8-17-01 F 7:45 PM Atlantic City

Some boardwalk dive called Dukes. I'd like to shoot a game of pool, but wife and baby await me back in the room. I shouldn't even be stalling for this, as it's dinner time. Where'd I leave off? I tried to type 15 minutes in the dead of night on the plane, but some laptop snafu left me with no better choice than to write it in my travelling notebook--which is actually better, I guess. I slept maybe thirty minutes or so on that plane. The little dipper hung on the horizon to our left all night, framed perfectly by the window. Mountains of dark cloud flashed occasionally, and a sliver of new moon appeared ahead in the east, it's dark orb glowing with a faint ring of light. It was weird as the dawn approached to be so clearly flying out of the night; the gradations of light seemed clearly defined, delineated, demarcated--take your pick. We landed six AM eastern time, three Pacific. My nose ran. We wrestled our shit to the rental place. The baby, who slept cherubically all flight, played cherubically all the while we waited on bags and car. Negotiating Newark airport exit is not unlike the Tijuana border crossing--we eventually got going south on the Garden State Parkway after a missed turn off while I tried to figure out how to unlock Rochelle's window and feared we get stuck on one of those 25s-mile-without-an-exit expressways. We took a local route into the collapsed economy of Asbury Park, its fallen fun palaces leering post-apocalyptically alongside porno-converted theaters and dilapidated skate halls. We picked our way down the coast and stopped at a good omelet joint in Pleasant Point, where in 1980, I'd once weathered the stinging sands of a tropical depression, swaying signals, God's-might thunder, lightning flashing and cracking. The baby elicited the admiration of random patrons with her unequivocal joy. Roach switched seats with me at a tollbooth because I'd have blacked out in the next mile. More later. I've got to bring beer to the room. Wish I'd brought the camera.

8-17-01 F 2:27 EDT

First class baby! Going to Newark--Hoo-yah! Actually, first class isn't all I thought it would be. I was expecting a swim-up bar in a fern grotto, thought we'd be issued togas, be hand-fed grapes by topless broads, thought they might have some stewardesses fan us with palm fronds. Anyway...I think the wine's free. They didn't have any brandy. The kid's sleeping comfortably on her momma's shoulder. I hope to be as lucky some day, either way.

I'm not sure when or what I last wrote, but this is going to have to be my fifteen minutes because that dammed laptop is acting like it's got no charge. Muffhugger. Oh, well. I wanted to fill this notebook with travels anyway. This notebook has stuff three-years-old to the day--the East Coast Stadium Tour of 1998.

I think I didn't finish a third-person page when the laptop was plugged in last night at class. I left class early to pick up wife and babe at LAX as they returned from Idaho. I stopped in a Ralph's and a Vons on the way to buy flowers, but neither of them sold flowers. Rochelle and Ava had already deplaned by the time I got there. The kid looked alien for a bit. I was joyed to see them. JOYED. Filled with LOVE. We drove home, the kid cooing in the back the whole way. Picked up a twelver and some flowers for the wife on the way home. Played with my sweet little girl. Played with my sweet big girl after my sweet little girl went to bed. Neither one of us could sleep. I got out of bed after a 3 AM hump session to email my aunt and cousins of our imminent arrival. Called a sub for Wilshire Crest. Slept until about eight.

8-16-01 Th 11:27 PDT