102: Road Trip!
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It's hard. After on the road again, in six days on the road, and hit the road jack, and road runner, and born to run, and running on empty, and life in the fast lane, and lost highway, and highway one revisited. After let's get away from it all, after Easy Rider, and Thumba Inglewees, and Lost in America, and too many road movies to name or even remember. After Jack Kerouac in Route 66, and as long as we're at this, after Huck Finn, and the journals of Lewis and Clark, after all that, it is hard for an American to just hit the road without some expectations. Take Jamie. After his mother died, after three months of visiting her in the hospital, and three years in which she'd been sick, he hit the road, and the car that used to be hers. I kept trying to be like, you know, what is the realization I'm going to come to, or what is the feeling that I'm going to settle on, and that was what I kept feeling, was like, am I feeling something? Am I experiencing something? Really? Like, you feel like, okay, I'm on this big road trip, I'm supposed to have a revelation. Yeah, that's what I thought, you know. I was hoping that I would, yeah, be somewhere, I'd step out of the car, and experience the grandeur of the place, and just be like, yeah, this is what life is, and like, this is like my mom dying, and this is like where I am in my life, and like, you know. But it didn't happen like that. Any road trip is going to feel longer than you think it will, and you'll be tired, and you won't get a meal exactly when you're hungry, you never find a bed exactly when you want to go to sleep, and you're probably not going to find out what it is that you got on the road to find out in the first place, and you know all that, you know all that going into it, and you still, we all, still, buy into the quiche about road trips, that what the road trip stands for is hope, hope, that somewhere, anywhere, is better than here, that somewhere on the road, I will turn into the person that I want to be, I'll turn into the person that I believe I could be, that I am, and come Memorial Day, we hit the road, you and me, and our whole great nation, with high hopes and no expectations for the future, and to hasten the journey, we bring you now this hour of radio today, from W.B.E.'s East Chicago, and public radio international, it's this American life, and my road glass. Today's program, road trip, act one, busman's holiday, dishwasher Pete loved riding the bus from city to city until one last seven-day trip that took him off the whole deal, act two, mail C, how do you even say that, mail C, mail C, can a road trip in Europe, save a marriage, answers with one case study, act three, on the road in a tuxedo, at the age of 92, the comedian George Burns was still traveling all the time, Margie Rockland briefly traveled with him, what it is like when being on the road has been your job for decades, act four, Paul Paul for Jesus, share our trick achieves what everyone wants when they hit the road, she actually finds adventure, and it is not pretty, same with us, act one, busman's holiday, while radio listeners to our program may remember dishwasher Pete, he travels from state-to-state washing dishes and publishing his zine dishwasher, usually he only stays in one place for a few weeks and then he takes the Greyhound bus to the next town, lately he's been living in Portland, but he was only too happy to get back on the bus. I like riding Greyhound, over the last eight years I figure I've ridden at least a hundred thousand miles on Greyhound, in total about four solid months of my life have been spent cooped up in their buses, I would consider my home away from home if only I had a home, but I like most about Greyhound is how long it takes to get anywhere on the bus, airline passengers love to complain about the five excruciatingly long hours it takes to fly from coast to coast, but on the bus that same distance takes three full days to cover, which is what I think is about the perfect amount of time for such a trip, and unlike airplane flights no movies are shown on Greyhound, no headsets handed out, no free magazines available, no waitresses, force bags of peanuts on you every five minutes, on the bus, passengers are largely left alone with their thoughts.
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