Road Trippin'
Road trips are the best. That freeing feeling you get driving down the highway with the windows down, the wind aggressively blowing on the side of your face and your favourite chill but rock steady beats pumping through your stereo. It’s the exhilarating wonder of the open road, the enticement of unknown landmarks that lay ahead to make you go ooh and ahh.
I absolutely loved road trips. When I’ve needed to reconnoiter, I’ll jump into a car and go, the smooth repetitive pulse of asphalt my lullaby. Usually there’d be a destination, a point I’d zigzag my way to. Yet on one occasion, I hoped into a motor vehicle without a clue where I was going or what I was doing. All I knew is that I needed to get away. I disconnected from the world and went a rambling,my phone off for the majority of the day. Most people would think such a trip insane or wanderlust (as my Aunt romantically called it) I found it necessary.I needed to go and see where the road would take me as I didn’t know what to door much less think with my own grey cells. That it took me on a journey that traversed the literal and figurative plains and mountains of my life, was pure happenstance and my saving grace. If I hadn’t of gone, I can guarantee you I would not be alive writing to you now. Since that Kerouacan road trip I’ve been on a few others. Most in North America, with my most challenging and extraordinary in the land of Hobbits.
One of the greatest luxuries of living in the States is the privilege of a having an incredible roadway network. Yes, Eisenhower might have thought he was preparing the nation for another possible war, yet what he was really doing was laying the foundation for various Winnebago’s, vans, Subaru’s and (my favourite)Volkswagen's to go a-exploring. How many of us would not have survived the border lockdowns without the ability to wander thousands of miles in our automobiles? And to be perfectly honest, in a car is the best way to acquaint oneself with the many nooks of this bizarre nation.
Before I left for Scotland this summer, I got an inkling that I’d need to take a road trip to de-stress and process the whole Fringe experience. To positively reacquaint myself with myself and this nation. As the closing days of the Festival were approaching, I could feel that something was different in me. I didn’t know what it was at the time, but I thought a good road trip would work it all out.Upon my return to the States at the end of August, I landed in New York and the next day immediately flew to Chicago to pick up my wonder-mutt. As we prepared for our long drive back to the Big Apple I thought rather than do a whole extensive road trip, why don’t I just have a prolonged pit stop somewhere in the Catskills.As the pooch and I exited 86 and headed for Ithaca, there were grumblings in my mind. Did I really want to do this? Was it worth it, and more importantly, as skint as I was, could I really afford to do anything other than sleep in my car and eat leftovers? It’s like the minute I drove into Catskill college town, I knew I did not want to be there. So, I turned the car eastward and headed for NewYork City.
Why did I now not want to vagabond? It was always something I enjoyed? A simple dumb pleasure that brought me back to centre. In the instant that I actually scratched my head, in the darkness of the New York State woods, a distant voice in my clear timbre annunciated: ‘you’re over it.’ And over ‘it’ I am. The urge to road trip is gone. By some bizarre strike of lightning, that I was either unconscious for or completely unaware of in waking, I am no longer search for meaning along the dotted lane lines. After thousands of miles of riding, running and speeding, the brakes have been steadily pumped to a stop. And like The Wanderer, I stand atop an unknown mountain, above the clouds and mist, triumphantly looking out into the distance and ponder, what next.
