The street sign said Rose, and that's where I was heading. Rose Avenue, Marina Del Rey, California. There was just one slight problem: I was currently in Berkeley, at Rose Street, a few hundred miles to the north of where I wanted to be. Fortunately for me, this particular sign didn't bother with details - it just said Rose.

A few years ago, anyone who heard me talking like that would suggest that I see a shrink, right away. Hell, they'd probably offer to make me the appointment. That was before Jim Trevors accidentally stumbled on jumping. He told me, once, that it had scared the shit out of him, phasing like that without the faintest realization of what was about to happen. He'd been daydreaming, driving along the freeway, and turned off at Main Street. A lot of people do that, every day, all over the US, heck, probably all over the world. But I guess none of them ever did it while they were thinking vividly of another Main Street, somewhere else they'd been. Not until that day, when Jim found himself not precisely where he'd intended to go. He was on Main Street, all right . . . just the wrong Main Street.

So I knew, today, just about five years later, that when I turned on Rose, I wouldn't see the thick-leafed trees of Berkeley's streets around me, but the tall, graceful, omnipresent palms of Southern California, and impatiens-lined street islands. There's a moment, while you jump, that you see your destination ahead of you, shrouded thickly in fog, like crossing the Bay Bridge from East Bay to San Francisco, when the bright air in the corners of your field of vision gives way before you to a pearly grey-toned scene of headlighted cars and high-rising buildings. And you keep going, and at some indefinable point the brightness stays with you, but if you look behind, you see a grayscale expanse of bridge stretching away across the water.

I don't know why there are never any collisions associated with jumping; I mean, you would think that at a certain point two people would try and be in the same place at the same time. It's not happened yet; maybe it never will. Or maybe it's just the laws of probability, and not enough people are jumping yet for it to even be a noticeable possibility. Anyway, street to street jumping is pretty easy. Pretty much anyone can lay an image of one street over another in their mind, and if you've jumped once, you have the determination to see yourself through, because you know it can be done. City to city jumping has been done, but takes a very good imagination and a lot of determination. I mean, how many people can really look at a freeway mile-marker on the 580 that says "Dublin: 5 miles" and convince themselves that once they've covered those five miles they'll be amidst the rolling hills of Ireland? And street to city jumping, or vice versa? My bet is that it's not impossible, but I just can't believe that anyone has that sort of control. Maybe one day, when our minds are more disciplined to this form of travel.