Can I really do it?
Can I disconnect myself for four months?
'Can I disconnect myself?' Those words would have sounded funny twenty years ago, and completely foreign before that (they sound a little like a line from a Talking Heads song), but we are wholly 'connected' now - to everyone we know and countless people we don't know and might never meet, to places we are not likely to ever visit and things happening there that in no way affect our lives. The Internet has contributed to our species' most profound round of evolution since our muddy thumbs first wrapped around a fiery torch, and it is with no small amount of doubt, and trepidation, that I wonder if I can manage to disengage the rapid flow of information that has become so integral a part of our daily lives - the updates, the headlines, the live tweets, tickers, alerts, feeds, posts and podcasts - for any extended period of time.
Can I disconnect myself?
It occurred to me at the tail end of last week's post that I should try on 1/48/50; try driving 14,000 miles across the fruited plain with no television and no Internet whatsoever. I've since found it's hardly a novel concept. It's been done, and written about, countless times as a matter of fact. But I'm not discouraged; it only illustrates my point that so many others share my disquiet over all this connectedness. I wouldn't be rehashing an old concept, I'd be stepping into a community, a village, a reservation, its inhabitants all gripped by the same strong impulse to try a different way.
I'm not discouraged, but also not convinced I can do it. I'm talking absolutely no TV or Internet. That's no joke. Especially the Internet. The television I can do without; most of what I find there these days just makes me angry or depressed. But no Internet means coping with the abrupt discontinuation of a way of life, a routine that I've grown quite accustomed to.
For starters, I'm a news junkie, have been since I was a kid, and I have been living large since the advent of the 24-hour news cycle. No Internet on 1/48/50 will change that in a drastic, albeit temporary, way by removing the Huffington Post, the Drudge Report, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC, NPR, WPR and myriad other informational/opinion websites from my daily diet. It will mean feeling stranded in my brain, left knowing all sorts of things are going on out there, somewhere, but not immediately knowing the what, where, when, how and who. It will mean discovering a way to content myself with finding out a day later, and not thinking of it as a day late.
I've heard it argued that it's unwise to disconnect so completely in this day and age. It's a complicated world after all, more tightly knit and strung than ever before. But that's really more of an excuse than an argument. The world has always been 'complicated', violent, unhinged, collectively closer to murder and mayhem than peace and harmony, and yet for almost 4000 years people traveled great distances with no connection with - or to - what lay behind or ahead. The 24-hour news cycle's biggest impact in the last twenty years has been getting us to believe that knowing what happened is not enough; we absolutely must know what's happening. But we don't really, and we sure as hell don't need to know what will happen. As evidenced time and time again by the follies of our overeager Fourth Estate, what will happen too often turns out to be merely what may happen, then in an instant what could have happened, but didn't.
As I'm a news junkie, I'm also a weather nerd, and no Internet will mean no Weather Underground. I guess there is a very simple answer to this: look out the fricking window! If I want to know what the weather's doing, or what it will be like in a certain area of the country on this road trip, I will have to look up at the sky and figure things out. This shouldn't be a difficult thing. I used to pride myself on knowing about weather, knowing the various types of clouds and conditions and what each signified, figuring out what the day held in store by utilizing methods of observation in place long before Doppler radar. When did I become dependent on peering Rasputin-like into my phone for a glimpse into the future? And for that matter, when did the weather become something we need to track days and weeks in advance? Essentially, the only thing any of us ever need to know is whether we are being rained on at any given moment, and that, again, can be discovered with a half-second glance out the window.
No Internet will mean no MapQuest, and on the surface this seems like a big deal. I will be driving 14,000 miles, after all. But Rand McNally still puts out a print edition, don't they? (Actually, I better check into that, maybe they don't...not a lot of print anything left these days.)
No Internet will mean no YouTube, but what am I really losing there? People trying to do the cinnamon challenge? Someone's pissed off cat? A bear attack? Bum fights? Trick shots from half court? Epic Rap Battles of History? (Actually, that would be hell...but it's just for four months. I can do it. I'm tough.)
Most damnably, no Internet will mean not being able to blog about the trip as I'm taking it, to share photos and observations about the photos with whoever cares to take a moment or two to check them out. But again, is real time necessary? Can't I absorb it all and share it later? More than ever, more than anything, we - as a species - have become hopelessly rushed into everything we do.
And what about my cell phone itself? That is, the part of this little mini supercomputer in my pocket that actually places and receives calls? I keep thinking it makes sense to have it with me, but people have been traveling long distances with no connectivity for millennia. Christopher Columbus sailed into - literally - the unknown without it, as well as countless other explorers and adventurers on land and by sea. There is nothing unknown where I'm going (other than, perhaps, myself), this trip will not even take me out of the country. Do I really need my cell phone? Better question: can I live without it?
My gut response to that is of course I can. But keeping a cell phone with me isn't about keeping myself accessible to the outside world so much as keeping the outside world accessible to me. With so many cell phones, there are far fewer pay phones than there used to be, barely any at all, and far fewer land lines, I'm sure. And I don't want to ever find myself unable to call out if I need to. I will probably keep a cell phone with me, as a kind of sidearm. But maybe for 1/48/50, I'll leave my smart phone at home and buy a prepaid.
No TV. No Internet.
Can I do it?
Can't I disconnect myself?
I'm not making any promises. That question might not get answered until the moment I set off.
Friday, April 26, 2013
Friday, April 19, 2013
No socks with Birkenstocks! (Thoughts on the motorhome, and driving one 14,000 miles)
If dreams really did come true, I would win the lottery, and the vessel I would choose for 1/48/50 would take the form of the newest Cadillac ATS - the ultimate touring vehicle, by my estimation, amongst the breed of cars I will probably never be able to afford (or feel comfortable trying to afford). On this list there are several series of BMW as well, also a class or two of Mercedes (a few of these actually get me a little aroused), but I would - in that instance - feel a strong impulse to buy American. I would feel pretty fruity driving a high-end European sports car on a 14,000-mile road trip across America.
But truth be told (and I never thought I'd say this) I just might feel a little fruity traveling across the country with all that money at my disposal. Maybe it wouldn't be a dream come true, after all. Maybe it would be the anti-dream come true. Money being no object sounds nice in theory (and hey, I certainly wouldn't refuse it), but I think being super rich would soften 1/48/50, to a fault. I don't pretend to be envisioning myself roughing it, but I don't like the thought of sinking into some impossibly luxurious bed in some sickeningly luxurious hotel each night either, my every impulse and desire well within reach. I'm not sure what I expect to see, hear, or have happen on this trip, but I do know there should be some kind of challenge involved, some momentum I have to work up to in order to a) make it happen, b) make it deeply satisfying.
I needn't worry, of course. The chances of me winning the lottery are infinitesimal, and no matter what my financial situation is at the time of departure, short of being super rich, I'm confident I will be able to rely on a healthy dose of 'having to make it work'. I will have to save money, and more importantly make efficient use of those resources along the way, and I'm looking forward to the challenge.
To that end, however, my accommodations are going to have to be as carefully considered as my mode of transportation. And I have found that the two keep wanting to cross paths.
The plan is to be gone four months - May through September. This would equal roughly 120 nights of hotel stays if that's what I decided to do. Assuming I found flea-bag motels to stay in, and assuming these hotels offered rooms for $40/night, that's still $4800. Nothing to sneeze at, and $40/night is not only hard to come by these days, but doesn't really get you much. It's been my experience that the less you pay for a room, the sketchier the cleaning service becomes, and the more likely you are to find yourself sleeping amongst the previous occupant's leftovers. Moreover, I will be traveling during the summer season, so the services of websites like Priceline (which I have used in the past, and scored stellar deals with) are not as likely to be of much use to me during peak vacation time. If I want $40/night in the summer, it's going to have to be a fleabag, and that will get old real quick.
The more I think about it, the clearer it becomes I will need to be self-sustaining, and that too is something I never thought I'd say. Years ago, when I first read Travels With Charley, I rolled my eyes a little at Rocinante, Steinbeck's camper-on-a-truck-chassis hybrid. There seemed to be something old fogey-ish about it, almost precious, the great author in his safari hat (or so I imagined), camped out by the side of a river, catching his fish and cooking them. I wanted to travel like Steinbeck, and write about it like Steinbeck, but I didn't want to roll like Steinbeck. Back then, I actually pictured myself taking this journey on a motorcycle and sleeping on the side of the road whenever I got tired. Eventually, that dream (delusion) gave way to driving a car and staying in hotels.
But now - and this perhaps is the very, very last thing I thought I would ever say - I've started entertaining the idea, and considering the possibility, the feasibility, the practicality, of the dreaded RV.
Yikes, the motorhome! The loud spicy belch of vacation options! 8-tons of too much of everything, clogging up lanes, shearing off intersections, creating blind spots, transporting some kind of stereotype - either the quintessential Griswold-style family, numbering in double digits, achieving triple digits in decibels, hellbent on having as much family fun in as many miles as possible, or a perfectly lovely retired couple - the woman, Lorraine, rocking her Winnie the Poo sweatshirt, the man, Danny (everyone calls him Harley) rocking his socks with Birkenstocks (and definitely wearing a safari hat), simple salt-of-the-Earth from Albert Lea, Minnesota in the summer, Sarasota in the winter, off to see America in a Winnebago, lawn chairs affixed to the bike rack in the rear.
Not for me, dude, not for me...
And yet, *sigh*, maybe it is. I'm forty. By the time I take this trip I will be approaching fifty, closer to 'retirement' than I ever thought I'd get. I have in recent years begun to accept my age and the accompanying limitations - of lameness if nothing else - and when I look at it logically, an RV really does make sense. And just because I'm driving one doesn't mean I have to become a stereotype, right? Doesn't mean I have to perch myself in the cockpit wearing what Niles Crane on the sitcom Frasier once described as a 'hat made out of Miller Lite cans...!'
And really, who cares about the stereotype? Who am I to judge Harley and Lorraine for anything? That makes me the one with the problem, not them.
But for every way that an RV makes sense, I can find an equal and opposite way it doesn't. For starters, I don't want to drive something so thirsty for gasoline. Every dollar I save not sleeping in a hotel might wind up getting dispensed into the gas tank. Nor do I want to be responsible for all the tasks attendant to owning one - finding fresh water and disposing of waste, charging generators, et cetera. All too quickly it can start feeling like owning an actual home, and I do not want to be bogged down with so much responsibility.
Doing chores is not living nebulously.
Mostly though, it's a matter of aesthetics. RV's are huge and ungainly, and anything even approaching enhancements can render them downright obnoxious on the road. Living nebulously means being as inconspicuous as possible, and that means avoiding those things that might scream, 'I'M TRAVELING!!!!' No annoying bumper stickers (no 'my Rolls is in the shop', 'shit happens' or 'best day of fishing beats the best day of...'), no bobble heads, no fuzzy dice, no musical horns, no decals or detailing, and no driving something the size of an ore freighter for 14,000 miles.
No socks with Birkenstocks.
The only indication that I am traveling - that I'm somewhere I'm not normally - will be my license plates and my accent (more on that in another post...)
I could camp, I guess, if I want to save money, bring along a tent and some gear and whenever possible sleep under the stars. That would allow me to revisit the possibility of driving a car. But nah, I don't want to camp. I don't want to sleep on the ground any more than I want to sleep in some previous occupant's leftovers. There are snakes and bugs on the ground. It's cold and rocky on the ground. Call me a pussy, that's okay. I'm secure enough in my manhood to admit that while I don't want luxury, I do want to be comfortable on this trip. Inconspicuous and comfortable need not be mutually exclusive.
The only thing that really makes sense, with everything considered, is an RV. And there's good news. I've found, much to my delight and relief, a happy medium. I have discovered that not all RV's are the size of an ore freighter. There are smaller size vessels, Class B or C, which are built on a truck or cargo van chassis. Many of them offer the same self-contained amenities, just in less space. Not unlike Rocinante as it turns out, but without having to be special ordered. New models are pricey, of course, but cost less than the full-sized models that have for a couple decades now been causing me to shy away from the idea, and used ones abound. When the time comes, it might just prove MORE than worth the expense.
There will be certain things any such vessel will be required to provide: a CD player and AUX jack (by the time this actually happens, I'd say my need for a CD player will be completely defunct), air-conditioning, readily accessible overhead lights, some kind of GPS navigation (although I have that on my phone, so no dashboard mount is needed really). I've never much been a fan of cruise control, so that won't be necessary, but a compass of some sort would come in handy (even though I pride myself on my sense of direction). I've also become a fan of satellite radio, so that might be something to consider, although again, if I'm really of a mind, I can have it installed on my own. Any used vehicle is unlikely to have it.
As to sleeping arrangements in this as-yet undetermined RV, they can actually be fairly primitive. The simplest mattress on a board would suffice, as long as the pillow is firm. A power source for a mini-fridge would be much appreciated, and a shower would make checking into a hotel far less of a necessity, but that's when you run into money (and the aforementioned responsibility of 'home' ownership). A bathroom, too, would be a nice feature, but again, the dreaded over-responsibility rears its head, and there's something about taking my bodily waste along on the trip with me that grosses me out.
But that is, in any case, the extent of it. I have no need to turn my motorhome into a pleasure palace any more than I'd want to be able to afford to stay in pleasure palaces along the way. No TV, no mini-bar, no laundry, no other comforts or conveniences necessary. I really like the thought of having no television, actually; for better or worse, that might prove to be the greatest challenge. And I have been flirting with the idea of doing away with Internet as well, being completely disconnected.
The thought of that terrifies me a little bit. But that might just be a fricking reason to do it.
But truth be told (and I never thought I'd say this) I just might feel a little fruity traveling across the country with all that money at my disposal. Maybe it wouldn't be a dream come true, after all. Maybe it would be the anti-dream come true. Money being no object sounds nice in theory (and hey, I certainly wouldn't refuse it), but I think being super rich would soften 1/48/50, to a fault. I don't pretend to be envisioning myself roughing it, but I don't like the thought of sinking into some impossibly luxurious bed in some sickeningly luxurious hotel each night either, my every impulse and desire well within reach. I'm not sure what I expect to see, hear, or have happen on this trip, but I do know there should be some kind of challenge involved, some momentum I have to work up to in order to a) make it happen, b) make it deeply satisfying.
I needn't worry, of course. The chances of me winning the lottery are infinitesimal, and no matter what my financial situation is at the time of departure, short of being super rich, I'm confident I will be able to rely on a healthy dose of 'having to make it work'. I will have to save money, and more importantly make efficient use of those resources along the way, and I'm looking forward to the challenge.
To that end, however, my accommodations are going to have to be as carefully considered as my mode of transportation. And I have found that the two keep wanting to cross paths.
The plan is to be gone four months - May through September. This would equal roughly 120 nights of hotel stays if that's what I decided to do. Assuming I found flea-bag motels to stay in, and assuming these hotels offered rooms for $40/night, that's still $4800. Nothing to sneeze at, and $40/night is not only hard to come by these days, but doesn't really get you much. It's been my experience that the less you pay for a room, the sketchier the cleaning service becomes, and the more likely you are to find yourself sleeping amongst the previous occupant's leftovers. Moreover, I will be traveling during the summer season, so the services of websites like Priceline (which I have used in the past, and scored stellar deals with) are not as likely to be of much use to me during peak vacation time. If I want $40/night in the summer, it's going to have to be a fleabag, and that will get old real quick.
The more I think about it, the clearer it becomes I will need to be self-sustaining, and that too is something I never thought I'd say. Years ago, when I first read Travels With Charley, I rolled my eyes a little at Rocinante, Steinbeck's camper-on-a-truck-chassis hybrid. There seemed to be something old fogey-ish about it, almost precious, the great author in his safari hat (or so I imagined), camped out by the side of a river, catching his fish and cooking them. I wanted to travel like Steinbeck, and write about it like Steinbeck, but I didn't want to roll like Steinbeck. Back then, I actually pictured myself taking this journey on a motorcycle and sleeping on the side of the road whenever I got tired. Eventually, that dream (delusion) gave way to driving a car and staying in hotels.
But now - and this perhaps is the very, very last thing I thought I would ever say - I've started entertaining the idea, and considering the possibility, the feasibility, the practicality, of the dreaded RV.
Yikes, the motorhome! The loud spicy belch of vacation options! 8-tons of too much of everything, clogging up lanes, shearing off intersections, creating blind spots, transporting some kind of stereotype - either the quintessential Griswold-style family, numbering in double digits, achieving triple digits in decibels, hellbent on having as much family fun in as many miles as possible, or a perfectly lovely retired couple - the woman, Lorraine, rocking her Winnie the Poo sweatshirt, the man, Danny (everyone calls him Harley) rocking his socks with Birkenstocks (and definitely wearing a safari hat), simple salt-of-the-Earth from Albert Lea, Minnesota in the summer, Sarasota in the winter, off to see America in a Winnebago, lawn chairs affixed to the bike rack in the rear.
Not for me, dude, not for me...
And yet, *sigh*, maybe it is. I'm forty. By the time I take this trip I will be approaching fifty, closer to 'retirement' than I ever thought I'd get. I have in recent years begun to accept my age and the accompanying limitations - of lameness if nothing else - and when I look at it logically, an RV really does make sense. And just because I'm driving one doesn't mean I have to become a stereotype, right? Doesn't mean I have to perch myself in the cockpit wearing what Niles Crane on the sitcom Frasier once described as a 'hat made out of Miller Lite cans...!'
And really, who cares about the stereotype? Who am I to judge Harley and Lorraine for anything? That makes me the one with the problem, not them.
But for every way that an RV makes sense, I can find an equal and opposite way it doesn't. For starters, I don't want to drive something so thirsty for gasoline. Every dollar I save not sleeping in a hotel might wind up getting dispensed into the gas tank. Nor do I want to be responsible for all the tasks attendant to owning one - finding fresh water and disposing of waste, charging generators, et cetera. All too quickly it can start feeling like owning an actual home, and I do not want to be bogged down with so much responsibility.
Doing chores is not living nebulously.
Mostly though, it's a matter of aesthetics. RV's are huge and ungainly, and anything even approaching enhancements can render them downright obnoxious on the road. Living nebulously means being as inconspicuous as possible, and that means avoiding those things that might scream, 'I'M TRAVELING!!!!' No annoying bumper stickers (no 'my Rolls is in the shop', 'shit happens' or 'best day of fishing beats the best day of...'), no bobble heads, no fuzzy dice, no musical horns, no decals or detailing, and no driving something the size of an ore freighter for 14,000 miles.
No socks with Birkenstocks.
The only indication that I am traveling - that I'm somewhere I'm not normally - will be my license plates and my accent (more on that in another post...)
I could camp, I guess, if I want to save money, bring along a tent and some gear and whenever possible sleep under the stars. That would allow me to revisit the possibility of driving a car. But nah, I don't want to camp. I don't want to sleep on the ground any more than I want to sleep in some previous occupant's leftovers. There are snakes and bugs on the ground. It's cold and rocky on the ground. Call me a pussy, that's okay. I'm secure enough in my manhood to admit that while I don't want luxury, I do want to be comfortable on this trip. Inconspicuous and comfortable need not be mutually exclusive.
The only thing that really makes sense, with everything considered, is an RV. And there's good news. I've found, much to my delight and relief, a happy medium. I have discovered that not all RV's are the size of an ore freighter. There are smaller size vessels, Class B or C, which are built on a truck or cargo van chassis. Many of them offer the same self-contained amenities, just in less space. Not unlike Rocinante as it turns out, but without having to be special ordered. New models are pricey, of course, but cost less than the full-sized models that have for a couple decades now been causing me to shy away from the idea, and used ones abound. When the time comes, it might just prove MORE than worth the expense.
There will be certain things any such vessel will be required to provide: a CD player and AUX jack (by the time this actually happens, I'd say my need for a CD player will be completely defunct), air-conditioning, readily accessible overhead lights, some kind of GPS navigation (although I have that on my phone, so no dashboard mount is needed really). I've never much been a fan of cruise control, so that won't be necessary, but a compass of some sort would come in handy (even though I pride myself on my sense of direction). I've also become a fan of satellite radio, so that might be something to consider, although again, if I'm really of a mind, I can have it installed on my own. Any used vehicle is unlikely to have it.
As to sleeping arrangements in this as-yet undetermined RV, they can actually be fairly primitive. The simplest mattress on a board would suffice, as long as the pillow is firm. A power source for a mini-fridge would be much appreciated, and a shower would make checking into a hotel far less of a necessity, but that's when you run into money (and the aforementioned responsibility of 'home' ownership). A bathroom, too, would be a nice feature, but again, the dreaded over-responsibility rears its head, and there's something about taking my bodily waste along on the trip with me that grosses me out.
But that is, in any case, the extent of it. I have no need to turn my motorhome into a pleasure palace any more than I'd want to be able to afford to stay in pleasure palaces along the way. No TV, no mini-bar, no laundry, no other comforts or conveniences necessary. I really like the thought of having no television, actually; for better or worse, that might prove to be the greatest challenge. And I have been flirting with the idea of doing away with Internet as well, being completely disconnected.
The thought of that terrifies me a little bit. But that might just be a fricking reason to do it.
Friday, April 12, 2013
Direction
When I was a kid, I was interested in space, fascinated by spatial relations, and aware that something didn't seem right. I had to look 'up' into the sky, but when I discovered my location on a globe, it occurred to me I was actually standing on the side of the planet, pointing outwards, which meant that 'up', in terms of Earth's orientation, was something else. The earth presumably sits upright to what many years later I would come to learn is called the galactic plane. There is a somewhat disparate incline between the two, but for my purposes here it's more or less true, and means if I face west, 'up' is actually (somewhere) to the north, 'down' to the south.
That alone is kind of mind-numbing. I have no idea how our galaxy as a whole is positioned on the plane of our celestial neighborhood or the entire universe (if we presume the universe isn't actually uni-anything, and might be relative in dimension and position to something else). The ability of most people, myself included, to wrap their head around it quickly gets lost in a Chex mix of mathematical equations and predictions really smart people use to try explaining it. When I was a kid, I limited myself (er, was limited...) to thinking about the arc of the sun through the sky. That was a nice, empirical way to consider it. The earth and the sun are essentially standing face to face on what's called the ecliptic plane, so the sun and the moon and all the other planets are not really up there, they are out there, at least at my latitude in America's upper Midwest. But what bout standing at the north pole? Is 'up' really 'up' then? True up? And what about the south pole? How the heck does that work? When I was little, imagining the south pole as a place to stand and still look 'up' really messed with my head, but it got me thinking, at least. Lots and lots of thinking...sometimes thinking right into a desultory sleep.
The difference between the northern and southern hemispheres of our blue marble grabbed my attention, and imagination, as well - storms rotating in a different direction, the sun arcing through the northern sky rather than the southern sky (think about that a moment, northern dwellers...), even the mere fact that the southern hemisphere is oriented toward the galactic plane more directly, so the nighttime sky in places like Chile, New Zealand and Australia is far more dazzling than in the north, really got me thinking about my place and position on the planet, and our planet's place and position in the cosmos.
Growing up, it was a similar issue with the sun in the sky that helped define that sense of geographical place for me. The further north (or south) in latitude you travel, in the summer at least, the more protracted the twilights and the dawns become, until eventually, above the Arctic or Antarctic circles, the sun doesn't set at all, just skims the horizon. Conversely, the closer you get to the equator, the shorter these times of day become, until there is very little in the way of dusk and dawn. The equatorial sun rises and sets straight up and down, rather than coming in or going out at an angle, and does so quickly.
I was very fortunate to have grown up far enough north where in June, and most of the summer, the last scratch of sunlight in the sky is still visible well after 10:30 p.m. and the first light appears at an astonishingly early hour. I was sixteen when I saw that for the first time. It was mid-June, right around the longest day of the year. I wound up on an island in Lake Superior, sitting bleary-eyed on a beach that a girl and I stumbled upon by accident. It was the tail end of my first 'all-nighter', my first time staying out and up (having handed my parents the archetypal lie of that age group: that I was spending the night at a friend's house), and I remember checking my wristwatch the moment I saw the first glint of daylight seep from the darkness out over Lake Superior to the northeast. The time was 3:19 a.m.. I was moved by this, moved by day's slow, subtle seduction of night, and from then on, 'northern' was how I identified myself.
Well into adulthood, I still love maps and geography, still prefer knowing where I'm standing - and how I'm standing - on the planet. I'm fascinated by roads as well - the way they connect us and the points we want to get to, and how we work our travels (on the ground, anyway) about and around natural boundaries, and how direction plays into the decisions we make. The points of a compass continue to intrigue me, and have become more than just a way to get somewhere. Over time, each has come to hold its own emotional/psychological significance in my mind:
We head west toward dreams.
We head north toward knowledge.
We head east toward the past.
And when it's time, our destiny lies to the south.
It's fanciful thinking, I know, for which I don't think I could ever provide a simple explanation, but it will surely play into 1/48/50. The idea is to go everywhere, hit all 48 states, but I got it in my mind that certain directions make more sense than others in different parts of the country, and when I really get thinking about it, a kind of geographical feng shui crops up.
I want to start out across the high plains - Minnesota, the Dakotas, Montana - head west until there is no more land to head west on. I then want to head down the west coast. Then east through desert, into the southern states. Up the east coast, and back home through the Great Lakes.
At first glance, it seems fairly straightforward, a nice wide loop through the Lower 48, literally around the country, and I've tried to make the actual route as efficient as possible. But there's more to its design than meets the eye.
I want to hit the high plains heading west because I think I should be chasing the sun when I start out this trip. And I really think the great bodies of water - the Pacific Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic - should always be to my right as I drive. The Great Lakes, on the other hand, is a whole other story. They definitely need to be hit from the east; Appalachia, from the south. And if I'm in northern Maine, I simply should be heading west, no? Along some numbered two-lane route, through a town with a white steeple church and a general store? And shouldn't the moon be rising behind me when this is happening?
It sounds a lot like the ramblings of a man who spends too much time alone, but to me, these fancies make perfect sense on a psychological level. The direction from which I approach - and view - everything permanently colors the experience, and for that matter, in terms of this trip, the reader's experience as well.
In other words, whether I stand at the lighthouse in Ludington and stare out over Lake Michigan to the west, or stand on the Navy Pier in Chicago and stare out over Lake Michigan to the east, makes all the difference in the world as to how I experience - and remember - Lake Michigan.
And I have the feeling there's not going to be a lot of room for error on 1/48/50.
I'm going to want to get this trip just right.
That alone is kind of mind-numbing. I have no idea how our galaxy as a whole is positioned on the plane of our celestial neighborhood or the entire universe (if we presume the universe isn't actually uni-anything, and might be relative in dimension and position to something else). The ability of most people, myself included, to wrap their head around it quickly gets lost in a Chex mix of mathematical equations and predictions really smart people use to try explaining it. When I was a kid, I limited myself (er, was limited...) to thinking about the arc of the sun through the sky. That was a nice, empirical way to consider it. The earth and the sun are essentially standing face to face on what's called the ecliptic plane, so the sun and the moon and all the other planets are not really up there, they are out there, at least at my latitude in America's upper Midwest. But what bout standing at the north pole? Is 'up' really 'up' then? True up? And what about the south pole? How the heck does that work? When I was little, imagining the south pole as a place to stand and still look 'up' really messed with my head, but it got me thinking, at least. Lots and lots of thinking...sometimes thinking right into a desultory sleep.
The difference between the northern and southern hemispheres of our blue marble grabbed my attention, and imagination, as well - storms rotating in a different direction, the sun arcing through the northern sky rather than the southern sky (think about that a moment, northern dwellers...), even the mere fact that the southern hemisphere is oriented toward the galactic plane more directly, so the nighttime sky in places like Chile, New Zealand and Australia is far more dazzling than in the north, really got me thinking about my place and position on the planet, and our planet's place and position in the cosmos.
Growing up, it was a similar issue with the sun in the sky that helped define that sense of geographical place for me. The further north (or south) in latitude you travel, in the summer at least, the more protracted the twilights and the dawns become, until eventually, above the Arctic or Antarctic circles, the sun doesn't set at all, just skims the horizon. Conversely, the closer you get to the equator, the shorter these times of day become, until there is very little in the way of dusk and dawn. The equatorial sun rises and sets straight up and down, rather than coming in or going out at an angle, and does so quickly.
I was very fortunate to have grown up far enough north where in June, and most of the summer, the last scratch of sunlight in the sky is still visible well after 10:30 p.m. and the first light appears at an astonishingly early hour. I was sixteen when I saw that for the first time. It was mid-June, right around the longest day of the year. I wound up on an island in Lake Superior, sitting bleary-eyed on a beach that a girl and I stumbled upon by accident. It was the tail end of my first 'all-nighter', my first time staying out and up (having handed my parents the archetypal lie of that age group: that I was spending the night at a friend's house), and I remember checking my wristwatch the moment I saw the first glint of daylight seep from the darkness out over Lake Superior to the northeast. The time was 3:19 a.m.. I was moved by this, moved by day's slow, subtle seduction of night, and from then on, 'northern' was how I identified myself.
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22 YEARS LATER - It was from this beach on Madeline Island, Lake Superior, sitting amidst a pile of ill-gotten empties right about where the old gent stands now, that I was first treated to an early, early, early northern dawn, which got underway at 3:19 a.m. according to my wristwatch.
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Well into adulthood, I still love maps and geography, still prefer knowing where I'm standing - and how I'm standing - on the planet. I'm fascinated by roads as well - the way they connect us and the points we want to get to, and how we work our travels (on the ground, anyway) about and around natural boundaries, and how direction plays into the decisions we make. The points of a compass continue to intrigue me, and have become more than just a way to get somewhere. Over time, each has come to hold its own emotional/psychological significance in my mind:
We head west toward dreams.
We head north toward knowledge.
We head east toward the past.
And when it's time, our destiny lies to the south.
It's fanciful thinking, I know, for which I don't think I could ever provide a simple explanation, but it will surely play into 1/48/50. The idea is to go everywhere, hit all 48 states, but I got it in my mind that certain directions make more sense than others in different parts of the country, and when I really get thinking about it, a kind of geographical feng shui crops up.
I want to start out across the high plains - Minnesota, the Dakotas, Montana - head west until there is no more land to head west on. I then want to head down the west coast. Then east through desert, into the southern states. Up the east coast, and back home through the Great Lakes.
At first glance, it seems fairly straightforward, a nice wide loop through the Lower 48, literally around the country, and I've tried to make the actual route as efficient as possible. But there's more to its design than meets the eye.
I want to hit the high plains heading west because I think I should be chasing the sun when I start out this trip. And I really think the great bodies of water - the Pacific Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic - should always be to my right as I drive. The Great Lakes, on the other hand, is a whole other story. They definitely need to be hit from the east; Appalachia, from the south. And if I'm in northern Maine, I simply should be heading west, no? Along some numbered two-lane route, through a town with a white steeple church and a general store? And shouldn't the moon be rising behind me when this is happening?
It sounds a lot like the ramblings of a man who spends too much time alone, but to me, these fancies make perfect sense on a psychological level. The direction from which I approach - and view - everything permanently colors the experience, and for that matter, in terms of this trip, the reader's experience as well.
In other words, whether I stand at the lighthouse in Ludington and stare out over Lake Michigan to the west, or stand on the Navy Pier in Chicago and stare out over Lake Michigan to the east, makes all the difference in the world as to how I experience - and remember - Lake Michigan.
And I have the feeling there's not going to be a lot of room for error on 1/48/50.
I'm going to want to get this trip just right.
Friday, April 5, 2013
Thoughts on maps, mullets and long-hauls, driving versus drifting and getting nowhere fast
Distance
I have been obsessed with driving ever since the State of Wisconsin granted me the right to get behind the wheel more than twenty years ago. The very night I got my license, a buddy and I took a road trip to Duluth, Minnesota (what constituted the 'city' for the likes of us at the time). I didn't tell my dad, and also didn't count on him knowing exactly how many miles were on the odometer when he allowed me to take it. I caught hell the next day, but it was worth it. That first road trip was monumental. There really wasn't much to it, just an hour's drive on a Wednesday night in the dead of winter, and not much for us to do but cruise down Superior Street (feeling totally urban), hit Orange Julius and Musicland at the mall, then drive back. But it was the crossing of a vast ocean in my mind, which before that night I could only stand on the shoreline of and imagine where all the waves were coming from.
Over time, the road trips got longer, more adventurous. I've done a hell of a lot of driving, and undertaken more than a few long hauls, all of them originating in northern Wisconsin. Laughlin, Nevada (2011). Fargo, North Dakota (2006). New York City (1994 and '97). Des Moines, Iowa (1995). Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan (1995). Thunder Bay, Ontario (1995 and 1997). Interspersed between these have been countless trips to Chicago and innumerable sojourns to the Twin Cities. I've always felt like I needed to be going somewhere, and more importantly, needed to be the one behind the wheel, and to that end have offered my vehicle, sometimes my gas money, to ensure that I was.
Shotgun is nowhere. The back seat, forget it.
My most epic, and also reckless, long haul took place in 1993, a run to Cincinnati, Ohio and back, non-stop, to pick someone up at the airport. Why they were flying in to Cincinnati rather than Chicago or Minneapolis, I have no idea, but I wasn't about to question a chance to drive to Ohio. It was as much a challenge as anything: 1500 miles round-trip, 24 straight hours on the road, which I stupidly attempted to drive myself. I came close to making it actually, but 20 hours in I was, quite literally, slapping myself to stay awake, chugging coffee as if it were doing anything other than making me nauseous, my fingers strangling the steering wheel, flinching and jerking the brake pedal whenever a winged monkey with flashing red eyes and leaving a rainbow trail behind jumped down from a tree and lumbered across the road, which started happening around the eighteenth hour, every fifteen minutes or so at first, but by the end, every 562 feet, 11 inches, like clockwork. Eventually, I had to be removed from the behind the wheel and deposited in the back seat, where I slowly laughed myself to sleep.
It's easy to look back on fondly now, but I would never try to do that again. Fondly, only because I didn't fall asleep at the wheel, careen off the road and up a tree (taking out a whole nest of winged monkeys). For as out of my mind with exhaustion as I was, I was truthfully no better a driver than if I'd been drunk. I didn't think I was being reckless at the time though, and it's frightening the way the young mind operates, how a sense of immortality blankets common sense.
Far and away, my favorite long haul of all time took place in the summer of 1990. I was seventeen, on vacation with my parents. We were doing a marathon run to Maine for my dad's high school reunion. By midnight of the first day my Mom and Dad had fallen asleep, leaving me the job of getting us across Ontario. I spent that savory overnight cruising east on King's Highway 17, finding French-speaking radio stations, watching for moose, identifying stars and planets in what seemed at the time to be an astonishingly clear sky. Around 3 a.m. the gasoline light came on and I started to panic a little, but found a filling station about an hour later, just in the nick of time (my parents never knew!) I will never forget my dad and I peeing on the side of the highway near Sudbury just before midnight (my poor mother shrinking down in her seat, mortified), or reaching Montreal at sunrise, as news came over the radio that Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait.
So I am no stranger to long-distance driving, but this road trip will be different than all the others. I will be alone. There won't be anyone to relieve me of duty when exhaustion overtakes me, nobody to 'deposit' me in the back seat. I will have to have the common sense to not push myself, not feel as though I have to make a certain amount of distance in a day, and not let bullheadedness or machismo get in the way.
I don't think it will be all that hard. The point of a nebulous life is to have no schedule whatsoever, no itinerary to follow, no place to be at any given time, nobody waiting for you. I fully intend to take my sweet time on 1/48/50. I want to stop along the way, stay over if I can, meet people, talk to people, backtrack if I feel like it, or turn left instead of right on a moment's notice. As much as possible, anyway, I want to drift.
That's living nebulously. For all the driving I have done in my life, every single one of the aforementioned 'long hauls', I haven't been able to drift. There was always an objective I needed to achieve, a destination to get to, a finish line. All my miles have been empty miles, sporting about as much flavor - and almost as satisfying - as a rice cake.
Time
Meeting people, talking to people, takes time, which means I will need to invest a significant chunk of my time to this trip. There's no getting around it; if I want to drift as opposed to drive, it's going to cause a major, if temporary, disruption of my personal and professional life.
As the time nears, I'm sure it will open to interpretation, but right now I picture myself leaving in late May, and returning in late September. Some people might think I'm crazy to travel during the summer, highways and byways clogged as they are with vacationers determined to squeeze as much time and distance out of their precious two weeks as possible (doing anything BUT living nebulously). Steinbeck specifically waited until after Labor Day to begin his travels with Charley for that very reason, and he's not the only one. But I like summer. I like the light, the heat, the aroma, the holidays, the storms, and indeed, the sense of urgency that propels us (me, anyway) to run.
Not only do I like summer, but I despise winter with a white-hot passion you'd think would melt all the snow and ice, but never does. My relationship with winter has only gotten worse as I've gotten older. I do not want so much as a mile of this road trip to fall victim to chilled weather. I want to be on the road only after the last threat of frost in the spring, and off the road long before the first threat of flurries in the fall. Four months will provide ample time, I'd say, to hit all 48 states, and see something of them at the same time.
Er...right?
Until very recently, I wasn't sure how much time I would need. During my 2011 trip, driving through 'big sky' country in eastern Colorado, the enormity of this land really hit me, and I wondered, how long can I expect it to take me to drive through the contiguous 48? And how wil I go about reconciling time and distance and getting it all to create as minimal a footprint on my life as possible?
I found the answer on-line: a website that allows you to create a point-by-point driving route, quite literally a road trip-planner. While this site is a bit too fastidious in its planning (I have no intention of treating 1/48/50 like Clark Griswold, niggling every detail down to the last second, penny and gallon of gas), it does help to actually see the trip strung out across a map, get an idea of where to drive and have the distance and time quantified. I spent the weekend carefully plotting my course, keeping in mind a few key requirements:
a) I have to hit all of the lower 48 states. It's in the name, after all. '1/48/50'
b) There are a few landmarks I want to see, and I do not feel guilty for this.
c) With a few notable exceptions, I want to avoid heavy urban areas; I'm far more interested in rural areas and small towns, not because I believe them to be any more 'real' than urban areas, the people any more virtuous or interesting or relatable, but because, speaking honestly, they're just less of a pain in the ass to navigate, generally less dangerous to take a wrong turn in.
After all the plotting and calculating, my entire trip, as I envision it, tops off at 13,848 miles, and requires 233 hours of driving time. Yowza. From this, I figured if I drive eight hours a day, it will take me about 30 days to complete. Not only would that be physically taxing, but also depressingly self-defeating. I wouldn't see anything or talk to anyone driving that much, and I'd be able to do little more than fall dead asleep at the end of each day, right back to miles tasting like rice cakes.
No sir, this is not the Cannonball Run I'm planning; there's no finish line, so eight hours a day of driving is out of the question. But then, how much do I whittle that number down? Four hours a day? That'd turn it into a two-month trip...ish. Two hours a day? That would get me right up around the three or four month mark, taking into consideration all the variables, but that seems kind of paltry and lame, inching my way across the USA. I want to feel like I'm getting somewhere!
On the other hand, living nebulously means nothing if not being perfectly okay with getting nowhere fast
I have been obsessed with driving ever since the State of Wisconsin granted me the right to get behind the wheel more than twenty years ago. The very night I got my license, a buddy and I took a road trip to Duluth, Minnesota (what constituted the 'city' for the likes of us at the time). I didn't tell my dad, and also didn't count on him knowing exactly how many miles were on the odometer when he allowed me to take it. I caught hell the next day, but it was worth it. That first road trip was monumental. There really wasn't much to it, just an hour's drive on a Wednesday night in the dead of winter, and not much for us to do but cruise down Superior Street (feeling totally urban), hit Orange Julius and Musicland at the mall, then drive back. But it was the crossing of a vast ocean in my mind, which before that night I could only stand on the shoreline of and imagine where all the waves were coming from.
Over time, the road trips got longer, more adventurous. I've done a hell of a lot of driving, and undertaken more than a few long hauls, all of them originating in northern Wisconsin. Laughlin, Nevada (2011). Fargo, North Dakota (2006). New York City (1994 and '97). Des Moines, Iowa (1995). Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan (1995). Thunder Bay, Ontario (1995 and 1997). Interspersed between these have been countless trips to Chicago and innumerable sojourns to the Twin Cities. I've always felt like I needed to be going somewhere, and more importantly, needed to be the one behind the wheel, and to that end have offered my vehicle, sometimes my gas money, to ensure that I was.
Shotgun is nowhere. The back seat, forget it.
My most epic, and also reckless, long haul took place in 1993, a run to Cincinnati, Ohio and back, non-stop, to pick someone up at the airport. Why they were flying in to Cincinnati rather than Chicago or Minneapolis, I have no idea, but I wasn't about to question a chance to drive to Ohio. It was as much a challenge as anything: 1500 miles round-trip, 24 straight hours on the road, which I stupidly attempted to drive myself. I came close to making it actually, but 20 hours in I was, quite literally, slapping myself to stay awake, chugging coffee as if it were doing anything other than making me nauseous, my fingers strangling the steering wheel, flinching and jerking the brake pedal whenever a winged monkey with flashing red eyes and leaving a rainbow trail behind jumped down from a tree and lumbered across the road, which started happening around the eighteenth hour, every fifteen minutes or so at first, but by the end, every 562 feet, 11 inches, like clockwork. Eventually, I had to be removed from the behind the wheel and deposited in the back seat, where I slowly laughed myself to sleep.
It's easy to look back on fondly now, but I would never try to do that again. Fondly, only because I didn't fall asleep at the wheel, careen off the road and up a tree (taking out a whole nest of winged monkeys). For as out of my mind with exhaustion as I was, I was truthfully no better a driver than if I'd been drunk. I didn't think I was being reckless at the time though, and it's frightening the way the young mind operates, how a sense of immortality blankets common sense.
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JOE DIRT EAT YOUR HEART OUT - November 1994 saw a stellar road trip out east, rolling into New York City via the Lincoln Tunnel in a '74 Chevy Nova with Wisconsin plates and Wisconsin road salt. Here, I am pictured at the fountain in Central Park, looking more or less covered in 'Wisconsin road salt' as well, with my pencil thin mustache, flannel shirt TUCKED INTO belted black jeans and 4-H prize winning mullet. By some miracle, I made it out alive.
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Far and away, my favorite long haul of all time took place in the summer of 1990. I was seventeen, on vacation with my parents. We were doing a marathon run to Maine for my dad's high school reunion. By midnight of the first day my Mom and Dad had fallen asleep, leaving me the job of getting us across Ontario. I spent that savory overnight cruising east on King's Highway 17, finding French-speaking radio stations, watching for moose, identifying stars and planets in what seemed at the time to be an astonishingly clear sky. Around 3 a.m. the gasoline light came on and I started to panic a little, but found a filling station about an hour later, just in the nick of time (my parents never knew!) I will never forget my dad and I peeing on the side of the highway near Sudbury just before midnight (my poor mother shrinking down in her seat, mortified), or reaching Montreal at sunrise, as news came over the radio that Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait.
So I am no stranger to long-distance driving, but this road trip will be different than all the others. I will be alone. There won't be anyone to relieve me of duty when exhaustion overtakes me, nobody to 'deposit' me in the back seat. I will have to have the common sense to not push myself, not feel as though I have to make a certain amount of distance in a day, and not let bullheadedness or machismo get in the way.
I don't think it will be all that hard. The point of a nebulous life is to have no schedule whatsoever, no itinerary to follow, no place to be at any given time, nobody waiting for you. I fully intend to take my sweet time on 1/48/50. I want to stop along the way, stay over if I can, meet people, talk to people, backtrack if I feel like it, or turn left instead of right on a moment's notice. As much as possible, anyway, I want to drift.
That's living nebulously. For all the driving I have done in my life, every single one of the aforementioned 'long hauls', I haven't been able to drift. There was always an objective I needed to achieve, a destination to get to, a finish line. All my miles have been empty miles, sporting about as much flavor - and almost as satisfying - as a rice cake.
Time
Meeting people, talking to people, takes time, which means I will need to invest a significant chunk of my time to this trip. There's no getting around it; if I want to drift as opposed to drive, it's going to cause a major, if temporary, disruption of my personal and professional life.
As the time nears, I'm sure it will open to interpretation, but right now I picture myself leaving in late May, and returning in late September. Some people might think I'm crazy to travel during the summer, highways and byways clogged as they are with vacationers determined to squeeze as much time and distance out of their precious two weeks as possible (doing anything BUT living nebulously). Steinbeck specifically waited until after Labor Day to begin his travels with Charley for that very reason, and he's not the only one. But I like summer. I like the light, the heat, the aroma, the holidays, the storms, and indeed, the sense of urgency that propels us (me, anyway) to run.
"For all the driving I have done in my life, every single one of the aforementioned 'long hauls', I haven't been able to drift. There was always an objective I needed to achieve, a destination to get to, a finish line."
Not only do I like summer, but I despise winter with a white-hot passion you'd think would melt all the snow and ice, but never does. My relationship with winter has only gotten worse as I've gotten older. I do not want so much as a mile of this road trip to fall victim to chilled weather. I want to be on the road only after the last threat of frost in the spring, and off the road long before the first threat of flurries in the fall. Four months will provide ample time, I'd say, to hit all 48 states, and see something of them at the same time.
Er...right?
Until very recently, I wasn't sure how much time I would need. During my 2011 trip, driving through 'big sky' country in eastern Colorado, the enormity of this land really hit me, and I wondered, how long can I expect it to take me to drive through the contiguous 48? And how wil I go about reconciling time and distance and getting it all to create as minimal a footprint on my life as possible?
I found the answer on-line: a website that allows you to create a point-by-point driving route, quite literally a road trip-planner. While this site is a bit too fastidious in its planning (I have no intention of treating 1/48/50 like Clark Griswold, niggling every detail down to the last second, penny and gallon of gas), it does help to actually see the trip strung out across a map, get an idea of where to drive and have the distance and time quantified. I spent the weekend carefully plotting my course, keeping in mind a few key requirements:
a) I have to hit all of the lower 48 states. It's in the name, after all. '1/48/50'
b) There are a few landmarks I want to see, and I do not feel guilty for this.
c) With a few notable exceptions, I want to avoid heavy urban areas; I'm far more interested in rural areas and small towns, not because I believe them to be any more 'real' than urban areas, the people any more virtuous or interesting or relatable, but because, speaking honestly, they're just less of a pain in the ass to navigate, generally less dangerous to take a wrong turn in.
After all the plotting and calculating, my entire trip, as I envision it, tops off at 13,848 miles, and requires 233 hours of driving time. Yowza. From this, I figured if I drive eight hours a day, it will take me about 30 days to complete. Not only would that be physically taxing, but also depressingly self-defeating. I wouldn't see anything or talk to anyone driving that much, and I'd be able to do little more than fall dead asleep at the end of each day, right back to miles tasting like rice cakes.
No sir, this is not the Cannonball Run I'm planning; there's no finish line, so eight hours a day of driving is out of the question. But then, how much do I whittle that number down? Four hours a day? That'd turn it into a two-month trip...ish. Two hours a day? That would get me right up around the three or four month mark, taking into consideration all the variables, but that seems kind of paltry and lame, inching my way across the USA. I want to feel like I'm getting somewhere!
On the other hand, living nebulously means nothing if not being perfectly okay with getting nowhere fast
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