Notes For Million Mile Road Trip

Three teens ride a car across the universe and back. Look out for the flying saucers! "Tipping his hat to Thomas Pynchon, Jack Kerouac, and Douglas Adams, Rucker immerses readers in a fantastical roadtrip adventure that’s a wild ride of unmitigated joy. . . . he ties everything together with internal consistency, playful use of language that keeps his ideas alien yet accessible, and a solid grounding in fourth-dimensional math. This wacky adventure is a geeky reader’s delight."—Publishers Weekly, starred review

Three teens ride a car across the universe and back. Look out for the flying saucers! Million Mile Road Trip is a phantasmagoric roller-coaster ride—mind warpingly smart and wildly funny, with a warmly beating heart."Rucker immerses readers in a fantastical road trip adventure that's a wild ride of unmitigated joy. This wacky adventure is a geeky reader's delight." —Publishers Weekly

When Darren, Nikki and Larry sat around talking about selling everything, quitting their jobs and hitting the road deep down it was just something fun to talk about, not real. But when life gave them the opportunity to have such an adventure, they decided to go for it. Winnie, their RV, was their new addition to the family. Nikki and Darren had spent the last eight years being married and building a normal life including owning a mortgage or two, climbing the corporate ladder and preparing their life for a family. All but the last thing happened so they decided to talk about all the things they could do if they didnt have kids including travel. It was time to stop talking and starting doing. After 37 states, numerous breakdowns, Elvis sightings, the last Mardi gras before Hurricane Katrina, Appalachian Trail crossings and many other humorous encounters, they end up nearly a year later where they started with a new business and another addition to the family. The next adventure will be even greater than the last!

Breaking the Vicious Circle is a tour de force that should be read by everyone who is interested in improving our regulatory processes. Written by a highly respected federal judge, who would go on to serve on the Supreme Court, and who obviously recognizes the necessity of regulation but perceives its failures and weaknesses as well, it pinpoints the most serious problems and offers a creative solution that would for the first time bring rationality to bear on the vital issue of priorities in our era of limited resources.

I love driving. I have driven since I was six, and learned on the old Farmall tractor from childhood days in rural Northern Ontario. We never had a car growing up; I swore when I grew up, I would drive somewhere every day. My happiest place is behind the wheel. Home nursing gave me that perk, and every patient I visited turned out another story, names never used and situations slightly changed to assure privacy for participants. My mother lived a thousand miles across the province from us, so in order to ensure my little ones knew their grandmother well, we often dropped everything and headed for 'Grandma's'. Each of those road trips was a story in itself. Something of note would happen every time we set out on such a journey. For instance, my daughter and I were at one time both nursing new babies (and THAT is yet another book). Between the uprooted schedule we both maintained for our babies, we did not take into consideration that our nerves would get the best of us. I recall my daughter saying she was headed for the river bank halfway to our destination and don’t bother coming to get her. I could keep both babes since it was obvious she knew nothing about mothering. I swear I don’t recall questioning her parenting, but to this day she claims I did. Loudly. Could have been something to do with the fact my last baby was born when I was 45, not much left in the patience locker. I am an obsessive fisherman. My fishing rod is always in the trunk. I would travel out of my way for one little cast to see if fish are biting at a nearby lakeshore, or I would jump into my boat and be gone for hours, sometimes days after the big catch. Those lake trips added many miles to my log of distance and stories. I also play music in a bluegrass band with my daughter. We log many, many miles gong to festivals, practices and local and regional musical events. I have always had a rather large vehicle to contain in the early years kids and all their quilts and cuddle toys and sippy cups and anything else they snuck on board. Later years I had to carry medical supplies, briefcases, office supplies, and the like for work, then instruments and sound equipment for the festival circuit, and a front seat filled with coffee maker and a sizeable cooler for the many meals I had to consume while driving. At all times I carried a clipboard and attached pen to record the noteworthy things that happened on my various trips. Those clipboards filled quickly. In later years it was a laptop and/or tablet and cell phone gracing my passenger seat. Since my nursing career began in the early seventies, and motherhood as well, and musician matters all my life, plus the fishing and the snowmachine miles, you can imagine I had ample grist for this ‘Million Miles’ mill. The book is filled with my life on the road, a memoir.