The days have become weeks, and the weeks have counted off the months. It seems that yesterday we lived in suburban madness, commuting hours a day to satisfying but exhausting careers.

Then the trip. And it’s as if the old world, the old ways never existed.

It is 4:45 a.m. as I write this. New Year’s Day. We have crossed over from one year to the next. When the sun went down last night, we cooked dinner, popped a bottle of champagne we’ve been carrying around for months, and then – under only the light of the half moon – we scoured the sky with our binoculars. Stars upon stars. Countless dots of light, light hurtling at us – like the light of the North Star – sent this direction hundreds of thousands of years ago. And then, like old people all over, no matter the home or location, we turned in early, long before the big ball dropped in NYC or anywhere else. At midnight we were asleep as one year clicked into the other.
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Our trip started in part because I believe that where we live and work has a tremendous effect on how we live and work. I was born and grew up in small towns all across Canada, but in my adulthood I have lived in cities all across the U.S. – Phoenix, D.C., Dallas, Miami, Baltimore, etc. I romanticized this trip out of all proportion for several months before starting it, but I continue to be amazed at how gorgeous and varied the big country is.

A short break in the interviews I have scheduled for a book I’m working on allows us some time to wander, so we decide to take a couple of days in the remote and beautiful Death Valley National Park. We arrive at Stovepipe Wells at midday, the temperature a polite and friendly 65 degrees. Stovepipe Wells is a little outpost in the middle of the big valley. There are about 50 RV spaces in the National Park area – no electricity or water. And there are 14 spots with power and water right alongside the desolate and barely traveled Highway 190.
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The crunch was pretty loud. Oh, I didn’t know what it was, but I knew something pretty bad had happened. It was a crunch that sounded thick and noisy. I looked at my wife and asked her if she had any ideas. I thought maybe I’d run over a small deck chair we hadn’t stowed properly. Maybe fifty tin cans.

We had just finished packing our 29 foot Winnebago Minnie RV – which we’d taken to calling Winnie Cooper – after a lovely week on the Oregon coast. We had interviews to get to in California, but we had many days in between. There was no rush. I had put the new Dido CD in the player, took my coat off. I started the wipers on the big tin can. The rain was coming down sideways, the wind coming in, too, 30-40 mph. But the view was clear. We had finished cleaning the house we had rented for a few days, put the keys back in the lockbox, and we were headed out of the driveway. Until the crunch.

When I got out and got around the side, I saw the problem. The rain gutters on the front of the house had pierced the roof of the RV. We had chunked up against the house’s eave, a 2X6’ board under the gutter had been torn off, about a 9” chunk laying on the driveway.

The house looked okay. I was grateful I didn’t tear the metal gutters down. It would be an easy repair. A shitty break, but not the end of the world.

On the other hand, as I struggled to pull my gigantic ass up Winnie’s ladder, I kept thinking: “Please, God, I know I’m a sinner, a dirty dog sinner. I know I’m doomed. But this time, this one time, please don’t let there be a tear in the fiberglass.”
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All in all, the life in the big tin can is quite sweet. Check with me on different days about this, though, because I am sometimes a little dark, dark like the Grinch, dark like Monty Clift.

We have a 26″ TV with DVD and VCR, and an auto satellite dish that pivots and twirls till it locks on a giant floating TV machine that floats – always – above the Texas gulf coast. We have hundreds of crystal clear channels, and mostly I just make it go from 201 to 545 as fast as possible to remind myself that the world is still with us.

We have the microwave, a nice refrigerator, three burners, and an oven big enough for the thinnest cookies ever made. We have slideouts in the living room and bedroom, enabling us to increase floor space in each of those rooms by 50%. The bedroom has a nice queen size bed, with room to walk around both sides. Storage is good. I have the seven shirts that make up my wardrobe, and my wife has along about what Diana Ross packs with her when she goes to Europe for a month. The living room has a 4-seater dining room table and a full length couch. You can really stretch out. When the sun’s up, we have all the windows open, and the views are almost always pretty spectacular, given where we’ve been traveling.

The bathroom? Well, the shower is located about half way back in the RV, and on one side, and as long as you’re under 6 feet tall, it’s an efficient space. Imagine a phone booth. Then think of something smaller than that. Something that would fit inside a phone booth. With running water. And slick surfaces. The toilet area is across the hall from the shower, and includes a stool, wash basin, and enough storage for 2 toothbrushes, some soap, some towels, and the medium size tube of Crest. When you shave in there, your elbow beats a nice pattern on the side of the wall, but if your belly wasn’t as big as mine, you’d think you were in a phone booth. Or something that would fit inside a phone booth. With a little chair.
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I’ve often told people in the East that I thought of myself as a Westerner. I love the West, I’d say. I’d tell them about going to college in Arizona, my love of the Oregon coast, and some story about smoking a cigar on a car hood in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.

I never had to say much more than that. That was always strange enough for most people. In the circles I’ve lived in for many years now, the West is like one of the moons of Jupiter. There are pictures, but nobody’s been there.

In the past week we’ve traveled far from the Midwest, through South Dakota, Wyoming, and now into Montana. Big empty states. Beautiful empty highways that are always snaking through badlands or hills, pastures, wheat fields, and then mountains. Twenty-four Black Angus cows, steers, whatever, all lined up by a lone tree. Actual cowboys moving a herd of cattle down the side of the highway outside Aladdin, Wyoming – population 15. Endless and stoic power lines disappearing into the horizon in Crawford County, South Dakota.
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We take a southern detour to visit my brother-in-law in a corner of Iowa. He’s taught high school for almost 25 years, and he’s my wife’s only brother. He’s a funny and brilliant guy who knows enough about history and baseball to keep you talking all night. He’s the first person we see on the trip who we really know, who knows us from our old lives. I find myself chattering about the trip like it was a religious quest. I inflate the journey, the travel. At one point he says, “Well, as long as you’re having fun.”

My wife’s family is from Iowa, and she was born just about 20 miles from here. One of our stops this weekend is that little town, but we also have plans to see an area that covers six counties tucked in this corner of the state.

Most folks have no concept of the Midwest. To them, it’s just a flyover area of blank spaces, a green patch in a road atlas, a place they’ve never been. There is some sense of cold. If you say “Iowa,” some folks imagine corn.
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My friends who live in big cities have little understanding of the great middle of this country. This is not the greatest failing in the world, perhaps, but it’s a failing nonetheless. There are terrific and fascinating places and people on every square inch of the map, and I can’t think of a place that hasn’t educated or entertained me in some way. Sure, for some lives, New York is the place to be. LA for others. I know many pals who swear by the South. Others won’t leave the misty Pacific Northwest.

But I’ve never been afraid of the great expanse that Rand McNally and the fellas promise each year when the big Road Atlas comes rolling into my local Wal-Mart, and then into my car.

One of the reasons for this trip, in fact, was just for the sheer enjoyment of going all around the lower 48. I’ve been in all theses places before, but never in one swoop, so that’s part of the challenge. But the real joy is the intoxicating combination of people and places and events that come rocketing through your life when you travel 65 mph pretty much all the time.
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I may have found my home here in Wisconsin. As I travel I-90 and I-94, cheese and meat shops appear on the horizon every now and again. Everything is called a Haus. Cheese Haus. Sausage Haus. When I see two on the same exit, I pull over faster than you can say “who has a big belly?”

The Cheese Haus looks full, but there’s a place called Humbird right next to it, and it has a giant painted sign that seals the deal for me: “Fudge.”

Three ladies are working the place. It looks like they’ve just opened fairly recently. There are giant display freezers, but they’re new, and not especially tight to the walls. Some things have prices, but not all of them. The cash register is brand new, and one of the ladies is working it over like she was Mike Tyson.
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I’m steering the red SUV through endless Ohio towns. Roads are closed in a flurry here right now. The last months of construction have got me detouring through towns I’ve never seen before, and I’m turning around in many nice driveways when I miss those “No Outlet” signs.

After my third detour in three towns, I get a hankering for some ice cream. Not a big sundae or anything by Baskin Robbins, but soft-serve. I’m dreaming about soft-serve as I drive, someone dropping big dollops of the stuff from the sky on top of me. Me sliding down a big mountain of it, etc. These are the dreams that foodies always have.

Milford Center is a tiny town that is less than a wide spot on highway 4, and just as I’m blinking and passing it by, I spot a small wood one-story building on my right. The hand painted sign says, “Woody’s Dairy Bar and Pizza.”
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It’s 7 pm or so after I check into the Hampton Inn in Battle Creek, Michigan. When I drove in earlier, I was knocked out to see about 30 vintage cars in the parking lot, Fords, Chryslers, all primo condition, detailed, etc. A big sign in the lobby advertises this weekend as the National Street Rod convention.

After getting settled, I decide to run out and make some very bad food choices at the closest place with a drive-thru. As I emerge from the front door, a 50ish guy with a baseball cap comes right over at me. “Hey, are you the guy who bought the Packard?” He’s closing in, got his hand stretched out, so I have to shake it before I say, “Uh, no.”

He hooks one arm around my back and keeps shaking as he says: “Oh, shit, sorry. But you gotta see this, my pal just sold his ’44 Packard for 18 grand…I thought you were the guy…you look just like him.”

Now, this is all happening at light speed, so he’s got me away from my car and headed toward the back corner of the hotel parking lot. It’s daylight, he’s not especially threatening, and I am street tough like Allen Iverson, so after I unloose myself from his grip I keep walking along with him.

Two guys are waiting by a purple roadster of some kind. My baseball cap friend points at a fat guy with a beard and says, “My buddy here sold his ’44 Packard to some guy for 18 grand…show him the money.”
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There are only a handful of things that I’m looking forward to from this trip. I’d like to see the Grand Canyon from a helicopter. I’d like to throw a silver dollar into the Pacific Ocean. I’m hoping that I’ll find a cool diner somewhere on the side of a highway where they make giant milkshakes with cookie crumbs in the bottom.

I’d like to see some sunrises and sunsets, and I want to take a breath of ice cold air that is clean and free of whatever it is that troubles city air.

And I’m hoping that the distance from this house will make the dreams I’ve been having stop.

It’s a Winnebago. It’s 27’ long and it’s set up like a studio apartment inside. It has enough space for my books, some clothes. I have a camera and a bunch of lenses and a briefcase. And there’s room enough in this thing for a lot more. But it’s enough for now. I can pull over whenever I need to to refill the fridge.… Continue reading →