Sooo ... I guess I turned 50.
More than a decade ago, around the time I was taking my first reluctant steps into my forties, I vowed to take a solo cross-country road trip by the time I hit the big 5-0. Inspired by the concept of being nebulous (as I thought of it), I set up this page to document the ... I don't know ... the "journey", I guess, a move I knew was likely a bit premature. I knew the trip wasn't going to happen overnight, that there would be some lead-up that could very well run into years, but wanting to get and keep myself in the right preparatory headspace, I established the "...by age 50" deadline and started posting weekly with any road trip-related material I could think of. This was a mix of things, ranging from random stuff I saw in society so inexplicable, objectionable or repugnant it made me want to be "nebulous", to the best type of RV for an extended road trip (class B all the way!), to longplay thoughts on what music I would take along with me, the ultimate playlist for my 14,000-mile drive through 48 states in under 50 years. That last was an easy prescription; I could go on and on about music as long as I needed to, maintaining the desired headspace, biding my time until the time finally came to hit the highway. I spent most of the 2010s doing just that: biding my time.
And wow, has that time flown. In the wink of an eye all those 2010s were gone, taking that lofty "by age 50" deadline with them. What's more, sometime in 2019 I fell behind in my posts, kind of lost the thread of what up until that point had been a strict weekly schedule I actually managed to hold to for a while. There was no reason for this. No tragedy befell me, no upheaval, nothing major jumped up and started tearing my attention away, and I can't say I lost interest in the project (certainly never lost interest in prattling on about music); I did, indeed, keep myself in the right headspace. I just got distracted, and lazy. The sad truth: I've always been a little distracted and lazy. I have no one to blame for that other than myself.
"...by age 50" never happened, but I'm not too concerned; I could still take the trip. It's unlikely to happen this year, and probably not next year, but I still hold out hope. I'm still anticipating, making plans, running logistics through my head, still adding to my music playlist, and in response to that self-imposed deadline blowing my hair back as it shot past at breakneck speed, I've simply altered the mission statement to reflect the new reality: One Drive, 48 States, in 50(something) Years.
1/48/50(something), if you will ... and if I dare.
I'm going to continue to post here. Although perhaps not as regularly as once per week, I will nevertheless look to keep the dream alive, and if it never happens then it never happens. That will be too bad, but I'll be okay with it. Life is too short for a lot of things - anger, grudges, pettiness, etc. - and certainly too short for the gross habit of actively collecting regrets, Pokémon Go-style. The bumper sticker is correct, shit happens, but conversely, sometimes shit doesn't happen. There's a lesson in that too.
In the meantime, I'm going to try to focus on posting in this space whenever I go anywhere new, for any reason, an area of opportunity I have not seized on much in recent years, at least not as much as I could have. I've traveled plenty in the last decade but haven't always written about those travels. A share-worthy "road trip" doesn't have to be a cross-country undertaking, doesn't even require leaving the state. Any time I drive somewhere I haven't been before, whenever I find myself in a place where nobody knows me, I am, in effect, nebulous (as I still think of it), and feel I should be trying to capture that psychologically sensual situation in words, even if it never gets read by anyone, even if it turns out to be more private journaling than public blogging.
However, these days there is something else to consider, something I never thought I would have to when I started this in 2013. I always kept in mind the possibility that my trip might not happen before I turned 50, and that, indeed, it might not happen at all. I knew I was setting myself up for a conspicuous failure by establishing a deadline, willingly assuming a measure of responsibility to the likelihood that any number of life's shit sandwiches would keep the trip from happening by constantly forcing me to push my plans back, like that utterly depressing first scene in the movie Up. And I was well aware going in that simply the notion of driving across the entire country, hitting all 48 contiguous in one fell swoop, is a lofty goal for anyone, of any means.
But now, after another celebrated summer season not on an extended road trip, it's not me driving across the country I'm worried about so much as the country I've wanted to drive across since I was thirteen. I'll be okay if my big road trip doesn't happen for legitimate, "shit sandwich"-related reasons, but not okay if it doesn't happen because there is no longer a country to see, that is, the country that I grew up in: divided but standing, silly but stable, laughable but lustrous and kind of awesome, with more bringing us together than tearing us apart, and the fringe types still resigned to the fringes.
This is not a political diatribe. It's not about red or blue, liberal or conservative. I have opinions, but all-in-all, I'm about as centrist as can be, and for this, it might be said this post is about red and blue, those inflexible, binary labels we slap on ourselves and each other and our increasing inability, and/or unwillingness, to step out from under them, identify as different hues of the same American color scheme, which if we really commit to the red and blue idents should absolutely make Purple.
It's about how dangerously close my country 'tis of thee seems - sometimes - to disintegrating into fractious chaos that heretofore only happened overseas, hurling headlong toward a terrifyingly unstable future of closed borders, occupied sections and hastily rewritten governments, all these gorgeous red and blue states, with gorgeous "red" and "blue" cultures living next door to one another, amongst each other even, becoming red and blue territories, the stability that once made us a cohesive society, a single place so vast and diverse and, for this, luminously world-leading in all the ways that count, disintegrating before my eyes.
Every American alive today, from, say, age 10 to 100, has enjoyed a presumed quality of life - relatively safe, stable and bejeweled with opportunity, cup runneth over with plenty of everything (not the least of which, free time) to get minds wandering, eyes laughing, hearts racing, creative juices flowing, hands busy, moving and working toward the future with anticipation, and with options available to those among us who are struggling. There have always been problems, yes, always some uncertainty, injustices, racial strife, gender inequality, tensions between haves and have-nots, and amidst this an ever-present third rail of liberal v conservative conflict. But the country continuing on in spite of it all was never in question, not like it is now.
It is something that hasn't happened, and for this fact, something that may never, a worst-case scenario that for now remains safely encased in the sparkly, "lights, camera, action!" aesthetic of Hollywood. I just never thought it would be something any American would ever have to think about at all, could never have imagined, while sitting in my Future Trends class in the winter of 1991, a second Civil War. Even if the teacher had prompted me back then to describe how it might happen and what it might look like, I would never have taken whatever I (or anyone else in the class) came up with seriously.
But it can be argued that momentum to spin us wildly away from the stability of my lifetime is already in play in certain places. Whatever side you come down on politically, each has its fringe element who, driven by anger, intolerance and/or a painfully myopic view of the world, refuse to listen to anything or anyone outside their bubble, are reinforced on the reg by social media (which is anything but "social"), and actively use that platform to spread dis and misinformation around the globe at the speed of light. You might see them as radical, but they see themselves as heroes fighting the good fight.
Even when politics are not involved, we seem to be agitated now, teetering on the edge of something that, no matter what the conversation is about or who it involves, always seems to wheel back around to Democrat v Republican, liberal v conservative, red state v blue state. It's a political powder keg, the likes of which we've never had to deal with before, not since the 1960s, but to which I would argue we are far more vulnerable now than we were back then.
Politics used to be the boring shit on C-SPAN most people flipped past. And while flipping past on our way to the brain rot awaiting us on other channels might not have been the best way to spend the last 50 years, now it seems we've swung too far in the opposite direction. Politics used to be one of the things we didn't talk about in mixed company, not so much because it could lead to ruining Thanksgiving dinner, but because it could fucking wait. It wasn't entirely (or at all) urgent. It wasn't the colors we donned before entering a room, wasn't anything we felt must be presented to complete strangers through our lifestyle. For better or worse, it was not the most important thing going on in a country that ticked along nicely in spite of it all, a country where "mixed company" didn't have to be forced, it just happened a lot, probably more so than today, so naturally led to a shortlist of topics everyone tacitly agreed should be avoided, a country that made progress here and there while still keeping its shit together, still leaving room for traditions, a continuous give-and-take that for most people reinforced the spirit of "my country 'tis of thee" as they lived their lives.
A road trip across this country holds far less appeal, almost no appeal, if there will be states, cities, places, I can't get to anymore. What a frightening, but also ugly, ugly, motherfugly thought. The whole point of "1/48/50" was to see all the contiguous lower 48 states in one drive-through, over a series of months, because it was something that I could do, not only without the bullshit of having to show an ID at the next state line, but without any thought given to potentially being somewhere I'm not supposed to be, some manifestation of the "other" America.
That's at the very heart of the "Great American Road Trip" - all the different places and faces and cultures and ways to spend a Saturday night, Sunday morning or Tuesday afternoon at our fingertips, 48 unique states' worth (Alaska and Hawaii are, of course, no less part of the Purple, but separate discussions when discussing a road trip, which I think I still am...), and in them, multiple counties, each one with its own unique way to present itself, something it's proud of, something it wants to share. And within every one of those counties there are cities and towns, same deal. And if you are inclined, and can afford it, you really can see it all in one drive. And if you can't afford it, in terms of either money or time (or both), most of us can still take a few days, drive somewhere not too far away and see something new, something different but still American. Still ours.
I strenuously rebuke any talk, from any public figure or entity, of splitting up this beautiful blob of everything. "National divorce" my ass, and I bristle whenever I hear civil war talk, even in passing, even if only with a curious but not entirely serious sense of foreboding. Fuck that. That is the opposite of what should be happening. If I can't get into Idaho, or Maine, or New Mexico, or if any part of the aforementioned states, counties or communities turn into "occupied" sections where travel is considered something even as mild as "inadvisable" in some worst-case dystopian future where insurgencies are creating Middle Eastern Bloc-style roadblocks, there will be no point to doing it at all.
Yes, an American road trip is as much a celebration as anything, and on 1/48/50(something), I want to see all of it, not just some of it. I want to see the Deep South, Southwest, Northwest, Northwoods, Great Plains and Lakes, Big Apples and Skies, Grand Canyons, Tetons, Forks, Rapids and every single one of the little rivers, bluffs, crevasses, meadows, towns, roads and friggin' casinos with the prefix "Grand" along the way.
I want to see snow-capped mountains hoisting the horizon from the unbridled vantage point of an Interstate. I want to see lunar landscapes, bayous, northwoods and redwoods threaded by small two-lane highways. I want to experience crashing ocean waves from Asia and crashing ocean waves from Europe eroding impossible shorelines.
And no, I would never dare to forget the flyover states. I grew up in flyover country after all, and I'm a big believer that there is nothing "flyover" about any of it. Even in places time has clearly passed by you just need some imagination, some presence of mind, maybe a little bit of self-awareness or reflection, and you too can come to understand the profound beauty found in the way corn sweats on a blistering July afternoon in the middle of Not-So-Nowhere, Iowa. You might receive a message from the last of the evening light glinting off a window above Not-So-Nowhere, Arkansas's downtown, maybe about how time never really passes anything by, it's still always there, everywhere, unboxing, happening. Open your mind just a little and you will be sure never to miss the unincorporated crossroads on the edge of Not-So-Nowhere, Washington, where a single blinking stoplight strung above and swaying in the breeze might provide a sense that somebody was by there, if not recently, then once, and someone will be by there again, if not soon, eventually. And you'll know they were American, just like you.
I will be heartbroken if I cannot see all the festivals a long summer road trip through this country might present: every state connected by Interstates celebrating crops and commodities in communities in the time of abundance: blueberries, strawberries (all the berries!), rhubarb, apples, peaches, honey, almonds, peanuts and radishes, and every odd thing I never knew came from somewhere specific and never knew I liked. I want to, at my leisure, check out art fairs and micro-breweries and "Taste of ..." events put on by Chambers of Commerce doing everything they can to keep their downtowns alive. And yes, absolutely, I want to visit national parks, monuments and landmarks, from Valley Forge to the Redwoods, from Mt. Rushmore to Crazy Horse, from Badlands to Death Valley, from the Everglades to the Gateway Arch, across Purple mountain majesty, from one shining sea to the other, from Cali to Long Island, homeward bound on every country road I come across, like the old songs go.
I want to continue to have the luxury of romanticizing a road trip: train whistles in the night, tracing the path of jets through impossibly wide spaces, spontaneous highway convoys of mis-matched makes, models, passengers, cargo and origin, all carrying on for a hundred miles while the radio plays the music I want to listen to. And maybe storm clouds darken the distant sky while I'm driving, but they are real storm clouds, full of water and fury, rather than the "storm clouds" of grave political unrest. I may get easily distracted, but I don't want to have to be distracted by serious political machinations going on underfoot, don't want to have to think about plots to kill governors or bomb city halls or block highway travel or any unruly gestures of civil disobedience. It is all a waste of precious energy in this country, my country, our country, that has ticked along just fine for the last 200-plus years and leant each and every one of us the best general quality of life the world has ever known.
I want to see Savannah. Cour de 'Elene. Pittsburgh. And every Not-So-Nowhere along the way.
The true nightmare scenario is still hypothetical, something I merely think about rather than watch on the news. But it is not out of the realm of possibility, and were it to happen, if we actually started shooting at each other, it would be to the detriment of all our lives, all 300 million-plus of us, most of whom, I think, would immediately start looking back and appreciating what we had that we lost the moment the needle broke. But it would also hand deliver me the biggest regret of my life: that I didn't make 1/48/50 happen while I had the chance. While I could. While there was still the stability of my lifetime to cash in.
I hope, I pray, it never becomes the case. Please, fellow Americans, liberal and conversative alike, when you feel slighted, when you feel put upon, ignored, under-represented, disrespected by people you're starting to consider an existential threat, take a deep breath, find some middle ground. Let Purple Reign.
