It's hard. After "On the Road Again", "Six Days on the Road", and "Hit the Road, Jack", and "Road Runner", "Born to Run", and "Running on Empty", and "Life in the Fastlane", and "Lost Highway", and "Highway 1 Revisited". After "Let's Get Away From It All". After Easy Rider, and Thelma and Louise, and Lost in America, and too many road movies to name or even remember. After Jack Kerouac and Route 66. As long as we're at this, after Huck Finn and the journals of Lewis and Clark. After all that, it is hard for an America to just hit the road without some expectations.
« Ira Glass, This American Life »
Spent my days with a woman unkind
Smoked my stuff and drank all my wine
Made up my mind to make a new start
I'm going to California with an aching in my heart
Someone told me there's a girl out there
With love in her eyes and flowers in her hair
Smoked my stuff and drank all my wine
Made up my mind to make a new start
I'm going to California with an aching in my heart
Someone told me there's a girl out there
With love in her eyes and flowers in her hair
« Led Zeppelin, "Going to California" »
Any road trip is going to feel longer than you think it will. And you'll be tired, and you won't get a meal exactly when you're hungry. You never find a bed exactly when you want to go to sleep. And you're probably not going to find out what it is that you got on the road to find out in the first place. And you know all that, you know all that going into it. And you still, we all still, buy into the cliché about road trips. That what a road trip stands for is hope. Hope. That somewhere, anywhere, is better than here. That somewhere, on the road, I will turn into the person that I want to be. I'll turn into the person that I believe I could be, that I am.
« Ira Glass, This American Life »