Chris' post about driving to Chicago here blew some dust off a few boxes back in my brain.
I went through a Jack Kerouac stage of my life where I felt the need to drive long distances in cars and see where things took me. I would just get in the car, pick a spot on the map and to drive to it. One time it was Chicago (where I saw a car get lit on fire intentionally), once it was Nashville, a few times to VT, upstate NY, and Virginia. All of these drives I did solo. After doing a few of these drives, I decided it was time to drive cross country solo. The day before I left, a friend of mine asked if he could come along. I figured why not, took my bike out of my car and replaced it with our guitars so we had something to do on our stops together.
Our first day, the plan was pretty simple: go as far as we can without stopping, except for gas and bathroom breaks. We head out of Bernardsville sometime before noon and off down Rt 78 we go. I had planned a route (about 8,600 miles) so we were roughly following that. The first stretch of the route was to take 70W out to the Denver/Boulder area to hit Rocky Mountain Nat'l Park. We made some seriously good time during the day. If you haven't driven across the midwest, the only way i can describe it is this: its a right of passage to get to the good stuff. At times it really really sucks. We started a book to write down random crap that would happen or that we thought was worth writing down and one of the quotes that stuck with me was "Kansas is a piece of toilet paper for God to wipe his ass on". Hope that gives you an idea of what it can be like driving across the midwest.
As it started getting late we decided it was time for dinner. I don't remember where we ate but it was some truck stop diner. After dinner we felt refreshed and in our stoner excitement we decided that making it all the way to Denver was now the goal for the day. That's a pretty far drive. Like a really far drive. Even for stoners.
We kept making good time, and kept driving through the night. Inspiration hits my friend somewhere in the middle of the night and he pulls over somewhere in Indiana, because he decided that it would be an awesome idea to walk into a corn field and smoke a joint. I mean that's livin' right there. We pull over on one of the blue highways, drive a bit and pull over next to a field, and start our walk in. We kept walking into this corn field, and walking and walking... because if you're going to do this, you're going to do this right and be "in" the field. The sound from the crickets and bugs was loud. Like really loud. We decide on our spot. It's completely dark out. Pitch black. We fumble around and get ourselves set up to smoke and flick on the lighter. The light from the lighter illuminated the surrounding corn stalks and everything living on them. We quickly realize that we are completely surrounded by bugs. That freaks us out so our session (that was going to be an experience to write in the book) became one that was done in haste and we jet back to the car. After we spaz out laughing hysterically in the road from literally being bugged out, we calm down and continue on.
The stop was a really bad idea in so many ways. We lost our momentum and start getting sleepy fast. We also notice we are now having a hard time seeing the road because the headlights seem dim. This is one of those stoner conversations that I (for some reason) remember vividly, even though I would want to punch myself in the face if I was a sober passenger in the car then. Are the lights actually dim or are we both imaging that? And how weird would it be that we are both thinking the lights are dim?!? Woah. We pull over somewhere in Missouri to get gas and take a look at the headlights. The front of the car was covered in a nice sludge of dead bugs we've been smacking along the way. The headlights were dim because of this thick sludge. So we wipe down the car and decide that maybe Denver is a little too far. Once we pass Kansas City we call it a night at around the 1,300 mile mark. That was sometime before dawn. We pull over in a rest stop just off the highway to catch a few hours of sleep. Even though it was summer we woke up freezing our butts off. We also woke everyone else who was sleeping at the rest stop too because my buddy sets off the car alarm. Ah the stoner life.
That was day one of a fourteen day trip.
I went through a Jack Kerouac stage of my life where I felt the need to drive long distances in cars and see where things took me. I would just get in the car, pick a spot on the map and to drive to it. One time it was Chicago (where I saw a car get lit on fire intentionally), once it was Nashville, a few times to VT, upstate NY, and Virginia. All of these drives I did solo. After doing a few of these drives, I decided it was time to drive cross country solo. The day before I left, a friend of mine asked if he could come along. I figured why not, took my bike out of my car and replaced it with our guitars so we had something to do on our stops together.
Our first day, the plan was pretty simple: go as far as we can without stopping, except for gas and bathroom breaks. We head out of Bernardsville sometime before noon and off down Rt 78 we go. I had planned a route (about 8,600 miles) so we were roughly following that. The first stretch of the route was to take 70W out to the Denver/Boulder area to hit Rocky Mountain Nat'l Park. We made some seriously good time during the day. If you haven't driven across the midwest, the only way i can describe it is this: its a right of passage to get to the good stuff. At times it really really sucks. We started a book to write down random crap that would happen or that we thought was worth writing down and one of the quotes that stuck with me was "Kansas is a piece of toilet paper for God to wipe his ass on". Hope that gives you an idea of what it can be like driving across the midwest.
As it started getting late we decided it was time for dinner. I don't remember where we ate but it was some truck stop diner. After dinner we felt refreshed and in our stoner excitement we decided that making it all the way to Denver was now the goal for the day. That's a pretty far drive. Like a really far drive. Even for stoners.
We kept making good time, and kept driving through the night. Inspiration hits my friend somewhere in the middle of the night and he pulls over somewhere in Indiana, because he decided that it would be an awesome idea to walk into a corn field and smoke a joint. I mean that's livin' right there. We pull over on one of the blue highways, drive a bit and pull over next to a field, and start our walk in. We kept walking into this corn field, and walking and walking... because if you're going to do this, you're going to do this right and be "in" the field. The sound from the crickets and bugs was loud. Like really loud. We decide on our spot. It's completely dark out. Pitch black. We fumble around and get ourselves set up to smoke and flick on the lighter. The light from the lighter illuminated the surrounding corn stalks and everything living on them. We quickly realize that we are completely surrounded by bugs. That freaks us out so our session (that was going to be an experience to write in the book) became one that was done in haste and we jet back to the car. After we spaz out laughing hysterically in the road from literally being bugged out, we calm down and continue on.
The stop was a really bad idea in so many ways. We lost our momentum and start getting sleepy fast. We also notice we are now having a hard time seeing the road because the headlights seem dim. This is one of those stoner conversations that I (for some reason) remember vividly, even though I would want to punch myself in the face if I was a sober passenger in the car then. Are the lights actually dim or are we both imaging that? And how weird would it be that we are both thinking the lights are dim?!? Woah. We pull over somewhere in Missouri to get gas and take a look at the headlights. The front of the car was covered in a nice sludge of dead bugs we've been smacking along the way. The headlights were dim because of this thick sludge. So we wipe down the car and decide that maybe Denver is a little too far. Once we pass Kansas City we call it a night at around the 1,300 mile mark. That was sometime before dawn. We pull over in a rest stop just off the highway to catch a few hours of sleep. Even though it was summer we woke up freezing our butts off. We also woke everyone else who was sleeping at the rest stop too because my buddy sets off the car alarm. Ah the stoner life.
That was day one of a fourteen day trip.
