Some of us at work were talking about road trips the other day. Not just your ordinary day trip, but something that requires hours to reach a destination. We decided that there are two trip components.
The first consideration is the vehicle. Depending on where you are going, the right set of wheels makes the trip more enjoyable mentally and practically as well. If you are going to take the road up the Trask, a Jeep is just the right choice. The 914 would get hung up within the first quarter mile. My friend Dave Fox takes a trip to the east coast every couple of years. Rather than putting the miles on his car, he pays the money for one of those unlimited mileage deals with a premium-sized car (about $200/week). In the lap of luxury for very little cost. My sister and her then boyfriend would rent a motorhome and drive it to Mexico for a Baja vacation. Since it is Spring, I'll make a plug for my favorite road trip book, "Cannibal Queen," by Stephen Coonts. He traveled around the states one summer in his Stearman biplane. You get the general idea, the vehicle has to match the adventure.
The second consideration is the route itself. If the destination is the object, then Ike's Pike is the way to go. I suspect the readers of this page fall into another group, a smaller population for which the journey itself is more important. I can recommend a couple of ways to prime your travel pump if you fit this model. My son Adam and his wife, Susan, gave me a book/DVD for Christmas entitled "Horatio's Drive." It chronicles the cross- country drive of Horatio Nelson Jackson in 1903. It is a quick read. The DVD is almost exactly the same material. Good perspective. Another is "Blue Highways," by William Least Heat-Moon. Blue highways on older maps were the smaller, state highways.
Back at work the conversation went on for longer than any of us should have been in the cafe. By the next time we met, it was clear that many of the participants had continued to think about the subject. Whereas last time the discussion was mainly about what vehicle to take and some memorable drives, this time an uglier underside was exposed. We started talking about the journeys that were, for want of a more accurate description, Bad Trips.
Everyone had a story. Some had more than one. As soon as one narrator launched into the pitfalls of college-era beater cars, a Pinocchio effect took hold of each subsequent story. "You think THAT was bad, I once drove my 54 Bel-Air between college in Phoenix and my parents house. In August. During the day. With bald tires, no spare, and only $30." Just like the stories from the previous week, the new collection broke into two categories, the ones about the car and the ones about the route.
When it was my turn, I already had a gonzo road trip in mind. It must have been sometime around 1971. My brother Dave and I were racing AMA dirt track in those days. While I was barely making a living, as a recent MBA grad he had an income that enabled him to really enjoy himself. Anyhow, he had made a deal to go and buy a couple of racing bikes from Bay Area Bultaco down in Marina Del Rey. Now you have to understand that this is MY version of the story. His may be just a little different. Being a salaried, tie-wearing businessman, Dave worked the day shift. On the other hand I was an hourly fab rat working swingshift. The plan was to pick me up after work (midnight) and then share the driving duties from Sunnyvale down to the LA area. Dave borrowed a van from one of his riding buddies (it was Tom, wasn't it?) for the trip down. Now I don't recall much about the purchase or whether or not we got in some riding afterwards. In fact, I don't remember much about the trip back either, but the trip down is still pretty vivid.
This particular van was close to new. I think it was a Dodge with a 318 and an automatic. It had a radio and a tape player but it was your basic cargo van. My memory fades on this point but I recall the passenger bench behind the front seats was removed and we had a sleeping bag (or two) to catch forty winks. Fat chance. With no paneling or insulation, the noise level was magnified in the hollow interior. We were driving down in a base drum. This was about the time that I-5 had opened in California's central valley. When we left Sunnyvale we got down to about Gilroy and then crossed over Pacheco Pass, past San Luis Reservoir, to Los Banos. In those days, with the highway being so new and all, there were signs near the intersection of Hwy 152 and I-5 that said things like "Next Gas 60 miles." There was nothing, absolutely nothing, along the stretch between Los Banos and Bakersfield. Having been up about 20 hours by this point, and with conversation dwindling, the only thing to see was the occasional set of headlights coming the other way and the only thing to listen to was the tape deck (since we were out of range of any radio, including Wolfman Jack). Bruce Brown's film "On Any Sunday had come out that year and, what with it being a great movie and all and considering the purpose for the trip, it was a logical choice to bring along. Except for the fact that it was one of only about three tapes in the van. I think one of the others was a Mamas and Papas tape. I did manage to grab an hour or so of sleep but the repeated playing of sound track from "On Any Sunday" still makes my skin crawl if I hear it now. If we hadn't made a stop for gas and a bladder break about halfway down that stretch (at a couple of pumps and a temporary mobile home) I'd have gone nuts. To this day, that trip down ranks on the top of my list as the worst road in the worst vehicle at the worst time of day with the worst music. Paraphrasing Robert Frost, "Two roads diverged in Gilroy and we took the one less traveled by, and it nearly drove us crazy."