We are still men in our prime, blokes of 40 with no major health issues. All other things equal, we have 4 more decades to enjoy our lives. Medical advances might add a decade or two on that estimate. More, if we were to cross the country, would we really feel the miles in our bones? To be honest, we could cross the country in style in a car warrantied against breakdown and covered by road service if it does. When we tired of driving and experiencing, we could stop at the Motel 6 or the Hampton Inn or even the Venetian of Las Vegas and toss our cards on a reservation desk and gain shelter.
I'm guilty often of what is known as folk etymology. Keep that in mind when I say that travel stems from a French word, travail, which implies pain and work and determination and uncertainty. When Lewis and Clark traveled toward the Pacific Ocean, the Corp of Discovery had to carve canoes out of tree trunks. We can buy Kayaks popped out of blow molds and outfit ourselves to the teeth at Moosejaw. Why tan your own hides instead of buying Goretex. If we traveled across the country, how could the trip be travel for us? Let's face it. We are not college sophomores with dad's gas card anymore or the age of most travelers holing up in youth hostels. We are not going to stay up all night in Wolfies of Miami Beach, a 24-hour deli, when we decide that the Banana Bungalow is charging too much a night.
Goretex is easier than buckskin
Camp Out Overnight with Coffee at Wolfies, Miami Beach
Banana Bungalow: Prices Not Too Low?
Outfit your Corp of Discovery at Moosejaw
Allow me to weigh in which camp Jim Rogers falls: was he a world traveler or a world tourist? Rogers is a wealthy investor who partnered with George Soros on the Quantum Fund. I'm not sure of his net worth, but it's enough money to hire a private army with Blackhawk helicopters to extricate him from any sticky situation. He traveled the world at least twice, writing on the adventures. One book is titled Investment Biker. Another is called Adventure Capitalist
I do not mean to diminish his explorations or his character, both formidable. I'm defining one end of a spectrum. Is it world travel if you make ones way in a well-equipped Mercedes-Benz? Well, it's not as safe as rolling in a Panzer, but that's not exactly using third world bus and rail systems, either. The chances of return from his journeys are very, very high.
In the New York Times, I read of young men in Morocco who take delivery of tires in Spain and swim eight to ten miles at night across the Mediterranean Sea, close to the straights of Gibraltar, pushing these tires and selling them to Moroccans. These young men risk capture by patrolling naval ships. They defy the elements on a broad stretch of water. They are at the mercy of aggressive fish and sea creatures. I understand that a breed of jellyfish now patrols the oceans in packs measured in miles. On the sea, these boys are fair game for smugglers who are also pirates. It's easy to steal tires from a man who is pushing them through the brine. The title of the New York Times article is "Where Boys Grow Up to Be Jihadis". Say what you want about young men described in this article, these men attempt journeys that have no certain end and journeys from which return is not planned. I have defined the opposite end of my spectrum.
I have taken to rereading William Least Heat Moon's Blue Highways. The professor had lost his teaching job and his wife, and he made a grand loop of America totaling 13,000 miles on about 400 hundred dollars and a few gas cards. Luckily, many people he met as he made his way took him in for dinner. As he moved forward, he read the land and gathered its stories. I didn't know as I made my way east of Walla Walla, Washington in May 2007 that I was traveling through the Palouse, a region of deep, fertile soil. I didn't appreciate this fact until my second reading of his travel account. The author also crossed the country by boat, with very few portages. I'll need to double-check my geography; one can boat to the Mississippi River by following the Hudson River, Erie Canal, Lake Erie and the Ohio River. The crossing of America is a frequently attempted and documented act. Least Heat Moon has collected dozens of volumes treating this theme.
William Least Heat Moon
Blue Highways
The Palouse
River-Horse
Maybe it's necessary to set a few standards and break a set of rules in order to make an authentic American crossing. A class of race car drivers hit the nationwide interstate to set new time records for crossing the nation from Manhattan to the Portofino in Rodondo Beach. A good run for the 2800 mile route is 32 hours. It's best celebrated by ringing the Portofino's desk bell.
New York to LA in under 32 hours, without Traffic Stops in Flagstaff, AZ
In a way, country-crossing is a routine, common undertaking. I once met a man in a Key West youth hostel whose job required him to cross the nation on a regular basis. He wasn't a long haul trucker, but a tour group leader. He met his groups in Key West, and the folks camped along a southern itinerary to the Pacific Coast. It seems that every starlet motoring toward Hollywood on US 40 publishes a travel blog titled "Hollywood or Bust". And the bust invariably goes down in Flagstaff, Arizona where the police cruisers are vigilantly monitoring for speeding. (It's a girl, my Lord, in a squad car Ford setting forth to ticket me. Okay, it's not Winslow, Arizona, so ticket me).
I understand the highway system originated after it required Pershing, as in General Pershing, 91 days to cross the country with a military unit. This might have been the same mission that included Eisenhower in 1919 along the Lincoln Highway. I remember seeing a nationwide map that referred to the interstates as the National Defense Highway system. The legislation that built those great freeways went into effect in the late 1950s; not to long after that, we came on the stage, about seven years later. Around 1964 Ken Kesey in a school bus called Furthur tore up the new macadam; it took military imperatives to lay down the great trunk lines. It took the hippies to make it cool, every crossing a documentable, artistic journey of self-expression.
Making it in Hollywood after a Speeding Bust
John J. Pershing
Laying Down the Law and the Asphalt in 1956
Ken Kesey: Who Was Totally on the Bus and the Interstates
Crossing the country by plane is kinderspiel now. One can jet from Dulles outside Washington to LAX on the Pacific Ocean in less than six hours, not even a full day's work. In October 1919, Major Dana H. Crissy died in a crash of a de Havilland DH-4B during an Air Service test of the feasibility of transcontinental flight. The first Air Mail flight made it across the country on September 11, 1920, an ironic date. It required about 76 hours, only 34 of them in the air. My battery is dying, so I have to leave the story of fast ships from the east coast to the west coast port of San Francisco for another time. Shaving a day off the journey meant winning an advantage in the freight wars.
Crissy Field, San Francisco
Maybe I should get to my point. The only noble journey we can plan across the country is a journey we take when our age and health suggests that it is foolish to set out. I once saw a man sneaking out a convalescent home in 1985, only to be escorted back by a nurse. We'll want to be out on the road before then. Where Kerouac's journey across America could be called a Beat journey, ours would be a Ulyssean journey, a journey where we turn over all our wealth and power to our heirs and set off to do some great feat. With that, I leave you with a link to the Wikipedia article on this famous poem by Tennyson.
Wikipedia Article on Ulysses, a poem by Tennyson
Wilbo Never Fails to Make Travel a Travail
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