Category: Islanders’ Epic

Milliarium is the Latin term for milestone.  During project management training many years ago, I was told that milestones were first used by the Roman Empire to mark the distance from Rome along a road.  There was a Golden Milestone erected in Rome that was meant to be the measuring point from which all distances were reckoned.  It was, in effect, the center of the Roman Empire.  A little research seems to confirm that this was, generally, correct.

Milestones gave way to mile markers, at least in the literal sense.  In the United States, there are markers along every Interstate in the Eisenhower Interstate System.  They not only provide a source of bemusement for the weary child-traveler seeking simply to pass time, they also provide a constant reminder to the nervous parent-driver that the “Empty” light on the fuel gauge has been lit for an increasingly longer period of time…and distance.  They also provide clever ways to name towns, a practical way to label exits, and an admittedly aging way to let a tow truck know precisely where a vehicle is stranded.  The notion of a mile marker as a significant point along an important path has slowly diminished over the years.

Outside of the literal, milestones retain a great deal of importance, particularly when it comes to project management.  The trainer I referenced gave us a quick history lesson on milestones to make this point: every great journey used to be measured in terms of distance from Rome, from that Golden Milestone, and every project is similarly measured from its beginning.  Along the way, a method for gauging progress and marking significant achievements or events is critical to understanding if the goal of the project is still attainable.  Thus, “milestone” was adopted as the nomenclature for these points along the path.

Although not very poetic, the metaphor works.  The idea of milestones as measures of progress for any significant undertaking is still widely used.  In fact, it has become one of those words that, when used, almost instantly communicates the point being made.  From projects to birthdays to life events, milestones are all around us.

It seems more than appropriate for milestones to be used in unraveling the DNA of the Islanders’ Epic.  Transforming the genotype, if you will, into the phenotype of the trip is not a trivial matter.  We’re taking a dream and making it a reality, and that kind of effort requires markers along the way, milestones, to help measure progress from the inception point.  The birth of the idea is the Golden Milestone, the beginning of the critical path to the destination.  The literal trip along Interstate 90 will have the same markers.  For I-90, the Golden Milestone will be the terminus in Boston, Massachusetts.  The endpoint will be the terminus in Seattle, Washington.  Over 3000 miles will separate the two, and there will be THOUSANDS of literal markers along the way.  There will be plenty of figurative ones, too, that will be indicators of our progress along the way, goals and achievements that we set out for ourselves.

The planning I mentioned?  Yeah, that will have milestones, too.  Lots and lots of them: we need to fund the trip; we need to get to Boston; we need places to sleep; we need places to eat; we need things to see; we need to know how to get off the path, when we want to, and how to get back on.  And we need to chart a figurative course to get us to the point when we can, literally, start the journey.

The same holds true for whatever undertaking you are planning.  What’s the Golden Milestone for the Epic in your life?  If the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, the journey of 3000 miles begins with 1000 milestones in a very comprehensive project plan.

Island-folk need to stick together.  There is something to be said for the unifying experience of being born and at least partially raised near the ocean.  You get spoiled by the sea and salty air.  You get used to boats and fishing, shorelines and beaches, blue skies and even bluer water below.  You get used to the myth and legends surrounding the ocean and ocean life, and that includes the tall tales of fisherman and the inexplicably-odd phenomena that take place in and around the even darker waters of nighttime.  You don’t really recognize it as a child, and it might escape your notice as an adult if you don’t wander away and meet folk who grew up far from Mother Ocean’s loving, comforting embrace.

I was born on the Island of Long, New York, more commonly referred to as “Long Island.”  The word “isle” is integrated into the name of the hospital in which I was born, and the name of the town itself is composed of words used to describe inlets and coastline.  We later moved to another state, but my father kept us close to shore.  The Long Island Sound remained within easy driving distance, and the house he bought for us was on the shores of a beautiful lake.  His fishing boat came with us.  The community in which we lived was nestled within a snug harbor.

My father himself was born and grew up within view of the Hudson River and New York Harbor, in the shadow of the great Island of Manhattan.  His parents hailed from another island, tropical and far to the south: Puerto Rico.  It was there he met my mother, herself born and raised on that island, la Isla del Encanto, the Island of Enchantment.  Their courtship and eventual marriage took place on the island, and they returned countless times over the years and decades that have made up their life together.  My aunts, uncles, and cousins live by the sea…almost FOR the sea…never straying very far for very long from her embrace and alluring siren’s call.  The ocean is a part of all of us, and it is never far from heart and mind.  Even though I live in the Midwest, I find my way back to the shores of Lake Michigan, that great American inland sea, and I longingly look out at her horizon, no opposite shoreline in sight, smelling the brine of a far-away ocean in my mind.  I am an islander, through and through.

William is from another island, many hundreds of miles away.  He was born, raised, and now raises his own children on the Emerald Isle.  More accurately, he is from the northern lands of the Emerald Isle, more commonly referred to as Northern Ireland.  His family tree goes back far and with deep roots in that island.  Like me, he, is an islander.  It was on his isle that I met my friend William.  In and around Belfast, the sea is never far from view.  Even where he lives today, out in a village on the edge of farmland, Belfast Lough is but a few minutes away.  Like the tropical island of my ancestors, Ireland is green and lush with vegetation, constantly watered and fed by ocean currents and Jetstream winds.  Although the rains that shower Ireland are a tad cooler than the near-daily rains from my little Puerto Rico, they come from the same place.  The sea is just as salty.  The fish as abundant.  The depths are as dark and mysterious, the surface as calm or violent with the winds.  The endless ocean is as terrifying as it is comforting, relentlessly brutal and relentlessly calming.  William’s sea and shore are no different than mine when the heart and mind of a nostalgic poet are at work.

Together, William and I are just a pair of islanders with aspirations of embarking on an epic voyage, not on the sea, but on land.  This trip along the asphalt river that is Interstate 90 is, by all accounts, an Islanders’ Epic.

 

I first met William when I was recently-relocated to Belfast, Northern Ireland, in early 2011.  I was in my late 30’s, and my kids still counted their age in single digits.  Although I’d been with the company for many years, I’d only ever worked in the US.  William was new to the company, period.  He was much younger than I was, and he was on the team that I was taking over.  While William’s tenure with the company was not fated to last very much longer, it lasted long enough for William and I to become friends.  When William moved on, our friendship had room to grow .  And even though my time in Belfast was not fated to last as long as I’d expected it to, William and I maintained our friendship across the Atlantic Ocean.  When I returned with my wife and kids to Belfast last summer, William and I got our families together.  We spent a day reconnecting and enjoying the simple pleasure that comes from sharing family with good friends.  Over six years since we first met, I still count William among my closest friends.

One of the first things that William shared with me when we started to get to know each other was his dream of driving along the United States’ legendary “Mother Road,” Route 66.  I hated breaking the news to him that Route 66, while certainly enjoying a revival, is more legend than anything these days.  Apart from officially being decommissioned and removed from the national registry in the 1980’s, significant portions of the road simply no longer exist.  They have been “realigned” to other major arteries such as Interstates 55 and 40, torn up and replaced with either modern roads or nothing at all, or simply renamed and absorbed into the massive web of roads that crisscross the United States.  Undaunted, William’s dream persisted.  I remember telling him about the portions of Route 66 that I knew well as a result of my living and driving around the Chicago area.  In fact, I had just moved to Belfast from Joliet, IL, home to one of many Route 66 museums along the old path of the Mother Road.  I promised him that, one day, I’d at least get him to the start of Route 66 in downtown Chicago and take him as far as Joliet.  If nothing else, I could help him get part of that experience.  The twinkle in his eyes somewhat diminished, we moved on to other things.  However, I never quite forgot William’s dream or my promise.

Years later, that whole I-80 thing happened, and I set my sights on I-90, the Mother of All American Roads.  Then I thought about William.

When I originally wrote the I-80 post, I started talking to William about making I-90 the new Route 66.  While not taking that Michigan Avenue-to-Joliet leg of Route 66 off the table, I went about the task of explaining why traversing I-90 is actually a pretty sweet idea.  From West to East, I-90 begins in Seattle, WA, and ends in Boston, MA.  It covers 3020 miles and traverses 13 states: Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts.  It incorporates two of the longest floating bridges in the world.  It reaches a peak height of 6329 feet while in Montana.  It hugs the shores of Lake Michigan and Lake Erie.  Dig in.  You’ll find lots to love about I-90.  Why not tackle that challenge and drive the United States from coast to coast?  That sounds like a reasonable, epic undertaking to me.

He bit.  I slowly turned the reel.  It didn’t take much, honestly.  He was “in.”  I’d found my co-pilot.

Now, on to planning the epic…

I have been listening to older episodes of the Tim Ferriss Show, one of the best and most popular podcasts around.  In one of those older episodes, Tim and his guest talked about the difference between a dream and a goal.  A dream is something you just sort of think about from time to time and wonder, “What if…?”  You kick the tires on it because it makes you feel good to think about it.  In the end, of course, you never really do anything about it.  If you do, then it turns into a goal, and that’s the main difference.  A dream is a thought; a goal is what happens when the steps to making the idea reality begin to materialize.  Once you know what the first step is, then you’re on a totally new path.

Not all dreams needs to be made reality.  It’s OK to dream and nurture a dream as a dream indefinitely if that dream doesn’t keep you from other things in your life or if it begins to drain you emotionally and spiritually.  That’s not a dream as much as it is a nightmare.  When that happens, it’s time to either let go and dream new dreams or shut yours eyes and leap into action.

I’ve got one of those dreams.  It’s a simple one, the seeds of which were planted a few years ago, as documented in this post.  The dream back then was to someday traverse the entirety of Interstate 90 on an epic, coast-to-coast road trip.  Even though I’ve talked about it to others, even ran the idea past my wife, it wasn’t until today that the dream started to become a plan.  Granted, it’s not much of a plan, but that’s OK.  The ideas are still swirling, but I’ve got a goal now.

The goal is simple: grab a co-pilot, grab some wheels, start in Boston, end in Seattle, and drive 3,020 miles of American highway to get from Point A to Point B.  Along the way, we’ll stop at points of interest, legendary and little-known, documenting everything we eat, everything we do, every place we stay, every person we speak to.  When it’s all said and done, we’ll have pages of journals, hours of audio and video, and a whole slew of stories to share.

That’s all I’ve got right now.  It’s the DNA of an epic.  Not sure how I’ll get there, but I know I’m going.  Maybe I’ll see you along the way.