Continuing to provide you with a gripping inside look at the whirlwind dazzlefest that is the barn boots book tour (not barn boots, actually) (logging boots) (more on the boots in a post for another day), the above photo reminds me to tell you that if yer gonna stay in 30-some motel rooms over 40-some days, you should not only remember to take your key when you leave the premises, you should take the little envelope with the room number on it, or you will be wandering the halls upon your return. Once during book tour in Oxford, Mississippi (I think … call the fact-checkers), and another time on a book tour in a location I can’t recall, I went to the wrong door with my key card and the door opened anyway. In both cases I encountered only someone else’s open suitcase and dirty socks (not the someone elses themselfses), but you will understand now why I always throw the deadbolt and hook the chain, no matter how prime the real estate. The perimeter is thus secured as I type this, having rolled a chunk of I-80 (fuel mileage dropped a click or two as the westward drive is a climb) from Iowa City to Des Moines with a stop along a rare undeveloped interchange to do a phone interview with Wisconsin radio station while sparrows and bob-o-links chirruped and bob-o-linked in the ditch grass outside my open window. It’s a fine green time to be crossing the Heartland.

Stops on the second leg of the tour, thus far:

View Michael Perry’s COOP book tour: Part II in a larger map

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