Was It Really 40 Days and 40 Nights?

It would be nice to think so, but it wasn’t.  The actual crossing was about 36 days, there and back. Four or five more days were tacked onto the end by going to the Jersey shore.  If you want to say that made it forty days even, okay.  But that’s not how I look at it.  To be technical, it wasn’t that cut and dry.  The days at the Jersey shore, to me, didn’t count. What was magical to me as a writer was that after I added the day at Hearst Castle, added the day going to Hollywood, and added the overnight stay at the Grand Canyon, when I got to the last long ride, with ‘Davey’ from Iowa to New Jersey, and counted afresh at the number of days, that rounded out to forty, exactly.  Cool!  At that point in my writing I had forgotten to pay attention to the number-of-days thing.  But since at the start we made a big deal about going 40 days and 40 nights, and since it now weighed in right at forty (again, without me trying to), I resurrected the idea and made it somewhat more prominent that “this trip was exactly 40 days and 40 nights.”  Yes sir. Made it Biblical.  Made it politically correct. Made it more entertaining and amazing.