I spent a great deal of the fall semester coming between Albany and Plattsburgh as I advanced both my education and political career between the two places. I've always enjoyed listening to country music, but all the time I spent in my pickup truck going between the two cities made me think about the way music is a sound track of my life.

The first time I heard Gary Allan's The Best I've Ever Had was next to the Queensbury exit early in the morning. I spent a lot of time singing that song traveling between the two cities on the Northway, along with dozens of other roads I took between the cities and my trips over to Burlington. That song was bid until it seemed to fade away and get tired as fast it came on.

Then I remember hearing Redneck Yacht Club after rolling out of the mountains into the Lake Champlain Valley and all the beauty I saw around that area in the morning. That song was pretty nice but it ignored all the beauty that I saw on the trip. It was so amazing to suddenly see the flat land and be transported to a totally different region then the Albany one that I've spent so much of my life in.

WOKO and WGNA seemed to be my friends on the long trip between the two cities. I love being in my pickup truck, and while the Northway often was lonely late at night, the radio was my friend. The bandanna on the mirror and cowboy hat on my head somehow kept me rolling on for one more mile between the forests and the woods.