anywhereisbetter

Today, my friend Ian packed up his things and headed back to England. We’d fallen out of touch over the past couple of years, but Friday night we had the chance to catch up again. It was good to see him before he left.

The following is part of a longer piece I’ve been working on; it’s far from a finished product, but posting it now seems apropos.

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It was two in the morning on an empty road in Texas when Ian first saw tumbleweed.

‚ÄúTumbleweed. The word sounded funny in his thick English accent. He laughed to himself and shook his head incredulously, unable to believe his own eyes. Given the circumstances‚ we’d been driving for two and a half days with no more than a few hours of sleep‚ hallucination did not seem like an altogether unreasonable explanation. ‚ÄúI always thought it was just something Westerns used to be dramatic. He thought for a moment, then continued, sounding somewhere between perplexed and annoyed. ‚ÄúWhere did it come from? Where’s it going? It seemed like a fair question. Where was it going? I sat there on the passenger side, sleep deprived, freezing cold, and more than two thousand miles from home, wondering if that tumbleweed might have been more sure of its direction than I was of my own.

Technically, Ian and I knew precisely where we were going. Three days before Texas, we had rented a truck, loaded it up, and hit the road. Our mission was to transport fourteen vintage Vespas and Lambrettas, all bikes belonging to our friends, from Brooklyn to Las Vegas in time for the city’s annual classic scooter rally. The less-than-hermetic plan seemed nothing short of ingenious at the time: everyone else would fly out to Vegas, while a couple of charitable characters would blur the line between generosity and stupidity by volunteering to transport the bikes by truck. Ian and I worked together as mechanics at a scooter shop (Ian preferred the term “technician,” a title I rarely lived up to), which somehow made us the de facto candidates for this task. In truth, I saw it as a cheap way to get to Vegas. I’m not what he was thinking.

Whatever our reasons, by nine o’clock on Tuesday morning, with the blinding sun in our rear-view mirror fueling our excitement, Ian and I had set out for the West. Coffee in hand, we looked forward to our triumphant arrival in Las Vegas. Friday felt so close, I could practically see that neon cowboy off in the distance somewhere. But our caffeine-driven early morning enthusiasm soon faded, as the open landscapes and rolling hills of western New Jersey transformed into a seemingly endless parade of brake lights. The easy flow of eastbound traffic mocked our foolishness, beckoning us to turn around, and the gravity of the task ahead began to sink in. I drowned out Ian’s frustrated grumblings with the sound of grinding metal, still acquainting myself with the finer idiosyncrasies of the truck’s transmission.

The truck itself did little to sooth our nerves. In fact, most of our first day on the road was spent taking inventory of the litany of ways in which our rented truck was likely to be in violation of DOT standards. In addition to simply looking like it had been set on fire and dumped in a lake, the truck suffered from a cracked windshield, a badly torn bench seat, and a manual transmission with a third gear more elusive than a funny episode of Full House. Headed downhill with the wind to our backs, we managed a blistering 60 miles per hour, and going uphill very nearly required tow cables and an ox. The cassette player didn’t function at all, the AM radio only worked out of a single, tinny speaker positioned directly next to the driver’s ear, and where one would normally find the cigarette lighter was instead a gaping hole with a single protruding live wire. Traversing the mountains of Pennsylvania, we alternated between laughing at our misfortune and cursing it. But we’d given ourselves ample time, so we forged ahead in spite of our waning enthusiasm. As the miles ticked by and nighttime set in, my eyes stayed on the road while my mind got lost in the vast black expanse that lay ahead.

Somewhere in Ohio, less than one half a mile from what appeared to be a deserted off-ramp, the truck sputtered, coughed, and died. We silently rolled off to the side of the road, too tired to care all that much about what had just happened. After some contemplation, we arrived at what should have been the obvious conclusion: we were out of fuel. The gauge had been stuck at two-thirds of a tank since somewhere in eastern Pennsylvania, and somehow we had failed to consider the fact that no truck‚ and especially not this truck‚ could possibly be so fuel-efficient. So while Ian stayed with the truck, I wandered several miles through the February night in search of an open station that sold diesel. After lugging several gallons back to the truck, it dawned on us that we had no idea how to bleed the lines. If you’ve ever run out of fuel in a diesel engine, you know that this is a problem.

I called our friendly rental company customer support line in search of assistance, and instead became the object of someone else’s schadenfreude. As I explained our situation, the voice on the other line responded in disbelief, “You took a Mendon truck to OHIO?” His tone was a mix of amusement and sarcasm that, stranded on the side of the road in the middle of the night, I might have done without. I didn’t bother telling him that Ohio was hardly the end of this truck’s trip.

The next morning, rejuvenated by the daylight, we marveled at the wonders of Middle America. I’d seen it plenty of times‚ my parents and grandparents had taken me on several trips through the Midwest and West as a kid‚ but Ian’s enthusiasm gave it new meaning. Several years older and infinitely more cynical than myself, Ian had moved to the States almost a decade prior, but had never really experienced the wonders of the Mississippi riverbed, the Ozark Mountains, the Texas Panhandle, or the Mohave Desert. In the coming days, he would see them all. Somewhere near the Missouri-Illinois border, a sign advertising what was unquestionably the ‚ÄúWorld’s Biggest Cross marked our entrance into this new world more effectively than any line on a map ever could.

‚ÄúWorld’s biggest cross, huh? I hope it’s attached to the worlds biggest gold chain.

Two giant crosses (no gold chains), one enormous teepee, a painted desert, and countless tumbleweeds later, we made it to Vegas. The sun set as we began to make our way into the city, our excitement building as the casinos’ glow lit up more and more of the slowly dimming sky. One last bend along the highway, and the city opened up in front of us. Giddy with pride and sleep depravity, we howled at our accomplishment. Vegas, baby, Vegas.

I know I’m romanticizing it more than a little, so I’ll just come out and tell you that in all reality, the drive to Vegas was pretty awful. In fact, the drive back was even worse. But once it was all over, that trip left me with some of the best memories of my life. I’ll never forget playing “what would Elvis do?” as we left Vegas sporting our new sunglasses, driving ten miles off of the highway in order to find a Jamocha milkshake, or the look on Ian’s face when we overheard a woman order a ‚Äúqway-suh-DILL-la at the Taco Bell in New Mexico. Looking back, I even remember the bad times fondly. I think of Ian’s wry comments as we stood helplessly alongside the road, or the way he would playfully duck under the dash each time we unlawfully bypassed an open weigh station, and I still can’t suppress a smile. It might have been awful, but I’m glad I did it. I traded two weeks of relative misery for a lifetime’s worth of great moments to remember, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

Sometimes, the worst experiences make for the fondest memories. That’s one thing I hope to never forget.