Still traveling. I survived half of Nebraska, all of Wyoming and a little Utah yesterday. Waiting for a fully loaded twenty-six foot Penske rental truck to chug slowly one barren Wyoming pass after another offered ample time for reflection. For me, the road has never held that sense of Kerouacian wonder. While I don’t mind traveling, I tend to find a lot less magic out there, and a lot more bullshit.
The problem with driving across the country is that you don’t see the country. What you see is a kind of uninspired, public restroom version of the United States, complete with faded Ted Nugent ads on diesel pumps, endless combinations of rest stop Kentucky Taco Huts, and a general lack of basic human decency.
Few things crush the soul like those torx bolts they use to build toilet stalls in public restrooms, for example–the ones with the extra little metal bit right in the middle.
As commentaries on our society go, this one says, “We tried switching to a more unusual torx bolt, but too many people still dismantled the walls while taking a dump.”
More than anything, what gets me about travel is all the meaningless visual debris you can’t help but soak in on a trip like this. That image at the top of this post, for instance: why are there skiers on the paper towel dispensers on gas pump islands at rest stops in Indiana? If you’re somebody who can’t help but try to find meaning in things, a trip across the country isn’t easy. The sheer volume of words and images completely removed from any meaning or even significance can be pretty overwhelming. After a while, you start to think the same Snapple bottles are following you from one convenience store cooler to the next.
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