As usually happens when you’re as charismatic as I and devoted to a quest of awesomeness, I have acquired a sidekick. His name is Edward. He is young, naive, and idealistic, not unlike myself. His nose is a bit on the large side, but that’s okay. As I understand it, he has never seen a world beyond his home town of Edson, so this journey could be a dramatic one, especially if he’s afraid of heights.
This is approximately how we came together. He was sitting in the crowd of seven people that I was chatting with, being in fact one of the members. If I remember correctly, an old fellow named Bill brought up the question of where I was travelling to, and I explained that my hope was to fall off the edge of the world.
Everyone was impressed except Bill himself. “Someone already did that,” he drawled. “Columbus or something.”
“No,” I replied, “he ran into America just in time.”
“Then aren’t you goin in the wrong direction?” said Bill. “Seems to me it’d be more efficient to head for the other end of America.”
“It seems to me,” I commented, “that a journey is not about the destination, but the journey itself.”
At that moment I observed Edward leaning forward as though mesmerized. I presume his eyes were shining, but I couldn’t see them past his unusually sizeable proboscis.
“You are a visionary,” he declared. “I must accompany you!”
“Great,” I said, “awesome. We leave tomorrow. Is there a KFC in this town? I need to restock. Threw out all my supplies while crossing the mountains.”
“Why?” Edward inquired.
“Circumstances demanded it.” Wisely, I decided to say no more, knowing the truth would render him permanently incapable of speech and, quite possibly, every motor function he held dear.
Tomorrow, I will resume my journey. I suppose I’ll also be entering the prairies. Daunting, since I understand they’re really flat, but then, I imagine things couldn’t get much more dramatic than my whole mountain-crossing experience. Perhaps I’ll describe that in more detail later when I’ve thought of a way to tell it that doesn’t cause paralysis. I really do feel bad about that strawberry farmer.
lol