Formula Jr
03-20-2003, 08:47 AM
If you do ever try a cross country, and have time lines, there is a bare down that you come against. Cause you will linger in interesting places. This is the naked fact that you have to get from point A to point B, in time C. Ideally, you would have no time lines.
If I never had a place to be; say, I won the lottery or something, I would elect to be transient with a Donzi in tow. I can't conceive of a better life than one in motion with someone I loved.
For two hundred years, the powers that be, have torn apart the old "American Dream." That might be why our older and smarter elders have sold the home, spent the kid's inheritance and hit the road in $500,000 dollar, rolling palaces. They have walked away from an old culture of handing down and are defining a new one. And I don't blame them for doing so.
Over the years I've developed a real appeciation for the professional truckers that are out there -as few and far between as they are today- that do this stuff everyday, day in and day out. They have done this 100s/thousands of times, whereby, I've only done it a couple dozen. And they do it, in "all weather," and work a 53 foot trailer though stuff that whitens my knuckles. If there ever was an opinion poll that I would take seriously, it would be what these guys have to say. They travel through the Country on a regular basis. And they know whats going on to a much greater degree than we can ever know through the press. We get press at 6 and 11. They get it 24/7. In a sense, they are what our Country is doing at any moment. Tap into the trucking network, and you tap into the nervous system of the USA. And this is very important, as I'll explain later in another segment.
I woke up, somewhere fifty miles on the eastern side of Oklahoma City on Friday the 18th of November. I have no memory of this leg of the trip. Not even my voice notes yield even the slightest point of reference. I am numb and lifeless. The lack of interest may be why this is my last X-C for the foreseeable future.
It was a crazy and expensive idea to buy a boat off eBay, sight unseen, and then drive it almost completely across a continent alone. Travel is ultimately empty, if you do enough of it alone. I've completed the, "be your own best friend," school of thought.
My first crossing over, is still the one that resonates the clearest in memory. It was 1976.
I had had my license a tender six months previous. I had already decided to accept admission to the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma Washington. Not so much for its steller reputation in academia, it was known as a party college back then, but for the fact that it was about as far away as I could get from my completely insane, divorced parents: Two people selected by some sort of anti-cupid. Their only shared characteristic was a superhuman capacity for bitterness and hatered. It was through them that I learned that hatred can be come a drug, and like all addicts, they both required higher and higher doses of hate and vodka to get through the day. I had lost respect for both of them years eariler, so with the keys in hand, and nothing of depth to go back too, I drove in a single sitting from Annapolis, MD to Devils Lake, North Dakota. In the process I injured my knee. The '69 Chevy Malibu I was driving, did not have cruise control. But in 1976, on Route 2, that wasn't much of a problem. The Country was alot less populated back then. I just found a suitable stick to prop down the accelerator peddle and I was good to go. That first impression of vastness still lingers in my memory. All, I had known before was the megalopolis of the eastern seaboard. Somewhere in Montana, I received my first and only cross country speeding ticket: 103 in a 65 MPH zone. The fine was 67 dollars, and for laughs I sent in $66.99 towards the fine. A couple months later, the Montana Highway Patrol sent my father- the last address of record - a letter saying they would issue a warrant for my arrest, if I didn't cough up the penny - I kid you not! If my dad did have a saving grace, it was his sense of humor. He wrote out a check for the amount of one penny, and in the memo space said, "Hookers must be cheap in Montana."
From Route 2, I dropped down to I-90 into the biggest set of mountans I'd ever seen. The idea that this was all national park land, just blew my mind. I hit I-5 at Seattle and landed in the staff parking lot of UPS. Here, I was overwhelmed by the scent of cedar trees and fresh mowed grass.
I can still smell and sense that impression after 27 years.
I wandered around campus, and found out classes were not to start for another week. They were conducting some sort of "Up with People" kind of orientation that was not my cup of tea, so I jumped back in the Chevy and drove to LA along Highways 101 and 1. There was some one I wanted to visit. I had met a girl in high school that for some reason was from LA, but was finishing out high school in Annapolis. Out of State pregnancy adoption thingy was the real story. I told her when we last spoke I'd look her up, if I had the time when she got back to LA. I was kinda in love with her for what she had done: Whatever my understanding of that word, "love" was as a teenager. She was very surprized when I called her in Whittier. We hung around and she once again reiterated that she wasn't interested in me as a "boy friend," so, I drove all the way back, also along highway 1 and 101 picking up every single hitckhiker I saw. Of these there were two catagories: The first catagory of hitchhiker was of the dimmly light bum varity that didn't even have a good story to tell - they would ask for money above and beyond the ride. The second group, were people that had seen so much, and were so expressive, that I felt like I had met a traveling soul, or souls if there was a pair- and they never asked for anything. At least the Malibu had fulfilled its namesake.
These are the incredibly stupid things, young guys do; drive 5000 plus miles on a chance. But, I would not have missed it for the world. Started classes three days late and never missed a beat - it was still a party school.
Oky, I've added tangential stuff here. Deal with it. In the trade its called character development.
Once I stopped east of Oky-City, I thought about all of this, and I became well lubricated - inebreated, to put it all on tape. Where am I? What the hell am I doing. That ended up being a statement, not a question. I'm being altered by this trip in many ways that I understand now at age 44. All the rest of the trips where just fun adventures. This one said something else, something different. It said, "You can be the best at what you do, but if you can't make the time for another human being, then this is your walk." I have crossed that bridge for a long time. I've lived on the wrong side of that bridge for too long. I'm turning around and walking back. I have the time now.
5000 miles, isn't so far. But, this is, after all, an analogy. :)
<small>[ March 20, 2003, 09:02 AM: Message edited by: Formula Jr ]</small>
If I never had a place to be; say, I won the lottery or something, I would elect to be transient with a Donzi in tow. I can't conceive of a better life than one in motion with someone I loved.
For two hundred years, the powers that be, have torn apart the old "American Dream." That might be why our older and smarter elders have sold the home, spent the kid's inheritance and hit the road in $500,000 dollar, rolling palaces. They have walked away from an old culture of handing down and are defining a new one. And I don't blame them for doing so.
Over the years I've developed a real appeciation for the professional truckers that are out there -as few and far between as they are today- that do this stuff everyday, day in and day out. They have done this 100s/thousands of times, whereby, I've only done it a couple dozen. And they do it, in "all weather," and work a 53 foot trailer though stuff that whitens my knuckles. If there ever was an opinion poll that I would take seriously, it would be what these guys have to say. They travel through the Country on a regular basis. And they know whats going on to a much greater degree than we can ever know through the press. We get press at 6 and 11. They get it 24/7. In a sense, they are what our Country is doing at any moment. Tap into the trucking network, and you tap into the nervous system of the USA. And this is very important, as I'll explain later in another segment.
I woke up, somewhere fifty miles on the eastern side of Oklahoma City on Friday the 18th of November. I have no memory of this leg of the trip. Not even my voice notes yield even the slightest point of reference. I am numb and lifeless. The lack of interest may be why this is my last X-C for the foreseeable future.
It was a crazy and expensive idea to buy a boat off eBay, sight unseen, and then drive it almost completely across a continent alone. Travel is ultimately empty, if you do enough of it alone. I've completed the, "be your own best friend," school of thought.
My first crossing over, is still the one that resonates the clearest in memory. It was 1976.
I had had my license a tender six months previous. I had already decided to accept admission to the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma Washington. Not so much for its steller reputation in academia, it was known as a party college back then, but for the fact that it was about as far away as I could get from my completely insane, divorced parents: Two people selected by some sort of anti-cupid. Their only shared characteristic was a superhuman capacity for bitterness and hatered. It was through them that I learned that hatred can be come a drug, and like all addicts, they both required higher and higher doses of hate and vodka to get through the day. I had lost respect for both of them years eariler, so with the keys in hand, and nothing of depth to go back too, I drove in a single sitting from Annapolis, MD to Devils Lake, North Dakota. In the process I injured my knee. The '69 Chevy Malibu I was driving, did not have cruise control. But in 1976, on Route 2, that wasn't much of a problem. The Country was alot less populated back then. I just found a suitable stick to prop down the accelerator peddle and I was good to go. That first impression of vastness still lingers in my memory. All, I had known before was the megalopolis of the eastern seaboard. Somewhere in Montana, I received my first and only cross country speeding ticket: 103 in a 65 MPH zone. The fine was 67 dollars, and for laughs I sent in $66.99 towards the fine. A couple months later, the Montana Highway Patrol sent my father- the last address of record - a letter saying they would issue a warrant for my arrest, if I didn't cough up the penny - I kid you not! If my dad did have a saving grace, it was his sense of humor. He wrote out a check for the amount of one penny, and in the memo space said, "Hookers must be cheap in Montana."
From Route 2, I dropped down to I-90 into the biggest set of mountans I'd ever seen. The idea that this was all national park land, just blew my mind. I hit I-5 at Seattle and landed in the staff parking lot of UPS. Here, I was overwhelmed by the scent of cedar trees and fresh mowed grass.
I can still smell and sense that impression after 27 years.
I wandered around campus, and found out classes were not to start for another week. They were conducting some sort of "Up with People" kind of orientation that was not my cup of tea, so I jumped back in the Chevy and drove to LA along Highways 101 and 1. There was some one I wanted to visit. I had met a girl in high school that for some reason was from LA, but was finishing out high school in Annapolis. Out of State pregnancy adoption thingy was the real story. I told her when we last spoke I'd look her up, if I had the time when she got back to LA. I was kinda in love with her for what she had done: Whatever my understanding of that word, "love" was as a teenager. She was very surprized when I called her in Whittier. We hung around and she once again reiterated that she wasn't interested in me as a "boy friend," so, I drove all the way back, also along highway 1 and 101 picking up every single hitckhiker I saw. Of these there were two catagories: The first catagory of hitchhiker was of the dimmly light bum varity that didn't even have a good story to tell - they would ask for money above and beyond the ride. The second group, were people that had seen so much, and were so expressive, that I felt like I had met a traveling soul, or souls if there was a pair- and they never asked for anything. At least the Malibu had fulfilled its namesake.
These are the incredibly stupid things, young guys do; drive 5000 plus miles on a chance. But, I would not have missed it for the world. Started classes three days late and never missed a beat - it was still a party school.
Oky, I've added tangential stuff here. Deal with it. In the trade its called character development.
Once I stopped east of Oky-City, I thought about all of this, and I became well lubricated - inebreated, to put it all on tape. Where am I? What the hell am I doing. That ended up being a statement, not a question. I'm being altered by this trip in many ways that I understand now at age 44. All the rest of the trips where just fun adventures. This one said something else, something different. It said, "You can be the best at what you do, but if you can't make the time for another human being, then this is your walk." I have crossed that bridge for a long time. I've lived on the wrong side of that bridge for too long. I'm turning around and walking back. I have the time now.
5000 miles, isn't so far. But, this is, after all, an analogy. :)
<small>[ March 20, 2003, 09:02 AM: Message edited by: Formula Jr ]</small>