We just entered Indiana, and are now stopped at a McDonalds/Shell station in Richmond, IN.

The northbound 75 is backed up, at a near standstill, for several miles because of an accident. Thank goodness we are on the southbound 75.

By the way, we started at 7:14 today and have travelled 303 miles so far.

Looks like Toby wants to drive! :)

We are on Route 75 now, heading toward Ohio, where we will eventually hook up with Route 70, which will take us through Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, and maybe Colorado, depending on our exact route later on.

Here is Toby, on Becky’s lap.

We just entered Michigan from Ontario; at customs now.

Well, we’re off. For me, tomorrow morning is simply the first day of a fun cross-country adventure (well, a fun road-trip adventure, anyway; I’m not sure Buffalo to Phoenix technically qualifies as cross country, since neither is actually anywhere near the coast). And believe me, I can’t wait.

For Becky, it’s that too (and she can’t wait either), but it’s also something much more dramatic: she’s moving from Buffalo to Phoenix, leaving her childhood home behind her. So in a way, tomorrow is the first day of her new life.

Tonight we went to Starbucks for one last coffee date with Becky’s friends, the “SHA girls” (who are now going to have their own blog, by the way; they’re taking over Becky’s blog and turning it into a group endeavour). Well, I say “one last” coffee date, but that’s not really true — Becky has the most fantastic, tight-knit group of friends in the world, and I’m quite certain this won’t be the “last” anything; they’ll stay in touch and stay close, I have no doubt of it.

But anyway, it was goodbye for now, and fittingly, we took a bunch of cute pictures. As usual, click for a larger version of each photo:

Unfortunately, Shannon won’t be able to come with us on the road trip, as she (and we) had been hoping. She just had surgery on her foot two days ago, and she’s staying home on doctor’s orders — which she is actually obeying at her parents’ behest. :) But said parents are going to fly her out to Phoenix as soon as she gets her cast off and is allowed by the doctor to go.

Speaking of which, here are a couple pics of Shannon in her cast this evening. Note how, in the second picture, she’s resting it on Hugh Manatee:

Now, about that road trip. I’ll be blogging from the road, of course, but don’t expect constant updates — I want to actually enjoy myself and take in the sights and experiences, which would be a bit difficult if I spent the entire trip staring at my cell phone and carpal-tunneling my thumb into oblivion. I’ll keep y’all updated to the greatest extent reasonably possible, however.

I’ve created a new category for posts related to the road trip; it’s called My Life: Road Trip July ‘03. But don’t rely on the category page to stay updated on our movements, since I can’t immediately categorize Moblog (cell-phone) posts. The categories will probably remain a bit jumbled until after the trip is over, so just check the homepage for the very latest.

Oh, and check Toby’s blog and the new SHA girl blog, too — I can’t make any guarantees, but stuff might be posted there as well.

Adios!

BrendanLoy.com is now listed on NYCbloggers.com, a directory/community of — you guessed it — New York City bloggers, organized by subway station (a rather ingenious idea). I am one of five bloggers at the 190th Street A Line station.

Here’s some general info about the site. And here are a few cool icons advertising it:

Pretty cool, huh?

Today was one hell of a day. I went to a job interview at a temp firm, fully expecting to fill out paperwork and be told something like “don’t call us, we’ll call you.” Instead, I walked away from that job interview with — shock! — a job.

But that’s not the only reason this day was extraordinary. Having overslept by nearly an hour and a half, I just barely arrived on time for my fateful interview — and, if not for a chance phone call from an unknown person, I might not have arrived at all. (More on that in a second.) Then, as if God were sending me a message to stop cutting things so damn close, events conspired to create another extraordinarily close call in the afternoon, and I just barely made it onto my Amtrak train to Buffalo.

In sum, I was no more than 10 lousy minutes, total, from both missing my train and being late for my interview. What a crappy day that would have been. Instead, I had a positively great day.

(more…)

audblog audio post

I GOT A JOB!!!!! Here is a photo of the building where I will be working. More details later.

Here is the New York Daily News’s front page:

The Post and the Times front pages aren’t online yet.

Well, it’s official. As of midnight, it is illegal to smoke cigarettes at virtually any workplace — including restaurants and bars — anywhere in New York. This is nothing new for New York City, which had already instituted its own citywide smoking ban, but an even broader ban now applies throughout the whole state.

Up in the Buffalo area, bar patrons and bar owners are notably pissed off about this, as I learned last week when I went to several bars with Becky and her friends. At each bar, there were signs posted like this:

Now, mind you, I’m no great champion of smokers’ rights. I’m an asthmatic whose father is a hardcore nicotine addict and whose ex-girlfriend has an idiotic habit of “smoking socially” to such an extent that she’s going to be addicted pretty soon too. I personally think cigarettes are gross and disgusting. I don’t like them. I don’t like them at all.

So I have no problem with bans on smoking in public places and workplaces, including restaurants. Indeed, I support such bans. This isn’t just based on my personal feelings about cigarettes; the dangers of second-hand smoke are such that, logically, the old “my right to swing my arm ends where your nose begins” principle clearly applies. If it’s a battle of liberties between your right to smoke and my right to breathe, the latter clearly wins.

But bars? I’m not so sure we should be banning smoking in bars. Given the fact that there aren’t too many non-smoking bars out there — which market forces dictate that there would be if lots of people wanted them — I think we can safely state that a large majority of bar patrons either: 1) like having the right to smoke; or 2) are indifferent toward whether they have that right or not. So a law that bans smoking in bars is effectively putting the interests of a small minority ahead of the interests of a large majority. But why? What’s the justification for such an anti-democratic move?

Ostensibly, at least, it’s a health issue, and the same “my rights vs. your rights” argument that I discussed above applies. But in the case of bars, I think the calculus is different. People have a legitimate and reasonable expectation of healthy air in workplaces and restaurants. But people don’t go to bars to be healthy. They go to bars specifically to be unhealthy — to eat, drink, and be merry (and drink some more).

Bar patrons’ right to breathe free air is diluted by the fact that they have already made a conscious choice to enter a mecca of unhealthy behavior. If people don’t want to breathe smoky air in a bar, they could just — here’s a stunning concept — not go to bars.

That would be an unreasonable statement if we were talking about restaurants or other workplaces, but in the case of bars, it makes sense to me. Is the ability to publicly drink alcohol in healthy atmospheric conditions an unalienable right that needs to be defended by state action?

Essentially, what this boils down to is not right-to-smoke vs. right-to-breathe, but rather, right-to-smoke vs. right-to-drink. In that case, there is no compelling state interest either way, so I say, let people have their poison. Don’t regulate. Leave well enough alone.

Moreover, as I indicated above, if enough people want to drink publicly without either smoking or inhaling other patrons’ cigarette smoke — i.e., if they want to enjoy their drug of choice, alcohol, without suffereing the side effect of somebody else’s drug of choice, nicotine — surely market forces will conspire to create non-smoking bars for them to patronize. Where there’s a will, there’s a way; and where there’s a demand, there’s a supply.

The only somewhat strong argument I can think of for a ban on smoking in bars involves not so much bar patrons, but bar employees. I can’t dismiss this point too easily, since there is a possibility that I could end up working at a bar sometime in the next year, if I get desperate enough for cash. So you could argue that a smoking ban is justified to protect me, and other desperate unemployed people like me, who don’t really want to work at bars but are forced to do so by an unforgiving job market.

You could make that case if you want, but I wouldn’t. I don’t think the state needs to cater to my needs quite to that extent. If bars were exempted from the ban, this law would still ensure that there are plenty of smoke-free workplaces for me, or anyone else, to work at. No one is really “forced” to work at a bar; if you don’t want to, you don’t have to. So I just don’t see why the desires of the few should outweigh the desires of the many in this case.

In the case of bars, I say the majority should rule. If people want to kill themselves slowly, in public, that should be their right, as long as they’re not doing it in a fashion that harms other people who are actually making an effort to be stay healthy.

We have the right to do stupid things to ourselves. This is America, dammit.