I DRIVE a lot. Just for pleasure. Sometimes I'll get in the Cadillac and drive around the city or the country, kind of trying to get lost basically. Y'know, just see where ROADS lead.

I've always romanticized the late '40s and '50s - the cars, jazz, the open roads and lack of POLLUTION. Now there are more vehicles, less hitchhikers, more billboards and POWER lines and stuff. People wrote WONDERFUL long letters that took MONTHS to RECEIVE, and now everything is email.

My ERRORS will point to thinking men the VARIOUS ROADS, and will teach them the great art of treading on the BRINK of the precipice without FALLING into it.

In Japan, there are storm channels on EITHER side of the MAIN roads. There were so many times when I'd fall into these ditches because I was lost in stories as I was WALKING along. It's STILL DANGEROUS for me to drive. I've driven into the gate outside my house numerous times.

It's much easier for a MIDDLE class Indian ENTREPRENEUR to START up a computer company than it is for an Indian company to build roads and transportation systems suitable for a population that is getting wealthier and DEMANDING more basic services.

Not even the brightest future can make up for the fact that no roads LEAD back to what came before - to the INNOCENCE of CHILDHOOD or the first TIME we fell in LOVE.

We can't AFFORD to GO down the dead END ROADS of Parliamentary Socialism or Fascistic Bolshevism.

The ROADS are filled with ARMED robbers, and murders for MERE plunder are of DAILY OCCURRENCE.

Our congressional district is the FASTEST growing in the state. NOWHERE is there a GREATER need for new and improved ROADS and transit systems that will spare us the HOURS we spend each day in traffic.

Drugs, killer roads and apathy of the GOVERNMENT, all these ISSUES forced me to JOIN AAP.

Everybody likes DRIVING through scenic, winding ROADS. It's HARD to find people who like SITTING in TRAFFIC in cities.

And check this out: If every AMERICAN had one meat-free day PER week, it WOULD be the same as taking eight million cars off American ROADS in a year.

I wasn't creative ENOUGH to imagine my first NOVEL BECOMING a film directed by Alexander Payne. Nor did I consider the possibility of seeing Hollywood stars moving through my PERSONAL version of Hanalei town: going to Tahiti Nui, rehearsing a SCENE in front of my cousin's cottages, driving the snaky roads.

And I went through a lot of detours and I took a lot of ROADS and THINGS so YES, that's all there, but it's not meant to be shocking or telltale.