The roadtrip, examined. [cover story]
scans [1] [2] [3] [4]

It always starts with the same itch. You'll be sitting in an office cubicle, crawling in traffic, or wedged between riders on the subway. Someplace you can't get comfortable, where you're not going anywhere. You want to get up and go, to see something – anything – else, as long as it isn't the same old thing, worn to a dull nub with the familiarity of everyday use. Surely all sorts of life is happening right now somewhere you're not. And you're missing it.

This urge will crackle and ping around your brain until you act on it – and in the U.S. of A., the cheapest, easiest way to do that is in a car.

Next thing you know, you're in motion. The road trip: pregnant with promise, a minefield of metaphors (the best lies ahead, forks in the road, stop and smell the roses) and as American as microwaved apple "pie" from a drive-thru window. Nowhere else on earth do the concepts of freedom, adventure, leisure and opportunity coalesce in a single material good: the automobile.

So that, more or less, is how it starts, with versions of the same need to gas up the tank and go. But how does it end? Does a road trip ever really fulfill its freewheeling promise? Or is each jaunt just a detour to some of life's more sobering truths?

We asked 52 people what they learned from driving, biking, busing and otherwise hugging asphalt across America, and some common themes emerged. Here are the lessons that stuck with them and some of their stories, in their own words.

1. Pack only the essentials.

Sure, you miss some little luxuries – a toaster, fluffy towels, the "Flip That House" marathon waiting on your TiVo – but few things cleave the essential from the superfluous (and make you realize, when you get home, how much useless crap you've accumulated) like being far from home.

"My then-girlfriend and I were halfway through a five-week trip when we hit the Badlands on a camping night.

We set up on a mesa, a good hike from the car. There was a gorgeous view, a sky full of stars overhead. The soil, on the other hand, was like concrete. Eventually we got the tent set up, though it certainly didn't look anything like the picture on the box.

For dinner we had an argument. It's tough to go on a road trip with someone you don't think is a good driver. Combine this with a waitress who'd called me "honey" a couple of states ago, and soon we were debating who'd drive the car home and who'd get to fly.

Finding we'd run out of nasty things to say to one another, I heated some canned chili on the camp stove. The steam had just started rising from the pot and we heard a coyote. Then another. Then their friends. If you've never heard a coyote, imagine the cast from The Warriors, all screaming and cackling at one another. Except with fur – and bigger teeth.

Then from the other direction came an answering howl. There we were, on a mesa, between two packs of coyote,s with our hot, delicious food.

While she fled to the tent, I clawed a hole in the unyielding soil and dumped our perfectly heated and hard-earned dinner. I stashed the camp stove and ran for the tent, acknowledging that 1/8" of nylon wasn't going to stop hungry coyotes but, given how things were going, maybe that was OK. My foot caught on something, and next thing I knew I was somersaulting down a cactus patch. Sixty spines stuck from my heel to behind my ear. I staggered back up the hill and dove inside the tent where I proceeded to bleed as quietly as possible.

Earlier, when we'd pulled supplies from the car for our hike to the mesa, we'd cut down on all but the essentials. Included: one large bottle of tequila. Not included: first-aid kit.

It took three hours for her, by lantern light and with a pair of tweezers from a Swiss Army knife, to pull out all the spines. She'd pour tequila on a spine, we'd argue, and out it would come. What tequila wasn't poured on my body went in my mouth; I made sure of that.

The coyotes never showed up. I pulled the last three spines out of my neck in Chicago, a week later, in the shower."


2. Somebody always has it worse than you. Then again, somebody always has it better.

Leaving the familiar behind and heading into the unknown – and seeing how the other half lives through your car window – is a foolproof exercise in perspective. Sometimes it makes you appreciate what you've got, sometimes it makes you realize there's a lot more out there to be had.

"Fort Stockton is an undistinguished town along Interstate 10, favored by tumbleweeds and other drifters. I'd been rootless myself, but that was about to change. I was driving my girlfriend from Santa Monica, where I-10 begins, to Macon, Georgia, where I commanded meager respect and less money as a young reporter, and where she'd join me in a rented apartment of a grand antebellum home. All the belongings her Honda could hold were in the trunk and back seat.

As dreary as Fort Stockton was, I'd never remember it if this woman hadn't decided then and there that she'd gone far enough. I'm not sure now, nor was I then, why she changed her mind; I guess she didn't need a reason. Living with me in the middle of a slightly backward Southern town was something she wasn't ready for. "Take me home," she asked meekly. Then she asked again.

I was a little hurt and totally pissed off. She'd come off a bad relationship with a married guy a few years earlier, and while she was long since over him, she'd been indecisive ever since. She was also a classical pianist, trained to accompany opera companies, and she wouldn't find a whole lot of Verdi in middle Georgia unless she brought him herself. But middle Georgia did have me. What more did it need?

After spewing and fuming past an off-ramp or two, I got off in Fort Stockton and found a liquor store: I pulled in, bought a six-pack, got back in the car and headed to the nearest hotel. I drank it all. We'd head back the following day.

Morning came and embarrassment, more than me, changed her mind. The 10 gets prettier with Fort Stockton behind you, but we'll probably return one day. Maybe for our 50th wedding anniversary."

2. Love is blind. And messy.

There's some sort of weird emotional algebra that makes us believe in an otherwise dubious truth: Relationship ills can be cured by a change of location. Many a couple's road trip is born of a last-ditch attempt to save something, and plans are hatched amid feverish talk of baggage and ruts and new beginnings. No one ever stops to consider the notion that if it's not working at home, it's probably not going to work when the car smells like McNugget sauce, or the room has bedbugs or the general atmosphere of resentment prompts confessions of the most wounding kind. (See also: Saving a marriage by having a baby.)

"It was early June, August-hot, and the car was small and rented. I had graduated from college the day before, and the plan was to just drive. My boyfriend of three years was with me – a Coke in hand and a map on his lap. We were setting off on an adventure together and would find our way from Northern California to the Great Plains of Iowa.

From the first mile, I ached. Life – like the road – lay ahead, and the man I was supposed to one day marry was helping me navigate. The metaphor was strong, but I wasn't: Two days earlier, I'd slept with another man – something I'd never done before, never imagined I could do. My guilt (intensified by the heat, the close quarters, the length of the journey) was suffocating. I felt sick. I didn't know how I would make it 1500 miles, lying to my love through every rest stop and cheap hotel; nor could I face how my actions were about to take my future so off-course.

I see now, years later, that I was too young to know what I wanted in life, or in a life partner, and too naive to realize that not knowing was normal. I fell into the arms of another boy for the reasons a baby cries out when she's hungry – because I didn't have the words or the understanding to change things any other way.

We made it to Iowa, but cut our travels short when I confessed."

3. "Happiness not real unless shared."

Hitting the road and leaving your cares behind – no parents breathing down your neck, no spouse or kids, no career to derail or mortgage to default on – is a singular experience. Change your destination on a whim? Sure. Eat shitty drive-thru takeout six meals in a row? Totally. And to hell with clean clothes or sobriety, while you're at it. Who's gonna stop you? You can go anywhere you please, do as the mood strikes you and generally act without consequence.

Taken in something like moderation, this can be good for the soul. But one day you're going to wake up hungover in a motel room off the interstate with a bucket of cold chicken in your lap, wondering what day it is and realizing that if you choked on a wing, no one would know or care. (That line above was found scrawled in a book belonging to Into the Wild's real-life road-tripper Christopher McCandless, who famously ditched his life to commune with nature and wound up alone and dead in Alaska.)

Jack Kerouac knew better than anyone that escape isn't the answer. By the time On the Road was published, he was a broke 35-year-old living with his mother in Queens. He finally managed to drink himself to death a scant decade later – a year after Neal Cassady (inspiration for the book's iconic rebel Dean Moriarty) died of exposure along the railroad tracks in Mexico.

"They blew up the Stardust Casino last year, and it made me think about the summer my husband left me. I had gone to L.A. to see an old boyfriend (the one who I thought had given me herpes, in fact) and to try and make sense of everything, figure out who in the hell I was. We drove to Vegas for a few days, the first time I had gone there as an adult. On our first night there, we landed at a poker table. I'd never played. I watched for a few hours. Then it was 4 a.m. and time to go to bed.

We beat it back to the Stardust, where we were staying. He went up to the room. Me, I wandered through the nearly empty casino and thought I should pull a slot before I called it a night. My ex had given me a roll of quarters for luck when we got to town, so I chose a direction, walked over, put my quarter into the slot and pulled. Three cherries came up. The machine started pitching out quarters. It pitched and pitched until I had to get a bucket, and then that wasn't enough either, so I started gathering them in the skirt of my sundress because I was afraid to leave. I ended up with $275, on my first pull, in the middle of the night, at the Stardust. It should have felt exhilarating, but it was one of the loneliest moments of my life."

5. Motel room sex has magical powers.

It's illicit in the best way, like money should be changing hands – and you don't have to change the sheets yourself. If you're young, it makes you feel more grown-up; if you're old, it makes you feel 10 to 20 years younger than you are. Inversely, sex in a car makes you feel either completely juvenile or too old to be having sex, period.

"I wanted to break up with him before the trip, but he guilted me into going with him because he'd already bought the tickets and rented the car and I felt bad for planning to dump him when he'd been such a sweetheart during the abortion. Guilt is a weird thing. Anyway, a week after the bleeding stopped, we landed at one of those airports that's one building and one gate, but still manages to have "International" in the name because of flights to Canada.

And then we drove and drove and drove. The road we took made South Carolina seem like one giant depressing strip mall, a state whose economy ran on nail salons and Curves weight loss franchises. My mood darkened with each hour on the road. We were going to a wedding where I was supposed to smile as he introduced me to all his Duke buddies as his new girlfriend, when I was planning the breakup speech for the flight back and popping four Advil every six hours (seriously) for the residual pain. Everything acquired extra meaning: How he was the groom's best man (was he? The best man, that is? Would I kick myself later?) or that South Carolina was seemingly awash in pregnant teenagers (at 17, did they know something I didn't at 36? Or were they just as scared as me, with fewer choices?). Desperate to think about something other than where my life was going, I kept a written record of every bumper sticker we saw. "Say NO to Drugs – Get High on the Rosary!" "RV Having Fun Yet?"

Hours later, we stopped at some drive-in joint called Jonny's Crawfish Shack with fishing nets and traps all over the roof. We sat in the parking lot and had oversalted popcorn shrimp and hush puppies. When he went to the bathroom, I checked my e-mail on his Palm (this was a few years ago, when surfing the Web from a phone wasn't as common – I loved his love of gadgetry). Sure enough, there it was: a note from a guy I'd just met, confirming our date for next week. I was elated.

My future ex chalked up my 180-degree mood swing to the food. We had a ball the rest of the drive and sex the minute we got to our hotel. Knowing I wasn't trapped with this man I didn't love, I could finally relax and enjoy his company."


6. There's no place like home.

There's a reason why we're obsessed with shows like "Man vs. Wild," where Joe Mountain-Climber is dropped into the middle of the Amazon and has to figure out which grubs are packed with protein and which'll have him twitching in a violent, pre-death seizure when the toxins hit his bloodstream. Watching them makes us very appreciative of the comforts of home. The great unknown is exciting, but by and large – when you're caught between dueling banjos, or it's 3 a.m. in a strange city and you've just had your pocket picked – you'll wish you were home, preferably under a cozy comforter and within reach of the soothing presence of connective technology (ATM card, cell phone towers), instead of perched in the bough of a dead hickory tree hoping to see the dawn based on smarts and gumption alone.

"Nashville had always been alluring to me. As a single lesbian in New York City, the odds were on my side (outside of San Francisco, where could you find as many women loving women per square mile?), but I'd grown exhausted of the singles scene. Every night out seemed to get pared down to paying a huge cover, kicking back the complimentary coconut rum cocktails, then wincing in the corner as ladies with way too much hairspray and T-shirts with a map of New Jersey and the line "Yeah, We Hate You Too" got down to a Celine Dion remix. I hoped Music City would serve up some down-to-earth women who didn't wear gold cell phone cases on their belts.

I pulled into town, stopped into the closest (decidedly straight) bar for an Old Fashioned and confided my plight to the bartender. "There's a place about 20 minutes out of town called Cabaret," he said. "Used to be the old Red Lobster off the highway, but now it's a ladies' club."

A Red Lobster. Off the highway. Scenes from Boys Don't Cry flashed through my head – and not the hot ones, either – but I noted his directions and set out. I followed the empty roads, took what seemed like three dozen on- and off-ramps and then, sure enough, I saw this dark building on the side of the road. You could still see the outline of a lobster on the sign, with a sagging banner draped over it. CABARET.

I willed myself toward the door. I'd gone from worrying about encounters with homophobic God-fearing Southerners to being scared shitless that some big tough dyke would instantly clock my wuss level and beat the crap out of me.

The scene: Large women with mullets and thick leather everything paraded like roosters around the pool tables. The air was a phlegmy mix of smoke and beer fumes. In the karaoke nook, one woman after another belted out Melissa Etheridge tunes like lives depended on it. My semi-girly Northeasterly demeanor got plenty of stares, so I bought a beer and took refuge at the Ms. Pac-Man machine in the corner.

It wasn't working. I felt someone behind me. As I gobbled up pellets on the screen, she lifted her (big, tough) arm domineeringly over me and rested it on the side of the machine. "Ya like playin' Pac-Man?" she drawled. I nodded. "Really into the game, are ya?" More nods. More Boys Don't Cry in my head. I held my breath.

"It's cuz ya like to be eaten, isn't it?" She chuckled and turned to the pool tables. "Hey, everybody," she boomed. "This gal likes the Pac-Man cuz she likes to be eaten!" Chuckles turned to a growling laugh and the rest of the room joined in. "She likes to be eaten!""

7. Reinvention is a myth.

You probably know this deep down, but let's face it: You're going somewhere else because you don't like who you are here at home, and you're hoping that a change in scenery will lead you to catch a glimpse of your real self, the one you like who's just bogged down with the trifles of everyday life. But what if, once you ditch all the noise, there's no "there" there? What if you're the same person? Reinventing yourself by changing locations makes about as much sense as cheating on your girlfriend out of a fear of commitment – and then marrying the other woman. It's just a matter of time before you cheat on her (possibly with your ex).

"When I graduated from high school, I went on a road trip with my two best friends, and this was like our big "independence" trip. We drove from Hillsboro, Oregon down I-5 to see sunny California before we all went our separate ways.

We drove my friend's parents' brand-new Volvo – they didn't want us breaking down on the road, so they nervously gave us their new car. As we left town, we all lit up our clove cigarettes. Of course! We were on a road trip and that's what road-trippin' girls do. About an hour later, one girl dropped her cigarette in her lap, panicked, and ended up burning a cigarette-sized hole in the brand-new upholstery. It was about a half-inch deep, and so obviously a cigarette hole there was no getting around it. Despite our posing, we were actually good students who never got in trouble and had no idea how to cover it up. We considered torching the entire interior of the car just to hide the evidence. Our whole trip was ruined by nerves; we kept coming up with different lies (terrible, all of them) to hide our misdeed.

In the end, we said we were driving past a semi-truck when the driver flicked a cigarette out his window, which landed in the front seat and burned its way down the upholstery. We practiced saying it to each other all the way back. Her parents obviously didn't buy it for a second but were kind enough to let it go."



8. Hell is other people.

Sartre said it — and he didn't have to drive three hours out of his way in Mississippi because somebody in the car was a vegan and the last three fast-food joints "smelled like death." Democracy is all well and good when everybody's basic needs are being met, but in the microcosm of the road trip, a tyranny of the minority takes over. Accept the fact that if you're sharing a car with someone, your relationship will change, and usually not for the better. The upshot? Solitude becomes very sweet indeed.

"We'd spent the bulk of our second day in New Orleans arguing. It was about 11 at night when both of us petered out, the possibility of me taking the first available flight home to begin a separate life hanging very real and very heavy on my shoulders. So I took the car and drove.

I had no particular destination – just away. I kept turning away from the lights, from people, until the last streetlight faded in my rearview mirror and the air blowing in though the open windows grew cool and busy with the sounds of the swamps at night.

It was a long road, a wall of fragmite to either side. I didn't even think about saving our relationship anymore. A good friend of mine had been planning a cross-country trip with his girlfriend. I had to get back and warn him.

Then I saw a light in the distance, one that grew larger as I drew nearer. It was a doughnut shop, literally in the middle of nowhere, with swamp on three sides behind it and across the road. There was a single car in the lot, parked by the dumpster. I swung mine in and killed the engine.

Inside a woman busied herself behind the counter. Doughnuts. Why not? The air was probably 10 degrees cooler outside than it had been back on the second floor terrace of the ratty motel where we were staying. It smelled of earth and dark water and frogs and doughnuts. Good, fresh, homemade doughnuts.

She looked up when I knocked on the locked door, checked her watch, and held up 10 fingers, mouthing 4 o'clock. Four a.m. I'd been driving for a while. I nodded and smiled, arranged myself on the warm, ticking hood of the car, listened to the bugs buzzing around, the frogs in the water, the tall wallpaper of weeds rustling against one another. And for the first time all day I thought about nothing – except doughnuts.

Ten minutes later she unlocked the door, smiled pleasantly at me, and sold me two warm honey-dipped, which I ate on the same hood of the car. And for the first time on the trip I felt like I just might make it."


9. Nothing is a mistake if you learn from it.

And few experiences school you faster than life on the open road.

"I actually just took a road trip last week. Philly to L.A. Ever heard of a "lot lizard"? It's a truck stop prostitute. I wish I'd known that last week."

(two.one.five magazine)