Travel Journal - Part 1
First Day - Tuesday August 8, 2006
I am taking a road trip to Minneapolis, driving my little Mini Cooper Convertible named Nigel. Yes, I named my car. I was going to fly, but Steve convinced me to take the time and drive, knowing how much I love driving. Good old Steve.
What a glorious day. I love getting out on the highway. I don’t even know why. Driving feeds me in some odd way that I’ve never been able to completely explain. The route is steady and forward, there aren’t any real decisions to make, all the important ones have already been taken care of. I love watching the terrain change as I go, but that’s not the real reason I like driving. I take in the scenery, the gorgeous Virgin River Gorge, which I’d never seen, the clouds over the Mojave, which I have. I watched sunset over Utah, at a rest stop shortly after I crossed the border. (Funny, Nevada, which is supposed to be such a wealthy state, doesn’t have any rest stops with bathrooms. I’m already at my second in Utah. And Utah’s are the nicest rest stops I’ve ever had the pleasure of stretching my legs and draining my bladder in.) The moon rising over a butte, huge and bright with a scar of clouds over it, was breath taking. I keep these images in my mind and think I should record them. In fact, I brought my video camera with me for just that purpose, and have it all unpacked with a tape in it ready and waiting on my front passenger seat under the album of music CDs I’ve been methodically listening to ever since I left Los Angeles and lost the local radio stations, but it seems, somehow, peripheral to the driving, and I haven’t turned it on, yet. It seems almost the antithesis of the spontaneous experience of driving. I will turn it on and use it sometime during my trip. After five days of driving, the peripheral will probably be more attractive.
I like seeing different people as I travel. People say “People are people.” Yes, but the people in North Las Vegas are a different sort of people than those in Los Angeles. There’s a desperate, haunted look in the faces and bodies of the people behind the counter, and, indeed those in front of it, at the Shell station I stopped at to top of my gas tank. Most of the haunted faces were staring into video poker screens, which might have something to do with it.
There’s one big gathering of casinos on this road, once you get out of Vegas. As I passed it, I wondered why they put it just there, then I saw the border and realized it’s the eastern version of State Line on the California side. No dummies here. Get everyone just as they enter your state, get them again just as they leave.
I’ve been on the road since 11:30 this morning. It’s now 8:54. I stopped to eat a sandwich and type this, but I want to get back on the road again. Another hour, perhaps, before I get tired. I like driving at night a lot; proof, I guess, that the scenery isn’t the main reason I crave this.
More later. Another stop at the rest room then, as the singer says, “on the road again.”
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Geoff Hoff is co-owner of Joseph Coaler Productions and, with Steve Mancini, co-wrote the best selling satirical novel “Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend
