The Road Begins
It all began 115 years ago.
On a $50 bet, Vermont physician Horatio Jackson commissioned a San Francisco mechanic by the name of Sewall K. Crocker to help him do the supposedly impossible: drive an automobile from California to New York in 90 days. On May 23rd, 1903, the two men, along with Jackson’s pit bull Bud, set out on a harrowing journey across treacherous dirt roads and rocky mountain passes, enduring blown tires, break downs, lost items, bribery payments, and a deceitful woman who sent them 108 miles out of the way just so her family could see an automobile with their own eyes. They made the trip in 63 days, 12 hours, and 30 minutes.
Above: Jackson, Sewall, and Bud…a solid crew.
From there began an American tradition: The Road Trip. Paved streets to Highways to Route 66 to Jack Kerouac to VW Vans and on and on like the winding, yellow-striped roads themselves. It became almost a patriotic rite of passage to travel cross-country. To see the storied places and meet the many people, to attain a firsthand understanding of this sweet land of Liberty that we call home. The mountains, the prairies, the oceans white with foam. The diners and the motels and the roadside oddities. The tycoons and the movie stars and the sooty, toothless vagrants. All of the strange and wonderful things that comprise our American mythology. Though the state of these things has undoubtedly evolved over the many years since Horatio Jackson and company blazed their continental trail, the intrigue remains.
Today, road trip culture has found a new home as this van life thing that we see popping up all over our social media newsfeeds. Hip young people and their cool dogs kicking back outside modified campervans in front of glorious natural scenery. The new rebellion to the rat race trap.
Image via Blog.Jans
It seems pretty glorious, and so, having recently completed our way-too-long journey toward earning our college degrees, my girlfriend, Gabby, and I have decided to give it a go. We’ve rented out a modified Ford E-350 emblazoned with psychedelic artwork for 32 days in order to embark on an epic road trip across the country and back.
We’ll begin on the northern route, from Ohio to Wisconsin to the Badlands (where we’ll catch a glimpse of the unobscured glory of the Milky Way) and Mt. Rushmore and Yellowstone and finally to Seattle where we’ll begin our way down the west coast toward California and the legendary Pacific Coast Highway. Once we hit L.A., we’ll go to a Salvation Army to cop some funky bohemian clothes and spend a night in Hollywood acting like A-list movie stars on a D-list budget. When we’ve been successfully blacklisted, it’s the beginning of our long journey back home through the Old West. The Grand Canyon, Santa Fe, Carlsbad, Austin, up to Nashville, on to Pittsburgh and finally home to Long Island on October 22nd, with many undetermined pitstops in between.
I must admit, given the time restraints set upon us by the rental van, the plotting of our course was an arduous task that kept me up deep into the night, bleary-eyed and profoundly frazzled, on several occasions. I thought it was driving me nuts until I spoke to my Uncle Mark at a family gathering sometime in July. He wanted to know everything about our trip. He listened along as I described the plan with wide eyes full of fantastic adventure and a wistful smile on his face. When I got around to telling him how much of a pain in the ass the planning portion of the thing had been so far, he gave me a simple yet beautiful response:
“Hey, that’s half the fun.”
And when I thought about it, I realized he was right. To sit there before infinite potential and one million untold stories and just imagine, to run your finger along the map and consider the very real possibility, inevitability even, of coming to know the places represented within. It was actually incredible.
My total incompetence in basic geography was another startling revelation.
You see, something resonates with the American people about traveling to parts unknown. It’s written into our operating systems, an ancient piece of programming inherited from our ancestors. Those who journeyed on the Mayflower and on covered wagon across the Oregon trail and aboard ocean liners to Ellis Island. We have migrant blood, predisposed to perilous journeys in the name of discovering and rediscovering life. Pretty epic, right? I like to think so.
Rediscovery: that’s at least part of the reason we’re setting out on this nationwide excursion in a colorful campervan this September. To take the great sand sifter to our lives and see what it is that remains, what values endure and what harrowing traumas persist. I have hopeless romantic visions of sky-opening revelations come to me beneath the mighty Milky Way on a cool South Dakota night, or of sudden enlightenment as just the right breeze passes me on Santa Monica pier, telling me to stay forever. And maybe we will. I want to believe there is something great, something great-er, to be discovered out there among the purple mountain’s majesty and across the fruited plains (from sea to shining sea). I’m sure I’m being a bit of an idealistic sap, but adventure is romantic, and hell so am I.
So that’s it, we set out on September 20th to see not only the many great and powerful cities and monuments and national parks that represent Lady America to the world at large, but to come to know the places in between that truly characterize her. The tiny towns and the side streets and all the unheralded places of humble beauty that we know are out there. I’m Horatio Jackson, she’s Sewall K. Crocker. I’m Dean Moriarty, she’s Sal Paradise. I’m Beavis, she’s Butthead. I wish there were some cuter couples for this analogy.
Ah, that’s better.
