Today is the big day. Nicky makes the move from Morris, IL, to Pinellas Park, FL. Thanks to Baup doing the research, we have an itinerary of sorts:
If I’m reading the Amtrak schedule properly, Nikki is in for a hell of a ride.
He has a
Six hour layover in Chicago
Seventeen and a half hour ride from Chicago to DC
Six hour layover in DC
Seventeen and a half hour ride from DC to Orlando
Just under 3 hour bus ride from Orlando to Clearwater
Holy guacamole, Batman! That leaves an awful lot of room for him to toddle off and get lost between connections. Even if he doesn’t, it’s going to take him roughly 50 hours to get to Clearwater. Will Sheryl or Mark go pick him up at the bus station, or will he pull a Stella, and rely upon the kindness of strangers? Only The Shadow knows …
He should have taken Greyhound. It’d be faster and cheaper. It’d be funny as all get out if he ended up at the Scientology Center in Clearwater. Can you imagine the fuss he’d cause?
Greyhound bus ticket Chicago to Tampa (estimated time: 1 day, 7 hrs, 20 min; almost 32 hrs) cost $155 on Friday 31 Mar 2017, route south-southeast through Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia, cross the Florida panhandle and down the west coast to Tampa.
Oh man, this is gonna be a doozy. Nicky can barely find his way to the local shops without getting into trouble. The chances of him not screwing up a 50 hour trip must be astronomical. There are so many things that can go wrong on a journey of this length with that many changeovers. If nothing else, boredom and exhaustion will get the better of him at some point. He’ll end up falling asleep for too long and miss a connection or wake up in the wrong city.
Nicky’s going to hate Florida. Has he even been to a hot weather state before? I doubt he’s worn shorts since gym class. The upside for him is that such a radical change will probably cure his writer’s block. The downside for everyone else is that it will probably cure his writer’s block.
I wonder if he realizes all the ‘clues’ he left in his books for his son to find him are now completely worthless? Well even more so than before.
I’ve never been able to wrap my head around Nicky’s logic on that issue. No one outside a tiny group of people even knows who he is. And how many of us even skim his crappy stories for a laugh anymore? The chances of someone who doesn’t already know about NAP stumbling upon his writing and taking an interest in it are practically zero. The chances of this someone being his son have got to be less than zero. Even if by some fluke he did, how on earth does Nicky expect him to recognize ‘clues’ pertaining to his parentage and whereabouts? Wasn’t the boy a baby when Nicky last saw him? If his son has no idea who his biological father is, where he is or what he looks like, then any such clues are pointless. One has to know what they’re looking for in order to have a chance of finding it. And Nicky’s assuming his son will be looking for him in the first place. For all Nicky knows, his son might have no idea that his foster father isn’t his biological father. Or the family might have told their son that his biological father is deceased etc. What does Nicky honestly think is going to happen? That one day his son will just happen to find one of Nicky’s books in a bargain bin or something? He’s probably assuming his son will behave like a character in one Nicky’s stupid stories. That he’ll start reading and moments later go ‘Oh my god, this story about a dimwit sitting in a diner in Joliet talking about hair metal must be written by my real father who’s trying to tell me where to find him!’
Or that his son will visit the Poe Museum and just happen to request one of Nicky’s books (if they’re even still there?) Even if we told his son everything about Nicky he wouldn’t be able to go looking for him. We’re not even sure he knows who I am when I get to see him once or twice a year.
I’m just wondering if Nicky wound up on the back of a milk carton yet.
Isn’t that for families who want their loved one found?