on the road trip

Viewing the country in a different lens

If you drive down 95 enough, the states will stand out just as much as you thought they would blend in with one another. I have a friend and he once confided in me that he had never been all the way down the coast, but it didn’t matter. If you made it far enough, there was enough information to generalize.

There is a lot of attention placed these days on famous actors, influencers, musicians, and the press tours they embark on for their latest projects. All of the stunts that are performed, the climbing on top of the Vegas Sphere, the ads run in local newspapers cosplaying everyday life from the outside. From Los Angeles to Atlanta to Dubai, it is never enough to settle along the Interstate, to remain in one spot for the duration of the tour.

The concept of the road trip is almost entirely and uniquely American, and this sudden lack of attention span and inability to sit still has led to its renaissance. Nearly 2 billion people plan to take a road trip at some point throughout the year, hoping to make their mark on the country’s best destinations.

My friend is about to take their first road trip, and there is a sense of awe nearly identical to that surrounding glamorous publicity tours. He is making his debut to the country and the country is making his debut to him. There are a lot of questions that could be asked of him: What are you looking forward to most? Where do you think your favorite spot will be?

The country, though, will not ask questions of him. It will assume who he is, where he came from, and where he is off to. It will offer him only what it offers everyone—a version of itself that may or may not resemble what he imagined, a truth that exists regardless of whether he’s ready to see it. What he’ll find along those interstates is a country in the middle of asking itself what it wants to be.

The weather will be great, I have been told, for most of his trip. I am nothing but eager and excited. However, it is raining a lot where I am in Los Angeles these days, and I do not think that is necessarily a bad thing.