A Summer Less Ordinary, Part I: Road Trips
F or most of my life, summer has been a season without accomplishment. I have to qualify that statement with this observation: my childhood summers were fun, productive times when I engaged in all the usual outdoor activities, riding my bicycle, playing little league, splashing around in our wading pool and, when I got older, walking to the municipal pool to beat the heat in a chlorine-rich environment. As I moved into adolescence, though, my interests shifted more to inactivity: television, books, and writing. Yes, I was writing, plowing through reams of notebook paper creating several different science fiction worlds; and when I wasn’t writing science fiction, I was reading it. Movies were rare treats, television offered little to amuse me, so I stuck to my books and my pen. This included family vacations. I missed a lot of scenery keeping my nose buried in a novel or a notebook. I also managed to get myself carsick in the process, particularly when we’d be traveling up ...