Our Mission

Hoosier here. So, this is where it begins. Sometime next summer, with a cast of characters yet to be fully assembled, Pinks, Rock, and myself will embark on a one month journey across this beautiful country of ours. We plan on documenting the proceedings- the planning, the implementation, the after math- for those of you who might care to follow us on our journey or give us advice along the way (all five of you who find the three of us interesting). We'll try to make it as interesting as possible, with photos, anectdotes, and perhaps even a little philosophizing along the way. We'll take a few "training" road trips throughout the course of the next nine months or so, and we'll throw up any interesting details from those, too. Thus, to start, I'll end my first post with a little something I wrote before the three of us drove, sleep deprived and slightly inebriated (those of us not driving), from Savannah to New Orleans and back again at the end of October. Hopefully it'll give you an idea of what's to come.

October 25, 2007

"Crossing a causeway outside of Savannah, Georgia, beneath a stone grey sky flecked with purplish-pinkish flashes of sunlight, the three of us were hit with an idea. We were on our way to Tybee Island, for what Pinks had called “a ritual cleansing” in the Atlantic Ocean. I had dubbed it our “baptism of the road.” We were about to embark on the first of what, we hoped, would be many overly ambitious, thoroughly exhausting, drug addled, sexually fruitious road trips. Somewhere on this causeway, most of the way through our first joint (I would abstain), one of us (does it matter who?) had an idea.
“Why don’t we just become travel writers? Like, travel around and write about it. We’re smart guys. We’re good writers. We’re funny. I know a lot of people who would read us write about ourselves traveling.”
All of us agreed. Why not be travel writers? We're all seniors in college (some of us more so than others), and decidedly unsure of where our lives might be headed within the year. So travel writers it would be.
Immediately upon making this decision, we were hit with a serious problem: how to find an un-trodden path through a well worn genre? The road trip narrative is as over done in American literature as, well, as about anything. Since Kerouac’s “On The Road,” the American road trip has been seen as a right of passage both serious and funny. It helps young men come of age, widowers weather mid life crises, and families reconcile, if only temporarily their differences. The point is simple though: in America, if you can just take to the open road, you’ll somehow find yourself.
Within these various genres, folks tend to take a few specific angles. There are the young, immature guys who hit the road and, after seeing their “real” country, are moved to action and live a pure life (think Into the Wild, or the Motorcycle Diaries)…this can also double as a “last stand” type trip, where friends take a trip to celebrate the end of “freedom,” via either marriage or entrance into the world of responsibilities or jobs.
There is the older man/woman, suddenly alone and lost in the world, that hits the road and sees the country for what it is- and finds a reason to keep living (About Schmidt). And there’s the satirical road trip, in which a dysfunctional band of people is forced into travel, and encounter all sorts of characters and bumpkins and realize that deep down, we're all more or less the same.
These three/four angles are usually presented from one of two views: there is either the Kerouac, outsiders looking in from the outside offering an alternative (and often condescending) view, or there’s the overly sacharin, Disneyland, small town America that comes across as too genuine to be possibly be true.
Faced with the task of tackling this already overdone, tired canon, what were we to do? Were there any new angles to circle and make our own? Were there any corners of this country that had not been criss crossed and thoroughly covered? Any obscure events that might have flown under the radar? Our answers, in quick succession: no; probably not, and if there are they have not been covered for a reason; and likely, but obscurity for the sake of obscurity is neither original, nor artistic, nor particularly fun.
Being baptized in the surprisingly lukewarm, unsurprisingly gloomy and grey Atlantic, I thought of our own motivations for our coming trips. Were we hoping to find ourselves? Maybe. In some sense, I think we were going out of an obligation to travel, to use our quickly dying youth to take in experiences that would no longer be possible once we integrated into society at large. Above all, I think, we were looking to appease that undying American (human?) inkling, that whispering deep in the soul, that begs to run, to take one’s life and individuality by the throat and just explore. To hell with structure and jobs and kids, it says- adventure, be spontaneous. Live. Still, we worried- was there anything in this of interest to anyone but ourselves?
Drying off on the rock strewn beach while a man fished some hundreds of feet from us and an abandoned revolutionary era fort loomed over us all, I couldn’t help but think back to earlier that afternoon in Savannah- that classic Southern town of old Victorian mansions, and Spanish moss laden squares, and endearing oddities. We’d encountered a man in a small, second story art studio in a small market in some corner of the city. He was old, his face wrinkled and fading like the limestone grave markers of the cities cemeteries. He had a shaggy white beard. He was surrounded by vibrant paintings, although none of them would pass for high art. He sat at an easel and worked diligently, and peacefully, on another ordinary, mundane painting- but one that he no doubt put his whole life into. We struck up a conversation with him, and found out he’d come to Savannah 12 years before from Philadelphia, leaving behind a stable job and quite a bit of money. “I saw a chance to re-invent my life at fifty and took it. At some point, you realize there are more rewarding things than money in life. I’m not lighting the world on fire here, but I’ve found a little place for me.”
Ah, but of course. Re-invention. That, perhaps above all, is what the road offers. Re-invention, a fresh start, free from constraints of the past or expectations for the future. Life is as blank as a west Texas plain at dawn.
This is a story that has been told countless times. This will not be the last time it is told. But the devil, they say, is in the details. Perhaps the most American idea of them all, yea, the most democratic of all our American ideals, is that each and every one of us has a unique story to tell; not necessarily for its extraordinary-ness, but for our own, personal way in which we tell that oft-told tale. This unique, intimate take on America from the road is all we can offer. Maybe it will be enough. It might not, of course. But as we cross the Savannah River, a phosphorescent orange and maroon sun setting over the refineries and tankers, the clouds glowing and thin as wafers, what the point of this trip is, and whether it is new or unique or enough, does not seem important. We ascend the crest, then fall, the highway opening in front of us. We’ve got a full tank of gas, a bottle of bourbon, a pack of smokes, and a couple of joints. We’re off, on the road, and anything seems possible.
(and maybe it really is…)"