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Preface
This website details a road-trip from Kittery, Maine to Ushuaia, Argentina.
In December 2007, during a transitional time in my life, the urge to live in the moment overrode the instinct to play life's
long game wisely and I bought a used car, packed some things in it and began to drive South.
My name is Justin and my new/old car is Silver Al – a 2001 VW Golf. That's Al as in 'Althea' named after a song that
has long been a dear personal anthem. Al and I are just getting to know one another but I am already crushing on her pretty
hard. I’ve got the butterflies in my stomach to prove it. Admittedly this is a pretty big first date to spring on her,
but I'm a disaster at courting. Like me, Silver Al has a passion for travel -she can already claim nearly 170,000 miles and
I've backpacked around over 70 different countries- and we seem to like the same music which I've learned is crucial. She
rocks her own style, with a cute hatchback, airbags torn out from some previous accident, a couple perfect tats in the perfect
places inked by rocks and tree branches and ...a stray bullet?. What’s more, she's a two door as opposed to the uppity
four door model, which, you know, means she's down to earth -spent a little time on both sides of the tracks as have I. This
is important because on the road ahead, high maintenance won’t readily be an option. So I'm just gonna treat her like
the precious shooting star that she is and hope our relationship goes the distance. Time will tell and I’ll keep you
posted.
At the time of my departure I had thought that for most of this journey I would be traveling alone. My brother, Bret, was
to join me as far as Guatemala City, where he would fly out of on the 11th of January. However, 2 days into the trip and
the day before we crossed into Mexico, I received a phone call from an old friend, Eli, who asked if he couldn't come along.
While Eli didn't commit right off the bat as to how far he might go, he ended up going the distance.
Eli, Bret and I are all from the smallish town of Warner, NH. Bret and I are from Joppa Road West and Eli is from
Joppa Road East. While you can hike or cross country ski between the two Joppas, you can't actually drive between them....not
in any sort of a regular car, anyway. I'm 33..hope to turn 34 when the sun hits Aquarius.
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