A Summer Road Trip

Doug
Doug
Jul 23, 2017 · 9 min read

Buy a one way flight. Go solo, meet new friends, see the day one homies. Say hi. Ask questions. Listen more, talk less. Get lost, use a map. Change your plans, or don’t make any at all. Hitchhike… eh, maybe.

I’m not a genius and don’t have the best advice, but this is my take on why you should do all those crazy things — because you’ll never, ever forget it and will forever & ever chase it, until one day, when you literally can not (or so I’ve been told).

Surf shop dog in Porland, ME

Here’s my experience — Sunday, January 29, 2017, 5:30am. “Thank you for purchasing your tickets online”. I bought a ticket to see my favorite band in New York City, more than six months in advance with no flight. In fact, when I finally did book the flight, I booked a one-way for Chicago and was slated to land two weeks before the show in New York City. In this world, two plus two definitely equals five. I was probably 12ish days away from taking off for Chicago to set out on this summer road trip of sorts with hardly any concrete plans. I bought a few more tickets to shows in various cities along the east coast, kind of told some friends I’d be passing through their cities, but just really wanted to do this to see other parts of the country.

June 30: I’m on a flight from SFO to MDW, en route to start this organized chaos of a trip. Oh yeah, I should mention at this point I had sold the tickets for the show in New York City — the purchase that spurred all of this was now a wash, but not the trip. And then we’re in Chicago and I couldn’t have imagined a better way to catapult myself into the next 17 days than seeing Dead & Co. at Wrigley with a bunch of friends. The show was unbelievable and apparently broke an attendance record at Wrigley.

I love San Francisco, like literally love the city, but it’s not a July 4th place. It’s patriotic, yes. But, everybody leaves the city and so for the first time since moving there four years ago, I was getting out. Lake Okauchee in Wisconsin. I’d say it was the best celebration of America’s birthday I’ve had in 26 years of my existence. What more can you ask for on July 4th than sunshine, friends, good beer, yard games like “catch the can” and fireworks. You can’t beat it. Wisconsin, good on ya. I owe a HUGE thank you to all the people that invited me for all the fun. I’ll catch that damn can next year. Before I move on from Wisconsin, cheese curds are sooo good and I learned the good ones make a squeaky noise when you bite them. It’s weird, but 1000% true.

Now it was time to hit the road. A few of the us that saw The Dead show in Chicago, plus a couple more, make the nine hour midnight drive for Nashville to see My Morning Jacket. We were… The Tennessee Five. By this point I’ve made plans to fly out of Nashville for the end of the trip, but this isn’t the end. I’ve got 11 days left at this point! The rental car I got was out of Nashville so I have to return it back here or else I’ll have to commit my life to service at Enterprise Rentals washing cars. Basically, its expensive to return to it away from the original location. So yeah, I’m renting in Nashville, driving to Maine and back with stops littered in between. Talk about seeing the east coast.

Here’s a quick hit-list of the stops I made over the next five days…Nashville, TN; Charlotte, NC; Shenandoah National Park, VA and Red Bank, NJ; Portland, ME.

The drive from Nashville, TN to Charlotte, NC on the 40 and then from Charlotte to the Shenandoah National Park, VA is so beautiful. I was speechless driving through the smoky mountains seeing all of the lush green trees. My head was on a swivel as I couldn’t help but look in every which direction to try and see all of it. A photo would never do it justice and probably get lost, but the mental snapshot I have will be there forever. It may have not been safe to be doing this while driving, but I couldn’t help myself. I was so happy to know that I would have to drive back through this awesomeness to return the car. If you can’t tell by now, I’m a sucker for nature.

Talking to strangers. I was definitely told not to talk to strangers as a kiddo. My mom probably didn’t want me to annoy some random person or get kidnapped — gah such a buzzkill, mom. Now, I can’t imagine a day that I don’t have at least one conversation with a stranger. It sounds so odd, but even just a few minutes you could have your day made or even learn something new.

I stopped in the small town of Sperryville, VA for pizza and sat at the backyard picnic tables. Sperryville is a small town (pop. 342 in 2010) outside the Shenandoah National Park. An old man sitting next to me was hanging out, alone, doing whatever he was doing. He didn’t have pizza. He just seemed to be enjoying the mountain air. I don’t remember how the conversation started to be honest, I think he actually asked me how I was enjoying my pizza and then I asked him where he was from, what he had been doing that day, etc.. So, before long the old man is telling me about his unusual life experiences; the time he fell off a ladder and managed to not break any bones (and also do it twice more later in life), our first jobs we ever had (he’s been a farmer all of his life, I swept sand off the pavement at a waterpark) and we also talked about friendships. He had just been visiting one of his friends of like 60-something years. That is so long and thinking about this made me realize how cool friendships are. I‘ll try not to dive into this too much, but think about it. Sometimes you meet a stranger by chance, become friends over a common or different interest and stay friends forever. Maybe it’s the first person you said hi to on the first day of kindergarten. Or maybe just friends you had during a certain time in your life. Regardless, you have memorable experiences with these people. I’ll always remember my best friend from five years old. We don’t talk everyday or live in the same place, but I still call him my best friend. Friendships are such an incredible thing and make life that much more enjoyable, especially the good ones. It seems like such a tangent topic for this post, but over the course of this trip I was able to see so many friends — some of which I hadn’t seen in years and others I hadn’t even known for a year. I loved that part of the trip. Thank you to the old man that will probably never read this, but he made me understand the importance of friendship.

After what seemed like years, I finally reached Maine. It’s super far up there, ya know. Nova Scotia is not too far from the northern Maine coast and I learned that a lot of northern Mainers actually speak French. Yeah, yeah it makes sense, but it just blew my mind. Lay off! I spent three days in Maine and it was by far the most relaxing part of all this. I’m pretty sure people don’t lock their doors in Maine. It’s quiet, peaceful and also beautiful. I was really hoping to surf in Maine but the forecast wasn’t ripe. I found a couple exciting trails to to run, kayaked in the Atlantic Ocean and of course saw My Morning Jacket for one last time this trip. I landed in the third row next to some real heady Vermont dudes and we nerded out over music. I loved Maine and would also highly suggest nobody ever eat a lobstah roll outside of that state, because the ones I had in Maine were insanely good. Like, every other coastal city needs to just stop trying. Maine won. All you other states can win something else, there’s other things to win, just not lobstah rolls. Or whoopie pies.

This is where the trip gets gnarly. Well, the travel part. On Thursday, July 13 at 2pm I leave Portland for NYC to catch a flight the next day at 7am. It’s not a long drive but I don’t get to New York until late that night. I don’t know how to describe it but my cousin and the folks I knew in Maine kept calling me crunchy (I now know what it means), so I guess that’s what applies here in some regard; I slept in the rental truck for a couple hours then went to the airport 7 hours early and kinda slept in the airport. It worked and I didn’t spend a dime. It wasn’t that bad, ok. Anyways, I hop (haha ihop, get it?) on a 7am flight to Chicago for another show, LCD Soundsystem, with a few of the same peeps from Dead & Company two weeks earlier. Great show, good times but Saturday is really PAINFUL. I’m tired, the travel is catching up to me and it’s possible I had a few too many beers. I’m scheduled to go back to New York very early Sunday morning to continue my drive back to Nashville with a pit stop in DC to visit my cousin. Then I decided, 10 hours before my flight, to cancel and rebook for Monday morning. So I spend another day in Chicago to kayak the river, see the zoo and hangout — that’s a day right there. Then it hits me and I realize I have to be back in Nashville by Tuesday at 4pm for my flight BACK to New York for work meetings while making an overnight pit stop in DC on Monday. This is like 2 minutes left in the Super Bowl, down a score with the ball on your own 15 yard line, let’s gooooo.

The overnight pit stop in DC is necessary because my cousin who I haven’t seen in close to two years lives there and I have to see the guy! He’s one of the chefs for the Admiral of the U.S. Navy, so of course the dinner spot is amazing and I just let him do all the ordering. I’m not sure he knows it, but I’ve always looked up to him for many reasons.

It’s now Tuesday July 18 and the trip is all but over. I’ve got 10 hours of driving ahead of me with little time for error or pit stops. Even though I was in a time crunch, I did a ton of thinking on this part of the trip. Again, driving through beautiful Virginia and the Blue Ridge Mountains. Two of the podcasts I listened to each said something that brought me drive several hours in silence. The first was a podcast interview with the founder of Whole Foods grocery chain who is so wildly passionate about his company, it’s inspiring. The quote that stuck with me from him was “follow the beating thing in your chest”. Yes, follow your heart. It’s a cliche quote and maybe even overused, but I’ve never heard it phrased like that. It really made me wonder what I’m supposed to be doing. I won’t dive in on this one because then I’d spill several hours of thoughts. You can just ask me and I’ll explain in person. And the reason I drove in silence for the several hours was this podcast with Questlove of The Roots talking about a piece of art. The piece is only painted blue and Questlove talks about how the art allowed him to slow down, be bored and important of silence. I think that’s pretty powerful coming from a creative guy that makes music for a living, and good music at that. Why should I (we) always try to fill empty space with something? Maybe, the beauty of empty space is actually that it is meant to be empty and that allows for us to be present, or more creative, or aware. Thanks, Questlove. I’m back in Nashville.

So, what exactly did I do? I drove a lot, alone: 2,840 miles to be exact. I saw the east coast for the first time. I made new friends and met up with old ones. I saw live music: My Morning Jacket 3x, Gary Clark Jr 2x, Phish at The Garden, Dead & Company at Wrigley, LCD Soundsystem, and Steve Miller Band. I learned an incredible amount about myself. I learned a lot about life, but still so far from figuring it out. I pushed myself even further out of my comfort zone and had fun. But really, above all, I went out and lived it.

And for the record and to settle my mom’s worrisome nature, I did not hitchhike.

Here are pics from all of it

Doug

Written by

Doug

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