In February, I rented a car and drove across the country.
There was an about-to-enter-late-twenties angst in me. I had spent too much of my twenties in front of a computer. I was supposed to be living life, whatever that meant. So I figured driving a couple thousand miles was as good of an idea as any other. It was my single, skinny, and ready for an adventure phase.
I found up a Nissan Murano from the local car rental place and started pulling the road underneath me. Mile by mile, I saw the forests of West Virginia, the plains of Kansas, the mountains of Nevada, and finally, the sunshine of California. 3,000 miles in 8 days.
Driving such a long distance sucks. There’s a reason people say that a cross-country road trip is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It’s not that they can’t do it again. It’s that they now know better to never try it again.
On the first night in Cincinnati, I waited in a Day’s Inn with half-broken windows and questioned the line of decisions that had led me there. Did I really want to drive across the country? Was it too late to turn back? I stared up at the dark but cracking ceiling, hoping that it would give me the answer. Instead, a highway’s worth of noise kept me company as my angst bubbled. Was my life worth it?
When the sun finally came, I began to wrap the trip around lofty ideals. It wasn’t just about driving across the country. It was about my twenties, the idea that I could still be reckless and endure discomfort. To head back just a day into the journey meant defeat. My pride couldn’t accept that. There was a point to all this suffering, there had to be.
The final tipping point when I got behind the wheel was the fact that I had cut my hair for the trip. It would be a shame to let a good haircut go to waste.
And so, I soldiered on. For the next week, I drove 6 to 8 hours every day and listened to the wind rip past my car. The car would grunt when climbing a hill and wheeze when sliding down one. Truth be told, I spent so much of the trip in a semi-trance state that I can only remember fragments of it. I stayed awake by singing songs I loved in college, judged cities by how many potholes they had in their roads (Kansas City won), and spent every morning on Yelp trying to find the least rodent infested motel.
For the first time in my life, I had a desperate yearning for community. All around me were strangers, who I would only meet for a few hours and never see again. They had lives that I knew nothing about, they did things that I could never understand, and they said things that I had to strain my driving-tired brain to understand. And yet, each day, after I finished my driving, I trudged into the Kansas diner or Colorado coffee shop or Nevada bar. I wanted to feel seen beyond my dusty car and hotel key. That sense of connection, no matter how brief, was my tether to the world. Without it, I would sink into the road and never reemerge.
The turning point of the trip came in Denver. I stopped to catch up with old friends, and the question of what I was working on came up. I remember feeling caught. It was almost the exact same feeling I had when I started the trip. I was editing and writing and publishing, but none of those labels seemed to fit what I was really doing. I stumbled out a vague answer and felt grateful when they didn’t press further.
On my drive the next day, I began thinking. For a long time, I wrapped my identity in my work. I was an entrepreneur. That meant I was someone who took risks, worked hard, and changed the world. As the road disappeared into the mountains, I realized that, perhaps, I had taken myself too seriously. I was in such a rush to make my mark on the world that I forgot to really see the world around me. To the truckers, bar regulars, and hotel clerks, I was known as Richard, the guy passing through town. They didn’t care about what I did before or where I was going. They just wanted to talk and for someone to hear their story.
As I drove to San Francisco and started making my way back, something changed. I met a man who moved from Amsterdam to Visalia, California for love. I met a woman in Rock Springs, Wyoming who was bartending to save money for her next tattoo while taking care of her parents. I met a man who loved skiing so much he worked year-round at a lodge in Ruidoso, New Mexico. In between all the hills were stories. I made sure to bring each and every one of them with me when I began each morning’s drive.
Of course, no adventure is complete with some disaster. When I was in Arizona, I pushed myself to jog above the Grand Canyon. The combination of high altitude and freezing temperatures meant that soon afterwards, I came down sick. I pushed on, driving another thousand miles before my body utterly gave out.
Laying in a strange bed, I began taking inventory. I had a bag of avocados, lots of beef jerky and nuts, and about a hundred different books. Earlier in the trip, I went to the annual VNSA Book Sale in Phoenix. It was basically two airplane hangars stacked full of books. On an unassuming table were James Clavell’s books. Shogun, Whirlwind, and Noble House. I bought all of them and more. For the first time on the trip, I found myself calm and tired enough to read. I picked up Shogun. By the time I finished the series, three whole days had passed.
When I looked at the car again, I saw the books for what they were, stories. And when I looked back at myself, I saw myself more clearly than ever before. I felt most alive when I was experiencing a story for the first time. Everything else felt like mere details. As long as I had a good story, all was right in the world.
I had found what I had been searching for. Anyone who saw my bookshelves could have said that I like books. But until that moment, I didn’t realize truly how much it all meant to me. Or why I even liked books so much. Now? I knew what I wanted my future to hold. Stories.
The rest of the trip passed away in a blur. I know that I stopped at New Orleans, Mobile, and Nashville only because I have the receipts of my stays. But the cities, in all of their glory, no longer had any attraction to me. It was different now. I had found what I was looking for when I started the trip. Now, I couldn’t wait to get home.
When I finally did get back, I took a picture of the odometer and just sat in the car. For a few moments, all was right in the world. The angst that once boiled inside of me was still there, simmering in the background. But I had an answer the next time it came around. Cut my hair and run for the hills.