On the Road... Again

And again... And Again...

So, as of… now, probably, I am back on the road.

Where am I going now, you ask?

As of now, I’m heading to Pennsylvania, to a gun shop called Trop. We tripped over a flyer for this store back when my wife and I first got married. We had to stop in Pennsylvania on the way to DragonCon… we would have stopped in Virginia, but we left at noon and not at 9 in the morning, like I wanted. The flyer called it “Chuck Norris’ favorite gun shop* (*It would be, if he ever heard of us).

Anyway, we stop there for about an hour or so, and continue on our way to Ohio. What’s in Ohio? The best man from my wedding, that’s who.

After Ohio on Tuesday, we head to Michigan. Why Michigan? My wife has family there. We should theoretically spend Wednesday, Thursday and Friday with my in-laws (I figure I should meet them ONCE) and then we go to BasedCon.

Yes, BasedCon. It was started by Rob Kroese, my co-founder at Upstream Reviews. He started it as a convention without masks or assholes.

Unless the schedule changes, I leave from Michigan on Sunday and head down to Texas—Dallas, to be precise.

During the weekend after BasedCon Dallas has FenCon. Dallas and the surrounding area also have friends of ours.

But more importantly, Dallas has homes. Lots of homes. And they’re all cheaper than our home, and bigger than our home.

Yes, we are in the process of moving out of New York City.

Step one: Find a nice place in Texas.

Step two: We’re packing up and moving over 30 bookcases in our basement alone. And I mean six-seven foot tall, three feet wide, at least one foot deep, fully packed bookcases. It’s taken us about a week for three of them. If we’re lucky, we might move the heck out of here by 2024.

Okay, that’s pessimistic. But I don’t need to read the news, I just need to look outside my window to know just how much suck is going on in New York. Normally, I’m so far outside the blast zone, we were safe even during the 80s and 90s. Now? The disease is spreading everywhere. I swear they’re deliberately pushing it.

Would anything stop this move? Well, if Lee Zeldin wins the governor’s mansion, fires Alvin Bragg, the Bronx DA, and Mayor Eric Adams, and stops New York’s laws trying to negate the Second Amendment, we’d at least be less urgent about it. But right now, I have more friends there than here, and the way the economy is going, I’ll take anywhere the standard of living is as good, if not better, but cheaper.

Also, I want a place where I can fire guns without a special permit that says I can go to a range. Gun shops in New York state won’t even let you look too closely at a gun unless you have a $350 piece of paper.

Meanwhile, I’m still trying to sell books. Saint Tommy #10 and #11 are out. So if you don’t have a copy yet, feel free to buy them. We’ll need the money for the moving costs.

Anyway, thank you, and maybe I’ll see you on the con circuit sometime soon.

Be well.

~Declan