There were so many adventures on my trip...

Everyone I met was a highlight. Everyone. Every place I went was special. But two weeks ago something happened to change my next trip... and there will be a next one.

Early in my trip I thought I might do 11,000 or maybe 12,000 miles. But my friend, Mike Argetsinger of Chicago, and more particularly of Watkins Glen NY, with whom I stayed one night in Chicago and two at his family holiday home on the shores of Lake Seneca, almost embarrassed me several times.

Mike, when introducing me to people, would say to them, "You know what Ray's doing? He's driving that van 13,000 across America in nine weeks! Can you imagine that?" As if it was something special. I didn't think it was.

But now I do realise that I took on something big and that I succeeded. 14,400 miles in the van, 1,200 miles in the pickup, 15,600 miles altogether. I drove through 39 states and went into eight provinces of Canada, I did what my wife...

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...and I were planning to do together, to see all the states we didn't see on our first trip.

And two weeks ago Mike succumbed to the cancer that's been haunting him for the past seven or eight years. He did so much to make Janet and myself welcome on our first trip and then for me on the last trip, how can I not miss him?

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Mike and his wife, Lee, in Chicago last June. He was a son of Cameron Argetsinger, the moving force behind motor racing at Watkins Glen, on the board of the International Motor Racing Research Center at Watkins Glen, raced at over fifty circuits in Europe and America, worked for the Cooper F1 team and represented his father and the USGP in Europe for some years.

In his latter years he authored books on Mark Donohue, Walt Hansgen and Watkins Glen, while his final work on Bobby Marshman will be completed for him by someone else.

As for my blog, it only reached the second day of my drive down the east coast, I completely lost momentum with it when I failed to have internet access for about six days out of eight leading up to that point.

But there's plenty to see all the same:

http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ustrip2014/1/1399811358/tpod.html