Pray to God I See Headlights... Traveloge Part 1

The late night commercials were wrong.

Despite a love for the freedom of the open road. Despite a desire to be my own boss, set my own hours and earn a good wage. After two days and 1300 miles in the cab of a truck, I now know that those commercials and my woozy, pre-dawn delusions of diesel-fueled grandeur were wrong.

My future is not in the exciting industry of long haul trucking.

I thought I was well prepared. After all, I had at one time owned a C.W. McCall cassette tape. I brought sleeveless shirts, loose-fitting canvass pants. An iPod loaded with new music, as well as podcasts. A sturdy soul, BP powder, three bags of pop rocks and a box of Girl Scout cookies (It's just you and me, Shortbread. One of us isn't going to make it across the Mississippi). It wasn't enough.

What I lacked was a spring-loaded spine and an ass like a bean bag chair. Short of that, the only salvation would've been a bottle of muscle relaxers waiting at my destination like the quaaludes-packed carrot on the end of the proverbial stick (as used in the filming of "The Lost Boys"). 

Historical Markers. Despite all the pain and persistent audible creaking every time I rotate my neck, I would like to do this drive again. With a loser schedule and a more comfortable conveyance, I've discovered something I kind of already knew-- they got stuff in this plucky stretch of America. Stuff that tickles the little ironic snark-happy hipster traveler who nonchalantly squats on the couch of everybody's brain. But also stuff of actual historical significance that reaffirms a connection with our country's past. And there are more than a few sites that artfully straddle the fence between the two.

The Davy Crockett Tavern, Davy Crockett Birthplace. The Davy Crockett Travel Center-- where there are six different flavors of Cappuccino, including Rabid Coon (extra foam), the Bear Grinner (with a dusting of ground Yellow Jacket), Alamojo (chicory and horny goat weed) and Wintergreen. 

Casey Jones Museum, National Bird Dog Museum, Rusty's Historic TV and Movie Car Museum, The Natural Bridge (Damn you, Natural Bridge, haunting my travels. I can't tell you how many times I've passed by this place and, despite my curiosity, never been able to stop), Luray Caverns, the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library, the Stonewall Jackson House and the George C. Marshall Museum (which share a highway exit...possibly more?).

These are things that need to be seen and can only be truly appreciated by someone without anywhere else in particular to be. 

Gasoline. I contributed heavily to the Jugheadistan country coffers. There were initially plans to drive at a constant, conservative speed throughout the trip in an effort to maximize fuel efficiency. That went out the window about 10 miles into open interstate when I encountered my first '89 Lincoln Continental doing 72 mph where I wanted to do 73. Three gallons of rapid acceleration later, and I'm scanning the truck stop signs pricing unleaded.

The variation is staggering. In one 30-mile stretch of highway I passed 10 different gas stations with prices ranging anywhere from $3.16 to $3.69 a gallon. And there was no rhyme or reason to any of it, turning the entire experience into a rolling version of Deal or No Deal. Do you want to take the $3.29 a gallon at the Exxon at exit 18B or would you like to play on? I've got the banker on the line right now...and he's offering an additional hot rollers-cooked meat product and a free bottle of water with a 10 gallon purchase.

Surely the app already exists where your GPS/iPhone scans the road ahead and displays the gas prices for your shopping convenience. And once that becomes standard equipment, things seem like they'd have to even out. Until then, it's just Howie Mandel in my head tempting with cheeseburger rollers and the fear of things unseen.

iPod Kills The Radio Star. This shit is going to happen. Instead of blindly scanning the Eastern Tennessee airwaves, I chose my own destiny of podcasts. No Taylor Swift. No local drive-time political rabble. No "Today's Hits" or "Yesterday's Favorites." No commercials. I ran through hours of podcasts and caught up on everything from the air gun assaults of English Premier League soccer players to a brief history of the fall of the French Bourbons. I listened to my favorite wrestler (The Heartbreak Kid) talk about his religious rebirth and how that meshed with his work in a generally crude profession. And Real World Star "The Miz"proclaim that he had ended the city of Cleveland's title drought by winning the WWE Championship Belt. He then more or less challenged LeBron James to a fight. Finally, I took in Oscar recaps from a variety of sources, including the screenwriter of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" proclaiming Will Smith to be the only true movie star of the current film industry.

And then...at 9:38 pm 21 miles outside of Nashville, the iPod battery died. I was tossed back, scared and screaming, into the unmerciful abyss of the airwaves. Like Adam and Eve tossed out of Eden and into Bob's Country Bunker. I found a local ESPN affiliate that sustained me with Brian McKinney inanely taking calls from a national audience on the value of drafting defensive or offensive players. Because I care what some lonely trucker in Peoria thinks about NFL draft strategy.  But, by boiling it down to a meaningless 50-50 coin flip of offense vs. defense, you enable the lowest dominator to engage. I whist-fully daydreamed about the halcyon minutes prior when I was able to listen to an Oscar-winning screenwriter discuss a subject on which he had interesting ideas and thoughts and tried once again for any last scrap of juice in my iPod. Unless you're claiming responsibility for an act of arbotoreal terrorism on a rival school, I really could not be less interested in what's coming off the radio phone lines.  At least it wasn't pre-teen romance from a persistently slack-jawed 20 year old relationship masochist who clearly made a deal with some unholy entity for tunes that stick on your brain like Alzheimer's plaque.

Satellite Tether. It's honestly not hard. You hit the interstate and go until you see a sign telling you to go somewhere else. When in doubt, just head south and west. But still, there's this doubt. Did I miss a sign? Where EXACTLY am I and how does that relate to where I need to go?

I haven't had a car, much less a GPS, in four years. But the cars I've ridden in, and occasionally driven, in that time almost all had either a GPS unit or smart phone constantly updating, reaffirming your place on the planet.

Being without it creates a constant, nagging anxiety. There aren't a lot of landmarks and what landmarks there are don't mean much without some kind of further reference. It's a loss of instinctual swagger that's a little troubling. I'm going this way because I know it's the way I need to go. I've seen the maps. I've been watching the road signs. I don't need this constant affirmation that every step along the way is correct, some metallic matronly voice behind an LED screen constantly providing positive reinforcement. And this is from someone who's only used these devices in the periphery. I can only imagine what it would feel like to an every day owner-operator.

TBC...