08/28/2026
⚓ Captain’s Log: Twenty-Six Weeks Without Shore
Captain’s Log.
Twenty-six and a half weeks since I last touched shore.
Twenty-six and a half weeks of steel beneath me, glass before me, and miles stretching farther than the eye can count.
They call it a highway.
I call it an ocean.
There are no waves beneath these tires, but there are currents. No sails above my head, but there is always wind. No stars to steer by, only painted lines disappearing beneath the hood, one after another, carrying me toward a horizon that never seems to get any closer.
I wake each morning and work.
Not because someone has chained me to this wheel.
Because somewhere along the way, I became the wheel.
The truck became my cabin.
My bedroom.
My kitchen.
My silence.
My escape.
And sometimes, my prison.
There are days when the walls feel closer than they should. The sleeper becomes a steel box, and the doors might as well be iron bars. I can hear the world outside, people laughing at truck stops, families walking into restaurants, someone calling home.
And I sit behind the glass.
Alone.
Sometimes the loneliness doesn't scream.
Sometimes it just sits beside you quietly for a thousand miles.
You can have music playing. You can have the engine humming beneath your feet. You can have the radio talking into the darkness.
And still feel the empty seat beside you.
That's the strange thing about this ocean.
I have never felt so alone.
And I have never felt so free.
I can pull onto the road before sunrise and watch the world wake up around me.
I can crack the window.
Let the cold air find my hand.
Let my fingers ride the wind.
And for a few seconds, there is nothing between me and the entire sky.
When the rain comes, I sometimes reach my hand outside.
Let it strike my skin.
Cold drops against my fingers.
Sharp enough to sting.
And I welcome it.
Because the sting reminds me that I'm still here.
Still breathing.
Still feeling.
Still alive.
The rain doesn't ask anything from me.
The wind doesn't disappoint me.
The highway doesn't promise tomorrow and then change its mind.
It simply keeps moving.
So I move with it.
Mile after mile.
State after state.
Sunrise after sunrise.
Sometimes I wonder if I've become part of this machine.
Maybe that's what happens when you stay at sea too long.
You stop remembering where the ship ends and the captain begins.
But then something happens.
A song comes on.
The sky opens.
The sun pours across the windshield.
Or rain runs across my hand.
And I remember.
I'm not a machine.
I'm a man.
A tired man.
A lonely man.
A man who misses people more than he sometimes knows how to say.
A man who has spent twenty-six and a half weeks without shore because there was something waiting for him beyond the horizon that was worth continuing toward.
And that's what keeps the engine turning.
Not the money.
Not the loads.
Not the miles.
Hope.
Hope is a strange compass.
You can't hold it.
You can't see it.
But somehow it keeps pointing you forward.
And lately, when the nights feel long, I have started thinking about shore.
Not as some distant fantasy.
But as something coming.
The horizon has been moving toward me all along.
December is out there somewhere.
A door.
A bed.
A home.
The people I have carried in my heart across every mile.
The road is still beneath me.
The ocean is still wide.
There are still miles left to sail.
But I know something now.
Shore is around the bend.
So tonight, I will keep the music playing.
I will keep my hands on the wheel.
I will let the wind run through my fingers.
And if the rain comes, I'll let it sting.
Because sometimes a little pain is proof that the heart hasn't gone numb.
Twenty-six and a half weeks without shore.
Twenty-six and a half weeks alone.
Twenty-six and a half weeks becoming the road.
But I am still here.
Still breathing.
Still moving.
Still dreaming.
And somewhere beyond the next mile marker...
shore waits.
Captain’s Log closed.
Engines steady.
Heart still beating.
Course: home, to my wife. The woman, who never lost hope in me.... I can see her standing on the shore with her arms open wide, welcoming this old captain home..... December just a few more months away..... till then I must ride this ocean
