Miles with Maggie

by Steven K. Roberts Bainbridge Island, Washington October 3, 1986 I’m into it now. Around me people are planning send-offs, media events, pot-luck parties. New friends, both the sorrow and delight of travel, drop by to play music or swap stories. And this place in the woods, the last for a long time to be so…

by Steven K. Roberts Bainbridge Island, Washington September 25, 1986 I suppose this machine really does look strange to people. I’ve been living with it for so long that I usually see only a list of uncompleted projects ranging from waterproofing to CMOS logic design. But when I ride down the street, people gape, and the…

by Steven K. Roberts Bainbridge Island, Washington September 11, 1986 Hello from Puget Sound! For a place so close to Metropolis, this wooded island is about as calm as can be imagined: the ferry to Seattle may just as well be transoceanic. People around here amble; they move slowly and stop to watch the sunset.…

by Steven K. Roberts Columbus, Ohio July 4, 1986 A nation takes a day off from its countless private prisons—its careers, its roles, its lives of quiet desperation—and celebrates liberty. Liberty! Red, white, and boom! Company picnics, family gatherings, bratwurst in the park. Fireworks. Tall ships, the Lady, and 40,000 shells bursting over New York…

This little piece marked the beginning of my move from CompuServe to GEnie, and was posted to my new “Computing Across America” area there. This was the start of what became known as the Miles with Maggie phase of my adventures. The photo above was from May 1986, and we had only been dating for…