Light live blogging ahead. The family’s westward expansion begins tomorrow. There are three daily posts in the active series: Laudato Si’, Dives in Misericordiae, and the month of Saint Ignatius–these are written and scheduled for the next five mornings. While you read and keep Max and Dick busy, I will be motoring through the upper Plains, then up and over the continental divide. Be nice to them, please.
My wife finds farewells difficult. It has surprised me she has been as willing to look far and wide with me for a new ministry assignment. But she is as excited as the young miss and I are.
I find old driving paths tedious: Ames to Kansas City, Ames to the Twin Cities, Ames to Chicago–all roads I’ve driven before. Many times. I know the exits to get fireworks (not that I do), or gas without ethanol, or reliable food. Once I turn west at Sioux Falls, it will all be new. I’ve never before driven my own car west of Lincoln, Nebraska. So each new mile will add to the expanse of the planet I’ve visited. I hope that feeling will get me through South Dakota by tomorrow night.
I’ve said good-bye to many students over the past six years. Now I know how they feel, more closely. One grad student I’ve known for five years is heading almost to the East Coast. I told her that this time next month we’ll be 3,000 miles apart. This, after a lot of guitar or piano and flute duets over the years.
New adventures beckon. Y’all behave yourselves.
Catholic Sensibility 
In case you are reading this while traveling ….
To quote Roy and Dale (or is it Dale and Roy?):
Goodbye.
Good luck.
And may the Good Lord take a likin’ to ya.
A good omen: Boston’s withdrawn from bidding for the 2024 Olympics. Most sane residents of Greater Boston rejoice in relief. (The bid was widely see here as a brazen con by developers and construction unions to board a gravy train to co-opt land for redevelopment, and the Olympics Committees are widely seen as overentitled parasites grabbing for taxpayer’s wallets. Yankee like local control, thank you kindly.)