Lighting the Fuse—Year II, Day One
The.
That's been my fear regarding a second year of writing a
journal of yet another trip of a lifetime.
It relates to one of my favorite scenes from Chevy Chase’s “Funny Farm”,
where he goes through all the machinations to sell his brownstone in the city
and move his family to the perfect setting in Vermont, a move which he thinks
will fertilize his writing talents, only to find he has such writer’s block
that the only word he can come up with for weeks is… “The”.
Coming off of last year’s incredible and memorable journey,
I was able to find a fantastic way to escape from the misery of this past
winter: Planning another one. The planning is half the fun. It also stretches out the wonder of the event
to become a nine-month long labor of love.
The labor and tinkering continued right up till last night, when I moved
the launch date up a day to ease into the whole process, partly because of a
pain in the ass I have--literally. Even
with all the planning and thinking, the one major unknown and the one thing
that has intimidated me a bit was the idea that I really had no clue what
exactly I’d be writing about. It’s not
like having a mental outline for a story.
Writing about a trip is much like planning for accidents to happen,
because one has to assume that enough fodder for fairly interesting writing
will actually occur. Not once, but
enough to sustain an ongoing travelogue over 51 days, 39 hotels and cities, 11
Major League ballparks, four crossings of an international border, and quite a
few convenience store visits. It
does. That’s the magic of it all. And frankly, to me, the value of the journal
itself and the fact that it will endure for my lifetime and my kids' lifetimes
was well worth the cost of the whole thing.
The actual accommodations and experiences themselves were gravy. That's why I couldn't say "no" to
another go of it.
Now that the sting of winter has been melted away by some of
the 99 degrees that appeared today on my brand new family truckster’s (Chevy
Chase movie reference again) information monitor, I begin my writing adventure
in a relatively cramped Harrisburg, PA Crowne Plaza Hotel (Priceline: $51.) with “Stupid Behavior Caught on Tape”
tuned in on the TV next to me. I am sure
we’ll be able to submit some appropriate material come August 15th when we
return approximately 11,000 miles henceforth to our starting point.
The day started off typical of a family adventure. While still finishing up business in my
office, and many household tasks remaining moving along as methodically as
possible, the first fly in the ointment buzzed:
Austin emerged from his bedroom at 7:00am to announce that his face was
extremely itchy. Two hours later, we
found ourselves in Dr. Mascia’s office getting a prescription for Austin’s
poison ivy along with advice for my ailing ass (four Motrin, he suggested, not
the baby dose I was taking, for my pulled hamstring and sciatic nerve problem,
which heals best if one avoids sitting for too long. Fact is, I’ll probably be sitting more for
the next six weeks per waking minute than ever before in my life). It wasn’t until six hours later when the blur
of the morning passed, and Bob Seger sang “Runnin’ Against the Wind”… “I’m
older now but still runnin’ against the wind”… that I felt the first moment of
freedom, purpose and exhilaration that I so passionately want—and expect--to
derive from this journey.
Two things have driven me for quite some time leading up to
today. One, the obvious anticipation of
a second and even more well thought-out trip than last year’s wildly successful
experiment (what great kids I have).
Two, the anticipation of my new car—one that I wasn’t sure I’d be able
to take on the trip: The new VW Touareg
(twa-reg) SUV. The two go
hand-in-hand. My great friend Gary,
whose name graces the VW dealer to which I am honored to have had the pleasure
of providing whatever advertising expertise I can offer over the past six
years, wasn’t sure the first Touareg would be delivered by the time we embarked
on our trip. I’d been nudging and asking
at every opportunity for updates since January.
It wasn’t until a week ago that he informed me that exactly a week
before our scheduled departure, every dealer would be permitted to drive to the
port in Rhode Island where they unload all VWs and Audis off the ships from
Germany, and pick up TWO of the new SUVs.
I eagerly offered my services (of course, to save a valuable employee a
waste of a day—how generous of me).
Given VWs history, it was entirely possible that those two would be the
only two delivered for at least a few weeks.
Translation: They were to be for
display and test-drives, to drive orders (at full list) of the most exciting
new car VW has introduced in years, save for the novelty of the New Beetle. (I happen to see it as more than a novelty,
but the Touareg is the second step past the Passat on VWs venture to go
head-to-head with BMW and Mercedes. The
next phase, the Phaeton, a Volkswagen coming later in the year starting at $60k
or so and working up to the mid-$80s, is but another step in the grand scheme).
Long story short, after a fantastic day seeing 8000 VWs and
Audis and having the pleasure of driving one of two new Touaregs allotted to
Montesi Volkswagen back to Connecticut, I all but positioned myself as a child
that would be denied basic nutrition for six weeks if I didn’t get to drive
this car—with Navigation System-- on my trip.
Four days later, Gary demonstrated why I’ve always felt he’s one of the
most genuine people I’ve had the pleasure of knowing in my 45 years on the
planet, and not only handed me the keys, but took a hit on a car for which
dozens of people would die to pay more than list price. When I exclaimed, “Really, Gary, I’ll pay
more”… there was a long pause on the other end, finally punctuated with Gary’s
comment “I was waiting to hear the ‘but’.
No car-buying customer has ever uttered those words ever before.”
So, here we are, driving what might be the first Touareg
actually sold to a customer in the country (since most dealers would want them
to display), and certainly the first one to be driven coast to coast. I mention the car because surely it is the
highlight of this week for all of us.
Aside from the fact that the car’s interior is elegant and so well
thought out, and it just looks great, if you’ve never used a navigation system,
hear this from me now: Some day, like
the remote control, the computer, the cell phone, caller ID (you get the idea),
we’ll all be wondering how we all got by without this system. Here’s the deal: Not only do you have a map in any scale with
your position on a very readable screen on the console all times, but you
program your destination in fairly easily, and there’s a visual display AND a
pleasant female voice that actually gives you instructions as you go… “Please
bear left in one mile onto to US 83 South… Please prepare to bear left in 1000
feet…. Please bear left now onto US 83 south…”
Yes, that’s right. She says
“please”, which is a far cry from marriage-threatening comments like “Jesus,
why is it SO hard for you to read a #&*%$# map?” or, “If you’d pull over
and ask for directions, you pain in the ass, we might be there by now”. I like that: “Please prepare to take the
second left ahead … Please turn left
now.” We marveled all day at the wonders
of this little option. I then wondered,
of course, if I veered off course, if there was a “Don Rickles” option, whereby
she would announce, “So you don’t want to follow my directions, huh? Well, screw you then”. To the contrary, she actually recalculates
the route and keeps on trying to get you there.
In today’s case, however, we found a glitch: There were two SECOND Streets in Harrisburg,
and when our dear lady friend confidently left us to ourselves with “You have
reached your destination”, we knew without a nanosecond’s pause that, Houston,
we have a problem. Let’s just say there
probably isn’t a Crowne Plaza in the slums of Harrisburg. Without any stress, we simply located the
capital building on our little screen, and directed ourselves right to our
hotel with nary a problem. Sizing up the
glitch, Austin announced, “That was as though they picked up a hitchhiker and
just dropped them in the wrong place”.
We, being the hitchhikers, of course.
Alas, we didn’t complain. We wouldn’t
have wanted to upset the apple cart, as we’re going to rely on this lovely lady
(we'll name her soon, I am sure) come hell or high water (which, by the way,
the Touareg will negotiate better than any other SUV on the road, according to
published reports. That is not to say
we’re actually looking for flood zones).
After a quick check-in and a lack of parking – in
Harrisburg, PA, mind you, we found a German joint along Second Street (not the
aforementioned one), a place where everything was really cheap for happy hour
(we stumbled upon this). After we
ordered, I marveled in watching Jennifer, our waitress, punching in one order
after another on the little computer in the corner. I couldn’t help but wonder (yes, I watch Sex
in the City) where all that information was going, because I hadn’t seen an
order come out in 45 minutes. So, we
were happy that a cable news network was on with coverage of the Windshield
Murder trial. Excellent dinnertime
entertainment, of course. When the food
finally came, I watched Austin’s face after his first taste of his Goulash, I
could tell something was up. Any parent
knows what looks mean what. In this
case, this was the “wahooey, there’s a shitload of cayenne going on here”
look. Lots. And this is a kid who is quite sensitive to
spicy heat. When I suggested to the
waitress that it might be smart to indicate this little factor on the menu, she
agreed by saying she herself can’t stand it and people send it back all the
time. Why then, I think, doesn’t she
give warning, especially when a 14 year-old is ordering it? Of course, not one to keep a thought to
myself, when I posed that particular question to her, she looked at me as
though I’d just come up with the formula for the AIDS vaccine, and exclaimed,
“You know, you’re right. I should do
that. That’s right. I am going to do that from now on”. And there you have it. No need to write about walking across the
Susquehanna on an old steel bridge to where the Harrisburg Senators had
apparently finished a game in the sweltering heat not too long before I got
there. Because here I was only five
hours into the journey, and I had just witnessed the testimony of this odd
windshield murder woman simultaneously with the serving genius of Jennifer the
[curly blonde] waitress. How much more
primed could we be to get out there and absorb all that America has to offer?
Day one: Guilford to
Harrisburg. 273 miles. CDs:
The Big Chill Soundtrack,
Moby/Play, Bob Seger’s Greatest Hits.
Talking Heads/Stop Making Sense, Led Zeppelin/Physical Graffiti; Black
Crowes/Shake Your Moneymaker. I think
Moby is some of the best driving music there is. Last year I played “18” at least as many
times as the title told me to… probably double--and never got tired of it.
C~ 6/26/03
