As many of you know, my wife Roberta and I took off this morning, via Subaru Outback, for the Washington, D.C., area.  Some friends just moved there, and we’re taking one of their cars to them.

The plan is to blow through the West, which we’ve seen a fair bit of over the years, and get as quickly as possible to Kansas City, where our tourism will begin in earnest — hopefully, from my point of view, with a visit to the Negro League museum (you may have heard that I like baseball).

Other things I want to do en route:

– Stop at the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.

– Take in the Louisville Slugger factory and museum in Louisville, Ky.

– Pay my respects to the great Secretariat at the Triple Crown winner’s grave in Paris, Ky. (I don’t even like horse racing, but Secretariat was something else).

– Visit Marshall University in Huntington, W.Va., in large part to visit the site of the 1970 plane crash that killed 75 people, including most the school’s football team.

Once in DC, my top priority is getting to the Vietnam Wall, and my No. 2 priority is the Washington Monument, in large part because I’ve been fascinated by the 555-foot obelisk ever since, as a little kid, I learned Washington Senators catcher Gabby Street caught a baseball dropped from the top of it in 1908.

Always wanted to give that a try myself, but so far I’ve been unable to persuade my wife to be my accomplice (something about being afraid of being arrested). I’m also told there are now heavy windows at the top that you’d have to break through just to execute the toss portion of the stunt. Whatever. Those are challenges, not insurmountable obstacles.

I hope to be able to keep the blog updated from the road, but in case faulty wireless connections or other technical troubles get in the way, I’d invite any of you readers who are  not already among my Facebook friends to send me a friend request and follow my posts there. I can flow information and pics to Facebook via my phone, and plan to do so frequently.

As always, thanks for reading, and I’ll get back with you all as soon as I can.

PS — I know there’s a lot more to DC than the Wall and the WM, and in fact Sen. Wyden’s office has arranged White House and Capitol tours for us. I’m also pretty fired up to see the Smithsonian museums, the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials, and all the various war memorials.