Thoughts from a Road Trip

wind chimes from recycled materials, road side stand, mississippi

These past thirty days, I have been traveling across the country. It's like every college graduate's dream- road tripping, friends, a goodly amount of caffeine, a lethal lack of sleep from staying up late nights talking. Heaven. (but all good things come to an end, or should, so that the next good thing can start.) The only real qualm I had with the trip as a whole is that we did it in a minivan, a mint green Toyota Sienna. Not exactly the epitome of coolness, of American independence and collegiate intellectualism. I had high hopes for a rugged Jeep, something we'd throw our backpacks into and just take off. In this vision, we were also driving through the desert, and that was a bit dampened when I actually stopped to think that the eastern and mid-western parts of the United States were far too lush for these barren lands of infinite sands that I associated with road trips. But I suppose that if one is offered a free road trip and a stipend, you don't look a gifthorse in the mouth. Or gift van.

the buffalo bisons baseball stadium, buffalo, new york

In 32 days I saw 26 cities. I added up at the minimum an additional 12 states to my official (officially in my head, as yet not on paper) How-Many-States-in-the-U.S.-I've-Officially-Been-to Tally, bringing up the whole amount to 33. We tried to do one iconic thing in every city we went to, to get an essence, a true taste of what that city's culture is really like. (*note: this was almost impossible, as we spent an average of 18 hours in each city before trekking to the next event hundreds of miles away.) I saw buckeye's in Ohio, endless corn fields in Kansas, the St. Louis Arch in Missouri, philly cheesesteaks in Philly, and the Miller Brewery in Milwaukee (maker's of such American staples as Miller Light and the "Beast", Milwaukee's best. Woo.) However, because our speed was nearly break-neck, and I was endlessly loopy from long hours in the van, I can no longer remember in which city we saw or did which event. I know that I sat by the Mississippi and speculated with others as to its depth (we are intellectuals, after all. and what with our tiredness, this amount of thinking was all we could muster)... but was that actually in Mississippi, or later on in Louisiana? I have a state marker on my map in Arkansas, but what exactly did we do there? Did we even stop in Indianna, or just drive through? Was that the one with the cornfields? I am not entirely sure. I hope these memories sort themself out unconsciously in the weeks to come. Otherwise, the wicked epic-ness of the road trip, while successful, is going to be seriously confused in the story-tellings that will (inevitably) happen in dimly lit bars this fall. (Because that is where epic road trip stories are shared.)

water fountain outside the atlanta aquarium, atlanta, georgia

There's one crucial element that you find yourself obsessively focusing on in every road trip: when are you going to eat again? I'd get up, have breakfast at whichever host's house we were fortunate to be staying at, but I'd be in the car for approximately an hour and then I'd start thinking about lunch time. Would we be stopping for food soon? Are there any cookies in the car? Has anyone seen a Waffle House sign recently? (Mm... Waffle House. So bad... so good.) And then after lunch it would only be a matter of time (minutes.) when I would start to think about dinner again. What kind of food would be at the event tonight? If it was only appetizers, would we have time to go out after the event? What kind of local fare was the city going to have? Was it going to be vegetarian friendly? Are there any cookies in the car? It's hard not to think about food when you're passing a cornfield every second of a six hour drive. I have seen with my own eyes why the midwest is called "America's Breadbasket." It wasn'tjust some cute but not really fully accurate motto, like New Hampshire's "Live free or Die!" (...kind of threatening.) or New Jersey's "Liberty and Prosperity". (Jersey?) But no. Corn. Every which way. So what else could you really do but think about food?

ducks, the world war II memorial, washington d.c.

Road trips: Long. People-filled. Little sleep, much driving. Incredibly amounts of bonding, over music, over stories from home, over communal hunger. And depending on where you are- views of corn. Very worth it.

the road trip team: me, jen, jason, & ko, washington monument, washington, d.c.