You may or may not know this, but we haven’t launched this site yet. See, our trip hinges on the sale of our car. In order to take the trip, we have to bring our dogs. And though we love our Honda Element, the idea of traveling across the country in that little box with two not-so-small dogs is unappealing–kind of like the guillotine is unappealing. The Element, also known as the Helenment, or Helen for short, is great for taking the dogs on small-scale road trips. The seats are neoprene; the floors are rubber.

For this trip we plan to buy a motorhome. Though I’ve entertained fantasies about living out my retirement years in a trailer working at a National Park in the gift shop and living full time in one of the best places on the planet, motorhoming as a verb has never really appealed to me. I guess that’s not 100% true. When I visited New Zealand there were these great motorhomes that people built themselves out of wood and other normal house materials on flatbed trucks. Those were tempting. And Airstream trailers are little bullets from heaven. But put me on a highway next to one of those bus-like monsters complete with car caboose, and I feel a little ill. I don’t have the smallest footprint on the planet, but I know conspicuous consumption when I see it.

We planned this trip late one night, maybe a week ago. We kept brainstorming until it seemed like it could possibly happen–though it was still patently nuts. Part of that revised, revised plan was avoiding hotels and kennels. Enter the motorhome.

Truth is we thought of this trip awhile ago, only it was a movie in that version of the plan. We’d go from state to state being married or not, in the company of some yet-to-be-named documentarian. The (brilliant, auteur) filmmaker would capture just how married we are while we enjoyed or were denied the legal status from one day to the next. It was grandiose on a lot of levels, but we entertain a lot of ideas in this house, so grandiosity is irrelevant.

While both of us would love to call ourselves filmmakers, we are not qualified. However, between us we have an abundance of web skills and an endless fascination for all things Internet. “What if we did a website?” I asked.

So if you’ve found your way here because we’re too excited to wait, and we’ve built and quietly spoken about our site, know that this is yet a work in progress. We have to rehome Helen and find a viable, cheap–did I say cheap?–motorhome in order to make it happen.

When it does happen, my wife Ami and I, our six-month-old daughter FJ, and our two not-so-small dogs, Hank and Esmerelda, will load up into our motorhome and leave Seattle. Thus will begin our slow tour of the states (and the District) that recognize our 2008 California Summer of Love marriage. And all the states in between.

In case you need to ask, we will be married the entire way.

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