Driving Solo from New York to the Middle of America

I had read Jack Kerouac's "On the Road," while living in a country where the very concept of a journey by road — for pleasure — was alien. Driving was an ordeal, for the infrastructure was jammed, bumpy and potholed.

Published in 1957, Kerouac's novel is a report of a series of four long trips that the Beat pioneer made between 1947 and 1950 (before the birth of the interstates). It had made quite a mark on me.

When I moved to the U.S. as a graduate student in the Upper Midwest, I knew that it was possible to drive just about anywhere.

After I moved to the East Coast, though, I got stuck in one state — geographic and mental — for too long. Even limpets changed rocks, but I hadn't ventured out of New York in a woefully long time. It had come to feel like a concrete bell jar. Perhaps that's why I was consumed by a wanderlust as intense as it was.

On a Saturday this past mid-June, I put my luggage into the trunk of my hatchback. As I powered up the Versa, I thought, what if the dashboard navigator lost contact with its orbital buddy? What if I ran into mechanical trouble? I hadn't booked a hotel. After all, I was traveling solo, half a continent away, to the very place where I had begun my adventure as an immigrant — South Dakota. 

Presently, I was on Interstate 80, feeling as light as a block of aerogel. I didn't have to worry about getting sideswiped by giant roving boxes that are MTA buses or getting honked at by edgy drivers.

I was going neither to see a member of the family or a friend, nor was I interested in seeing popular attractions along the way. I was traveling for the sake of traveling, to be on the open road and to see the land itself.

I drove on, the hum of the engine the only sound around. I had a DVD player, but no DVDs. I had a regular FM/AM radio, but that only played when it was near radio waves.

When the motor madness ebbed, the landscape started to press on me. Elevated spherical objects on pedestals poked out of the widening horizon. Very few were perfect spheres, like a giant golf ball or a lollipop. Most looked like jumbo M&Ms, flattened at the poles. UFOs? No. They held tons of water.

Myriads of metal placards rushed by the roadside as on a zoetrope, conveying one message or another. Some did it with blocky pictograms — a bed, an equilateral tent, an "H," a pair of a fork and a knife — and some with texts — "Speed Limit Enforced by Aircraft" or "It Can Wait … Text Stop." Adding more color to the mix, at intervals, were corporate logos.

Our roads are a marvel of civil engineering, but without these markers, we'd be lost. To me, they became both anchors and beacons. I'd keep an eye peeled for a Sunoco or a Shell and a Starbucks. The car drank "87," and I, steaming black coffee.

Nine hours and 560 miles later, I was at a Days Inn, in Ohio. No sooner than I entered the motel, I was raring to leave. I didn't want to be in a tenebrous box, with heavy drapes, dreary carpeting and an ancient TV.

I was up at 5:30 a.m. the next day. It was still dark out. I had gone west by a mere 10 longitudes —there being 360 in all — and I could see Earth's rotation at work. It'd be another half hour before the sun would come up. Back east, it rose earlier and set earlier.

Everything in the heartland was colossal, including its "rest areas." With the astonishment of an astronomer detecting a second moon around Earth, I observed that the "travel plazas," as they were called, were a town square and a mall rolled into one.

Each had a name — Commodore Perry, Great Lakes, Indian Meadow, Ernie Pyle — and offered many things in one complex: a place to refuel, grab lunch, draw cash, play video games, purchase a postcard, take a stroll, or a shower (if you're a trucker). 

By the time I hit Minnesota, the terrain had become as flat as an IKEA coffee table, extending forever in two dimensions. Its levelness and vastness were dizzying.

Having lived in the Empire State, I'd lost the ability to even picture anything of that magnitude. I felt very little, even puny. Suddenly, enormous wind turbines popped into the panorama, towering over fields on either side of Interstate 90, their blades churning knots into watts. They offered the element of "height" to this featureless topography.

South Dakota announced itself with a billboard that had Mount Rushmore on it. But I wasn't intent on arriving anywhere. The next day, I set out again. I could have continued west, all the way to California, but I returned to the east.

By the time I raced back to New York, I was beat, but rejuvenated. I had driven almost 3,000 miles, in 96 hours, through six states, over two famous rivers — Hudson and Mississippi — among a few others.