See America Right
November 29, 2005 by David BlackmanYou want to see America right. You want to have the quintessential American experience before gas hits $5 a gallon. You want to have adventures in corn fields and at truck stops. You, my friend, want a road trip.
Pick your traveling companions. Assemble a group of friends with complementary strengths, like the A-Team. Take someone who is calm and level-headed, who will diffuse the fights that occur when hungry and cranky people are stuffed into a car for too long. Take someone you are not terribly attached to -- you inevitably will come to hate at least one person on the trip, so you might as well plan ahead. For the sake of group drama, this person should be as passive-aggressive as humanly possible. Take someone who can generate spontaneous fun while you're stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic in sweltering heat, and can come up with spur of the moment plans in an unfamiliar city. Hedge your bets and take two of these, as this type of team member is the most likely to become violently ill for the duration of the trip and spend most of his time sleeping. A navigator will come in handy as well -- someone who isn't likely to say, "My map disagrees. The road is wrong!" or point to an exit as you pass it and comment, "I think that was where we wanted to get off."
Pick a destination. Make it far away so that you will be forced to choose between staying in a motel and taking shifts driving white-knuckled and drowsy. It will only be an authentic road trip if the drive is a struggle, a fight between you, the car and the road.
Find friends and relatives you can stay with. They won't really be able to house you and your friends comfortably. Don't worry, your Asian friend will volunteer to sleep on the floor. Constantly thank your host for her hospitality until she secretly wishes for you to leave so she can stop hearing about it.
Pick a car, a small car, the smallest you can find, preferably a two-door. It will make the trip that much more intimate. Pick the newest car available so as to look cool while on this journey. This, too, will help the group bond, since the only person willing to drive the car will be the owner. The group will thus split cleanly into two camps -- the driver vs. everyone else. Everyone else will want to get to the destination as quickly as possible; the driver will want to get there in such a manner that he does not get a speeding ticket.
Make sure the car has a sunroof, so that at 3 a.m., delirious from sleeping in a bed sized for a six-year-old girl, you can look out at the stars and notice that if you squint a certain way, you can almost see them as points of light hung in a three-dimensional matrix.
In preparation for the drive, go to the supermarket. Wander up and down the aisles trying to make decisions by consensus in total silence. The shorter the trip, the more food you should buy. Your band of intrepid travelers is likely to die of starvation if you don't have a box of cheese nips and a bag of red seedless grapes in the car. Buy lots of energy drinks. Not only do these help compensate for exhaustion, but they also help stave it off. Tell your nervous system, "Don't wimp out on me or I'll drink a Red Bull!" It will listen.
During the drive, make sure to discuss hot-button topics such as politics, the meaning of life, music, the relative attractiveness of girls you've dated, global warming, Indian off-shoring and Will Ferrell. Defend your positions as if your life depended on it. This will make the drive that much more interesting.
Alternate who gets to choose the next CD, skipping over those whose musical tastes are not worth speaking of. Burn up inside when it's your turn to put in a CD and everyone else is talking over it. Periodically turn on the radio for egregiously incorrect traffic alerts that claim large portions of the United States are inaccessible from the interstate you are currently on, marvel when the radio endlessly seeks through the empty spectrum when driving through mountains, wait for it to settle on a country music station for you and your friends to mock mercilessly until you find yourself singing along with the choruses.
Do not plan activities in advance. Everyone will get sick and need to sleep for much of the trip, so there's no point -- it will just cause you regret. Debate going to museums. Rationalize your belief that culture is dead with your desire to turn off your brain while on vacation. Daydream about picking up a girl at a bar/cafe/park and ditching your friends to go home with her. Imagine how you would explain it to them, how you would get back to them. Realize this will never happen. Visit empty college campuses and project onto them all the images of a perfect school that you had when you chose to come to Stanford. Imagine midday trips to the beach/slopes/downtown with a picturesque sitcom-style group of incestuous friends. Realize these are the same thoughts you had when you saw the Stanford campus for the first time.
Leave your laptop at home. Spend much of the trip fantasizing about checking e-mail. Instead, take too many books with you -- big heavy tomes that you've always meant to get around to reading. Realize you didn't really want to spend time with your friends anyway, you just wanted to get away and read. Wonder when you'll get a chance to do this. Read the opening line of "For Whom The Bell Tolls" over and over. Pick up a Dan Brown novel just to see. Read it voraciously. Pack a change of clothes for each day of the trip. Wear the same outfit you were wearing when you started out until it is stained with taco grease.
Run yourself ragged on the trip. Get at everyone's throat. Make the trip home a mad dash to remove yourself from these peoples' company as quickly as possible. Return home to your bed and your things and your personal space. Wonder why you ever left in the first place, why you ever talked to these people and if you ever will talk to them after this. Swear never to do it again.
Make tentative plans to go to Banff next time. Sleep on it.
David hopes to one day go on a successful road trip and not come back with a mono-like illness. Have suggestions on how to do this? E-mail him at blackmad@stanford.edu.
David hopes to one day go on a successful road trip and not come back with a mono-like illness. Have suggestions on how to do this? E-mail him at blackmad@stanford.edu.
