There comes a time in every man's life when he has to drive a great distance in order to end up at a mall, and also possibly to hand over his daughter-- who may or may not be someone named Becky-- to an institution of higher learning. In my case the mall was Mall of America, the institution was St. Catherine University (previously known as the College of St. Catherine; they changed the name to raise their Google hits, I believe) and the great distance was from Massachusetts to Minnesota.

We drove there for a couple of reasons. One, I had never seen the college, and although my wife had, we were not entirely eager to just put Becky on a plane and hope her freshman orientation experience went well. Parents are supposed to be there to make their child feel uncomfortable and anxious. It's in the handbook. Two, it was ostensibly cheaper than all of us flying there and back. Three, how big could this country be, anyway? I mean seriously.

You know how to get from Boston to St. Paul? Take interstate 90 through Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin, and when you cross into Minnesota, turn left. For some reason I have a problem taking seriously any distance that does not require me to take more than one highway for most of it. Likewise, when my GPS Navigator (which hates me) tells me the trip is going to take a mere 23 hours or so, I am inclined to think the whole thing can be done in a day, and is not a big deal.

Of course the GPS Navigator doesn't sleep, or eat, or need gas, or know love. It is also cruel and impossible to please, but now I'm getting away from my point, which is that 23 hours is difficult even when broken up into two days of 11 and 13 hours, because there are certain realities that do not become evident right away, such as traffic, weather, unfortunately lengthy dining experiences, the warm embrace of a hotel bed that is impossible to break from at six in the morning, tolls, pee breaks, and so on. It also does not consider the unfortunate fact that at any given moment roughly 1/3 of interstate 90 is under construction.

But we did make that drive in two days. We hated ourselves and each other and our GPS navigator, and the cars, and the highway, and life, but we made it. Which is almost more than I can say for the trip home but in that, again, I am getting ahead of myself.

(To Be Continued)