Thank you for your faithful readership in newspapers and anywhere you might access this column. Readers frequently ask personal questions about what I am doing. I think Fridays are good days for such divulgences!

This past two weeks I’ve driven across the USA. We – two adults, two children (aged 10 and 6), packed everything we need (and more!) and set off in our Ford truck on the 7000-kilometer (4400 mile) return journey. I plan to get us home mid-August, a week before the children will return to school.

Over the ten days we have camped, we’ve slept in a side-less, door–less shelter at an outward-bound facility, and spent three nights in a luxury guest house overlooking Scottsdale and Phoenix, Arizona. Now, while in Los Angeles, we are guest of a community training college students to serve the world’s poor.

On Friday we’ll fly to Hawaii where I will rest for a week before I speak for a week to an audience of 50 Korean adults about the ins-and-outs of family therapy. Then we’ll fly to the “mainland” and begin our long drive from LA, via San Francisco, back to our home in the Midwest.

At every stop along the way I scurry for Internet access that I may catch up with readers and ensure I meet my Mercury and other submission deadlines.

Rod Smith is a Family Therapist, contact him (even while “one the road”) at Rod@DiffiulctRelationships.com or visit http://www.DifficultRelationships.com