Road trips ruined my life. Or saved it. The first one I took was when I first got my driver’s liscense. I grew up in New Jersey, and one day, without telling anyone, I borrowed my parents’ Toyota Corolla and headed down Route 35 along the beaches and snackbars of the Shore, alone. I blasted The Replacements’ “Let It Be” and Peter Gabriel’s “So” and never felt so free before in my life.
Then, in college, I read Kerouac (yeah, yeah, I know it’s a cliche, but it also should be a mandatory part of any 19-year-old’s education, right?) and I understood that the road trip was something universal, something necessary for Americans who find that thrill in being behind the wheel or off with no real place to call home except for the wide joy of the road itself.
Soon, my buddy Jonathan and I had bought a car for $300 (and a $350 stereo system) and we were headed off from Boston to West Hollywood with the idea that we would become rock stars by the end. Jonathan played his Gibson Les Paul through a little Pig Nose amp propped up in the back seat, and I drove feeling more full the further I got into the West. We read and philosophized over Hunter S. Thompson (including a very misguided stop of our own at the Circus Circus in Las Vegas), and On the Road and Robert Pirsig (it seemed so appropriate that a friend back East set us up to stay with a friend of hers in Bozeman, Montana, Pirsig’s Zen town that seemed so mythical to us then). We didn’t become rock stars—or I didn’t at least. Jonathan ended up being one of the top sound and music soundtrack producers in Hollywood—but we were both stuck with a thirst to keep on the road, to find more.
One line of Kerouac’s sticks with me all these years later, and I think it defines what you need to find on any road trip. It’s this: “It was my dream that screwed up, the stupid hearthside idea that it would be wonderful to follow one great red line across America instead of trying various roads and routes.”
That has been my mantra ever since. I keep taking to the road. The year after the trip with Jonathan, it was New Orleans and across the vastness of Texas and on to California again. The next year, my girlfriend and I borrowed a pickup with a mattress in the covered back cab and headed down the Pacific Coast, starting in Seattle and not caring where we ended up. And then I made the move out West. I left Boston and rambled through the plains until I ended up in Sheridan, Wyoming, in love with the Big Horns and all that open space. There were more trips: My wife and I drove off from Seattle and landed here in Colorado, unsure if we would stay or just keep driving. This summer, we took the kids to the south of France and rented a car with a manual transmission and headed off into wine country and the rocky beaches of the Mediterranean. We still pack the car up and drive to Montana, not knowing where we will camp and crashing with old firends when we get there.
All the while, I have never thought that there would be some big revelation at the end, but as Kerouac found out, I have sought out the routes that wander. You must do the same.
