My name is Joe Conley, and this is one of my websites. If you’re reading this, you probably know who I am, and if you don’t know who I am, you probably don’t care. But:

• I have worked for Amazon.com for the past twelve years
• I have taken a two-month leave of absence, starting today, which represents the longest time off I’ve ever taken since I started at Amazon by about six weeks
• I’m going on a socially distanced road trip around the United States
• I’m going to blog about it, with a goal of writing every single day

I’ll be providing a more detailed write-up on the background behind WHY I’m doing this for tomorrow’s update (since I don’t want Episode One to be a downer, and let’s be real, the background is fucking depressing).

You might be thinking to yourself, why the fuck are you going on a road trip during a global pandemic, and that’s a fair point, but when you need a leave of absence you need a leave of absence, and it’s not like I want to to stay home and stare at the wall, plus the type of things I like to do on road trips are usually take pictures of mountains and avoid other people at all costs, so the risk profile is only marginally higher.

This road trip is an unusual one, though, in that I only have a vague outline of what I’m going to do. I’m a planner, so my vacations are usually broken down in Excel spreadsheets with meticulous detail, with times and dates and reservations. Here, I’ve done only the vaguest of planning, and only had a couple location locked in before I left (and only one ‘booked’, since I’m not sure when I’ll arrive anywhere). I’m fairly confident this is going to bite me in the ass at some point, but over the past few months, I haven’t had the time or energy to plan anything, and it’s kinda nice to just wing it. Here’s a rough idea:

This is as far as Google Maps lets you go on a single trip before it craps out, but post-Detroit (where I’ll be visiting my very lovely friends, Amy Jane and Graham) the idea is to meander back home, stopping off at Yellowstone National Park, and plotting a course that will likely be largely determined by weather quality. This also only a rough map, as I’ll be taking side quests here and there to Points of Interest.

So far, though, the trip is off to a great start, which began a few weeks ago. Coincidentally, my last day before going out on leave (Feb 26) is also my birthday, and as luck would have it, this is the year my driver’s license expires. In their wisdom, Washington’s Department of Licensing’s notice arrived of Feb 17th, 9 days before expiration, with a notice that advised that new licenses could take up to 30 days to arrive. (In fairness, I’m not sure when the WA DOL mailed this out, and the culprit could be the USPS under their historically incompetent current leadership). At any rate, I renewed my license online and didn’t really pay any attention that I might be without a valid license for 20+ days under the best of cases, particularly during a time when I would be out of state and not even able to receive the license in the first place.

This finally crystallized on the 27th, so I went back on the DOL website to see if I could get a temp paper license online. There were no options available. Fair enough. Guess I’m starting this trip off the way all good trips begin: hitting the DMV.

This morning I wake up early and drive to the DMV. Arrive, wait, talk to a helpful lady. She explains that recently the powers that be split the DMV into two locations. This one is for vehicle licensing only, the one for driver’s licensing is at a different location. She helpfully gives me the new address.

Fair enough. I drive to the second location, which, luckily, is only a few miles away. Arriving, I quickly realize four salient facts:

1. This location is closed on Mondays. Today is a Monday
2. This location only allows visits by appointment, so even if it wasn’t Monday, I’d be fucked
3. Appointments are made online and are booking more than 30 days out, so even if I had time to make an appointment, I’d be fucked
4. The list of acceptable reasons to book an appointment do NOT include getting a temp license because yours has expired, so I’m fucked

I call the DOL as I run a few more errands, listening to the endless phone tree options. After maybe thirty minutes on hold, the line disconnects. At this point I decide, fuck it, it’s been maybe five years since I was pulled over, what’s the worst that could happen going on a five-week road trip around the US with an expired license, and take off.

Today’s drive was pretty boring. As I write this, I am in a relatively shitty Quality Inn in Medford, Oregon. I have no particular interest in Medford, it’s merely a stepping-stone. The Inn has a powerful aroma of marijuana every time I step outside my room. There are signs threatening against smoking in rooms everywhere. I expect the residents, to get around this, step out into the hallways to smoke.

One of the several items I forgot was a decent glass. Most hotel-rooms are equipped with several pitiful Hobbit-sized plastic cups which are perfectly dreadful if you want any reasonably sized iced beverage, so I stopped off at a convenience store and purchased an almost incomprehensibly shitty plastic mug. The paper design inside the plastic has a very visible seam, with a horrible gold background and blue seahorses. I love it.

Today’s highlights:

• A man screaming at me in a Fred Meyer parking lot because I wasn’t moving fast enough
• An attendant getting super bitchy at me because I automatically stepped out of my car, before remembering that I was in the state that believes its residents are too stupid to pump their own fucking gasoline
• an unsecured load containing huge quantities of analog tape that were flying around the highway and eventually wrapped around the passenger side mirror and flew out for maybe 45 feet behind my car, until I could get off the freeway and clear it
• upon arrival in Medford, taking a much deeper look through the WA DOL website and eventually finding a page, free of documentation or letterheads or anything making it look legitimate, that says that actually my license has a 90 day extension period so technically I should be okay, as long as hotheaded policemen in different states find that sheet of paper trustworthy. I’m very impressed by how this page is buried within the DOL website and neither physical location, nor the automated phone tree, mentioned this fact.
• Culinary perfection: