"I didn’t know I-80 or its exits, just that eventually after packing and repacking enough times to put National Lampoon to shame, my parents tossed us in the car and we left the house and headed east. Some point soon after, and this always happened, my dad would abruptly ask if we had closed the garage door…and back to the house we went. We’d pass features that had been named by my brother and I for years and some we made up names for on the spot. It was the same anywhere we drove; there were certain curves of the highway or random, distant mountains that suggested our location, but I never knew quite where we were, only where we were going."
