I've had Talking Heads in, well, my head for most of the week. I started the trip with "Once In A Lifetime" and sang along until I had most of it.

"And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go?"
— Talking Heads

South and east, I think, past the sprawl and congestion of Atlanta to the sprawl and congestion of yet another place, but one that has something I haven't seen in quite some time. Ocean.

Into the blue again, indeed.

I remember, vaguely, Jessica showing me how to walk on sand in Mobile, a lesson I had mostly forgotten by the time Noah re-taught me in a chilly SoCal December several years ago.

It's time to see if the lesson stuck, to grab the sarong and the straw hat and stow them among my mechanical pencil and book of devilish word puzzles and take them to the beach—take the SPF 8000 and a list of postcards to write and watch the water as it continues its ceaseless wash from the east.

I won't be online much for the next week.

Here's to ducking sunburns and solving crosswords at the beach and mojitos in a Brazilian steakhouse and late-night conversations that never quite have a point.

Here's to getting over the fear of flying.

Here's to a last lunch with Jake before he flies out west.

Here's to the spouse who lets me go, because he knows that the only way to keep someone like me truly rooted is to occasionally turn a blind eye when she takes wing.

I'll fly home in a little over a week. See you soon.