And just like that…
The 2.5 week trip somehow rushed by but also felt like an entire lifetime
Just like that, the Voyage of the Damned has concluded the same way it began; two dudes in their mid-20s with questions whose answers may or may not exist.
One of my innumerable, mostly unspoken pet peeves is this idea of doing things “just to say you did it.” That’s bologna…baloney? Doing something to merely ‘say you did it’ necessarily implies the experience was for other people. Say to whom?
Zal and I tried really hard to do things for the sake of doing them. Things we wanted to experience for ourselves.
I’m writing this aboard my beloved Amtrak Empire Service from NYC en route to Buffalo. Looking out the train window––like looking out the passenger seat window heading back East with a somber song playing––forces one into introspection. This is a good thing. It also might lead one to imagine themselves as the main character in a cheesy movie or music video which is a vain and embarrassing thing.
The trip was filled with circumstances of both sheer euphoria and downright despair that will take some time to process. We did and saw so much that all the pictures couldn’t come close to capturing.
Triumphantly flipped off the Trump building in Chicago, drove up and back down the mountains in relentless Wyoming snow, hitchhiked in a blizzard, saw a moose, exchanged greetings with Mormons in Salt Lake City, looked over the fog at the Golden Gate Bridge, drove down the Pacific Coast Highway to Los Angeles where we posed before the Hollywood sign, gambled in Vegas, almost got duped by a prostitute (I thought she just thought I was friendly!) stood on a ledge under the spell of the Grand Canyon, and drove 30+ hours without stopping for rest from New Mexico to New York.
All the while we laughed with old friends and new from one coast to the other.
The day before we left the election was called for Joe Biden. So on Sunday morning I picked up a souvenir copy of the New York Times and we shot out of a cannon of ecstasy across I-80W blaring “On the Road Again,” “Life is a Highway,” and all the other clichéd Americana hits by Tom Petty, Springsteen et. al. This was the feeling you long for before heading out On the Road. What Jack Kerouac described as “nothing behind me, everything ahead of me.”
Inevitably it couldn’t last.
Eventually you hit the point where the romance and elation has faded and you’re not even close to California let alone down the West Coast. Then you’re cold and hungry, trying to shake off a wretched whiskey hangover and the whole ordeal becomes a exercise in steadfast endurance.
This is about the time the songs from the playlist have lost their luster and all the local public radio stations are reporting bad news. The dark empty roads turn creepy and you hope the socially underdeveloped truck stop cashiers aren’t practicing cannibals. You cannot help but imagine the nightmare scenario where the car breaks down in the middle of nowhere.
But even worse than all this is the feeling of intense guilt and selfishness and stupidity of traveling from place to place across the country in the midst of a pandemic which has claimed 250,000 lives because you couldn’t sit still for awhile. And trust me there’s a lot of places out there we got funny looks for wearing masks.
Still, when you reach a gorgeous new landscape or walk the streets of a new city it’s enough to sustain you until the next fix.
I am hardly the first one to remark on how vast America is and how much variation there is to behold in her geography and people. From the Midwestern Plains to the imposing Rocky Mountains of the West on into the rolling hills of California framed by the infinite Pacific Ocean.
Yet every last one of these extraordinary places is garnished (or maybe tarnished?) by Starbucks, McDonalds and gas stations selling souvenir postcards and keychains. And though the people vary greatly in their priorities and particular approaches to life in this land––from the ‘Bills Mafia,’ to the bums in Chicago, to the haughty residents of Beverly Hills and every semi driver in between––we’re all sorta just trying to get along in these brutal and hopeful times.
Jack London said of inspiration, “you can’t wait for [it.] You have to go after it with a club.” Maybe the same is true of happiness.
There’s so much to enjoy if the light hits from the perfect angle and you tilt your head just right.
The girl passing you in the left lane singing her heart out and playing the steering wheel drums. A homeless man receiving an unexpected $10 bill. A gray old couple holding hands on their afternoon stroll.
I am being a bit hokey but I think if nothing else this year has given us reason to indulge our sentimentality at least a little bit, no?
I digress. Anyway, the trip was amazing and I encourage everyone to do it if they get the chance. Although maybe not during a pandemic. Cannot wait to share the stories and hear others’. Thanks for reading.
Excelsior!
