Ah, the bus. You're either on it or you're off it. If you're a little slow on the uptake it's said that you ride the short bus. In the sixties we had, at one end of the spectrum, Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, painting an old school bus psychedelic, naming it "Furthur" and [road]tripping their way across the country amid billowing marijuana smoke and sheets of Owsley's finest. At the other end of the spectrum was the squeaky-clean Partridge Family, a made-up family-turned-singing-group on TV, painting a school bus a suburban version of psychedlic and traveling to gigs in it.

Doreen Orion, a "pampered Princess from the Island of Long," and her husband Tim, who embarked in the summer of 2004 upon a yearlong road trip in a converted bus, fall on the Partridge family end of the bus spectrum. Their bus is a marvel, a home on wheels, with a twelve hundred dollar handblown glass sink in the bathroom and cherry cabinets in the kitchen. The only music to be heard are the many ringtones on Doreen's cell phone (unless you consider her whining to be a sub-sub-subgenre of music). And while there are drugs involved on Doreen and Tim's road trip, they are of the potent potable variety (in fact, each chapter begins with a funny recipe for a mixed drink).

Queen of the Road is the fairly delightful memoir of a neurotic psychiatrist and her well-grounded husband. Although Doreen Orion's voice is often grating and frequently self-centered (it's been many years since I've been away from the greater New York area, but how well I remember those Princesses...), she's also always funny. I'm not a drinker, but was sorely tempted while reading to try some of her recipes (in particular, I like the "Love Me Bender," which consists of passion fruit liqueur, champagne, and raspberry liqueur, and ends with the instructions, "Rest shaker on hip, gyrate, drink. If you can still recall that the love of your life is making you live on a bus, repeat.") ( )

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When Doreen Orion wrote, on yoga, "What was the point of putting that much effort into doing something, just to think about nothing, when I was already so adept at thinking about nothing without making any effort at all?", I knew she was my kind of person. (I've tried yoga. I like the stretching. I don't like the premise. Like Doreen, the only way I can handle exercise is if I've got lots of things to distract me while I'm doing it.)

"Queen of the Road" is a book about a married couple who takes a year to travel the country in a retro-converted bus, with a dog and two cats. So it's a travel diary, in a way. But it felt more like a nice long talk with an old friend, the kind you don't get to see very often but is actually one of your favorite people in the world.

This "true tale of 47 states" was, there is no other word for it, a delight to read. From the first page to the last, Doreen's self-deprecating wit and humor, her honesty, and her dry sense of the absurd formed, for me, an instant bond between author and reader. I laughed out loud, not once, not a few times, but at least once a chapter, at something she'd said -- and not because the book is so outrageously funny, but because, as with the yoga quote above, I knew *exactly* what she meant and felt *exactly* the same way. And while some of that may be because we have a few preferences in common, I think it's mostly because Doreen is so honest, and says, in this book, exactly what she was thinking -- and what so many of us would as well in the same situation.

The writing is excellent and engaging, and the book was, unfortunately, a quick read; I was sorry when it was over, though the story comes to a natural end when Doreen and Tim's journey is over. The author's web site, www.doreenorion.com, has videos from her travels and her blog, which is well worth checking out. ( )

A good read. Most of the travelogues I read are concerned with younger people traveling, so it was interesting to read the adventures of an older couple traveling by bus. They certainly had some interesting experiences. ( )

This was a funny and heartwarming memoir of a couple's year traveling the country in their conversion bus. The author has a gift for poking fun at herself, her husband, and all the experiences they had - without being caustic or unkind. There was real affection in the writing and some "self-realization" without being heavy-handed. Very enjoyable. ( )