Back in Pt. Richmond singing 'Sweet Home California'

POINT RICHMOND, Calif. - My Travels With Charley, minus a dog named Charley, ended Tuesday about 4 p.m. when I pulled into the swimming pool parking lot at Brickyard Landing where I hang my West Coast hat.

And there Adm. Fox was sitting on curb, waiting to film my return, strategically placed near the gate to the pool where she knew I would want to plunge immediately.

I have a notebook full of observations about people, places, things and bad food - lots of bad food. But one overarching word can be applied to the weather conditions of the entire trip from Valois, NY to Long Island to all points west:

HOT

A cooling trend in Ashland, Nebraska

And while heat was always a likely factor - given that my Little Red Pickup is sans air-conditioning - it was exacerbated by a problem with the driver's side window. About 200 miles short of Edwards, Colorado, a gust of high plains wind blasted the half-rolled down window, knocking it completely out of its track. An emergency roadside repair got it rolled back up tight. But because the truck is (to say it politely) somewhat aged, repair is not simple and couldn't be made without a completely unknown delay in my travels.

The last time the window needed repair, just getting parts took more than a week.

Thus, the balance of the trip, the driver's side window was rolled up tight - no matter how freakin' hot it was.

Coming down the hill from Lake Tahoe into California, it hit 100 degrees just east of Sacramento.

Since arriving at the West Coast Fitz-Fox compound, I have been organizing my notes, thoughts, and sleeping a lot. (Not necessarily in that order, either.) I still have no idea, exactly, what (if anything) I'll be writing about my land voyage across I-80.

But my WRITE ON column in the Finger Lakes Times (set to be published later today) gives a preview of a small slice of life of America I found in my 3,800+ miles of driving.

Some of it was pretty and uplifting. Some of it was not.

The famous 'Dan Ryan Expressway' in Chicago, temp 98 degrees - and a traffic jam

A whopper of an endorsement for 'The Fracking War'

WATKINS GLEN, New York - When your writing is referred to in the same paragraph as a book by John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath) and another by Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle Tom's Cabin), there is only one rational response: You blush.

So Sunday afternoon I had a thoroughly beet-red face for quite a while after I read a book-jacket blurb kindly offered by environmentalist, biologist and author Sandra Steingraber.
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Sandra Steingraber

"It was Uncle Tom’s Cabin, not economic data, that turned the page on slavery.  It was The Grapes of Wrath, not demographic reports that opened a nation's eyes to Dust Bowl dislocation.  Out of that tradition comes Michael J. Fitzgerald’s The Fracking War.  Here, within a smoldering crucible of social crisis, is a tale of power, money, fateful choices, and consciences aroused.   If you like your drill rigs served up within the context of a fast-moving plot line, you’ve got what you want right in your hands.” 

  —Sandra Steingraber, author, Living Downstream and Raising Elijah

The beet-red blush was also because Sandra Steingraber is one of my heroes. Working here in New York as a journalist, I've published reams about her courage in fighting the hydrofracking menace, helping to lead the struggle against a manifestly dangerous propane storage project in Watkins Glen, and her arrest and jailing earlier this year on trespassing charges following a protest.

So to have her praise The Fracking War so highly, well, I'm blushing again.

Book cover art by Will Sweeney

All of the pieces have fallen into place - with a little pushing - for electronic publication of The Fracking War this week. There may be some last-minute surprises from the publisher to delay the e-launch. But as they say at NASA, 'Confidence is high.'

And the print version is on track to be available in early 2014.

By the way, my sincere thanks to all the folks who supported The Fracking War through the Kickstarter.com campaign. We made our goal. And right now Adm. Sylvia Fox and I are scrambling to get the promised T-shirts done and mailed out. I'm also trying to put together an author's website.

At a fabulous end-of-the-season party last night at The Stonecat Cafe in Hector, several people asked me about a sequel to The Fracking War. The answer is yes, there will be one. But I won't say much more about it until Wednesday at the book publishing celebration at the Hector Wine Company, which not surprisingly, is in Hector, too.