By Rob Adams, Sentinel Reporter/Broadcasting Manager
Geoffrey Nichols is getting ready for a journey. Physically, it’s a journey that will take him cross-country, and that’s nothing new for him. But this won’t be an attempt to make time on Interstate 80, the ribbon of highway that connects the New Jersey suburbs with San Francisco. It will be a meander on the back roads.
In short the current Greenwich resident is departing to truly see the country. When it’s over, he will relocate to Los Angeles with his beloved pug, Pixie. He calls the journey the Vintage Whimsey Tour.
“I felt the need to return to Los Angeles, where I had lived since the 90’s,” Nichols says. “Back in February, I flew back, and was off the plane nary five minutes, when I sensed that I had been playing hooky from life, and this is the only life we get. It was an unnerving, visceral sensation to have.”
Nichols and Pixie will depart Saturday, September 10 on a drive that will take them to Philadelphia to visit his grandmother. From there, he will visit Baltimore for the first time and progress further south, to Atlanta. Then he will turn towards New Orleans, but he will also make time for Memphis, since he says he loves barbecue.
Texas is also on the agenda, as he has never been to the Lone Star State. Colorado will be next destination, before Nichols and his co-pilot, Pixie, heads to Montana to visit friends. The it’s on to Seattle.
“It still boggles my mind to thnk that I’ve never been to Seattle, despite my penchant for rain and Pearl Jam,” he says.
Following Seattle, Nichols will visit Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada before coming south to Los Angeles.
“I don’t have any place to be,” he says.
Along the way, he will take pictures. Lots of pictures. Nichols, after all, is many things. He worked at McArdle’s Florist and Garden Center here in Greenwich when he made the February trip to Los Angeles.
“To quit a flower shop a few days before Valentine’s Day,” he says, “would have been professionally uncool, spiritually and karmically not cool.”
Beynd McArdle’s, and more to the point, Nichols is an artist. He is a budding screenwriter, who has the words “The End” tattooed on his hand – his first tattoo, he says proudly. He’s also, perhaps first and foremost, a photographer, and says he will shoot with Nikon cameras, as he is working on a potential deal with the camera giant.
Yet he takes simply wonderful photos with the point and shoot instrument of many modern-day photographers: an iPhone. Samples of his work can be found at geoffreynicholsphotography.com. Nichols will also be blogging about his experience on the site as well.
His social media effort will include tweeting from his handle @geoffreynichols, and multiple Instagram handles, including @geoffrey_nichols, and @pug_on_a_volvo. He will post pictures that are topic specific to each of the handles.
“I like to capture images,” he adds. “This trip is not about covering ground. The slower that I go, the more valuable tangibly and intangibly it is for me.”
He said the trip has gotten so big that he maxed out the routing software at the AAA office in Stamford.
Along the way, he will be staying with friends, such as one he befriended on a flight to Los Angeles 16 years ago. The personable Nichols, a Brunswick product who chats with ease, says he looks forward to seeing parts of the country that he never seen, and not “photographing palm trees.”
He won’t camp outdoors, given his concern for Pixie, but is content to stay in his car, a Volvo XC70 wagon that recently acquired.
We have a long family history with Volvo. If my mothers’ hadn’t drowned in Old Greenwich in 1990, she’d probably still be driving her 1980 four-speed wagon now.”
“Everyday is going to be this profound wealth of opportunity,” he says.
He’s also excited to be in control of his own trip, traveling just with Pixie, who sits patiently in Nichols’ lap as he talks.
Another stop on the agenda will be golf courses. With Nichols passing by several of the major golf courses on the professional circuit for 2017.
“Pete Bevacqua, who’s the CEO of the PGA, and was the quarterback at Brunswick when he and I played together, is a big fan of my photography,” he says.
“I’ll be a par-3 away from a number of the venues,” he adds with a laugh.
While no deal is in place with the PGA, he is hopeful that there might one, but regardless he likes to take pictures anyway.
“I’m inclined to document,” he says. “A day that goes by and I haven’t created something visually or put words on a page? It feels like a day not spent well.”
Nichols will head out with warm regard for the town he grew up with, but he is ready for the next adventure in Los Angeles. But he also knows the trip isn’t cheap. He will be crowdsourcing via Indiegogo.
He’ll be in touch though. Besides his social media interaction, Nichols intends to stay in contact with the Sentinel to let readers know how the trip is progressing.
“The Geoffrey Nichols that’s returning to Los Angeles is strikingly different than the one that left,” he says.
For Nichols, it is important to let everyone know that this trip is important – not just to him, but as an inspiration to others to follow similar ambitions.
“If there’s something that you want to do, and you’ve put it off,” he says. Don’t. Just do it. I’m really an advocate of ‘we are only here once.’ That’s important.”
Geoffrey Nichols can be found on Instagram at the following handles:
geoffrey_nichols
pug_on_a_volvo
the_vintage_whimsy_tour
nikon_across_america
volvo_america_roadtrip
