Road Trip

The iconic representation of a generation caught between "On the Road" and "On Golden Pond."

The Road Trip is an event that never fails to live up to the hype. It is reinforced by the strong draw of novelty, seeing things you never thought you would. It could be the Grand Canyon, or the father of two of your best friends that you didn't know were related, or a deep woods woman serving BBQ out of a roadside shack, but the road trip always shows you something unexpected.

The road trip maintains its allure through the support of the Out of Town phenomenon. When you are on the road, you are whatever you want to be. There is no reference point. You are just a stranger in a strange land, just an ephemeral spirit passing through. You might sit down to a chicken fried steak dinner in a small town in Iowa, and strike up a conversation with the waitress, and find out she is 20 and the daughter of the owners and when you pay, she says, "Where are you going? Can I come along?" And as you drive off in twilight, headed back to a life that disappeared for a weekend, you wonder "What if?"

As you drive all night, hurtling towards a known but not yet understood destination, maybe you find yourself in New Orleans at 6 a.m. Maybe you want beignets and coffee, or maybe you want a drink. And maybe you find a bar open in the French Quarter with a three-legged dog and a sign behind that bar that reads, "You bartender is . . . Pamela, John, Willy, Amelia . . . and as you order a Bloody Mary and lean in between the regulars downing gin at 6 a.m., you ask, smart-assing it, "Which one are you?" The bartender is everything about the place, eveything that is there. And you are not; you are everything that is different and anticipatory and disruptive. "Which one do you want me to be?" and you collapse in shock and admiration, because that is what you needed to hear!

The road trip distracts you because it does not require you to make meaning of anything that happens. You may step back from the requirement to justify your existence, and instead allow the world you drop in on to be what it is, and you watch it like a movie, involved but not integral. You have no meaning in the world where you find yourself on a road trip. All your meaning is located elsewhere. When you travel, you slip the bonds of personal definition and become just an object in another person's existential angst.

Whether you catalyze the action (Dean Moriarty) or simply observe the flow (Sal Paradise), the road beckons.