On The Bizarre Events of November 12, 2016: Des Moines to Brooklyn, IA
“Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process, a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. Only when this is recognized can the blown-in-the glass bum relax and go along with it. Only then do the frustrations fall away. In this a journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.”
-John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley
Even on top of a bivy, sleeping on a cold trucker’s lounge floor isn’t restful, especially with what had become a full-blown head cold. Waking up at 5:30 to medicate, caffeinate, and hitchhike wasn’t an inspired choice as much as an inevitability. East Des Moines was brisk but, with no wind and plenty of hot coffee, standing on the I-80 east ramp watching the stunning heartland sunrise was pleasant. Even inspiring.
Saturday's motivational speech: “Self, end this trip today or at least get two-hours east to Walcott and the familiar Iowa 80. With such an early start, anything short of that would be an unacceptable failure for any self-respecting hitchhiker.”
Screw you, Tony Robbins. You have nothing on me. Hey, that should be a motivational meme! “Suck it, Dr. Phil” belongs on a t-shirt. I’ll design it. $20 gets you or your kid one. Email my literary agent and get half off one children’s party!
Despite the lack of sleep, the cold, and Luis’s memory conspiring to make me want this trip done, my mood was stellar! Music pumping thru my cheap headphones combined with the sunrise, a hollered chat with a woman at the adjacent hotel, and the gritty smells and sensations exclusive to hitchhiking to thrust me into an upbeat headspace; the one I’ve found exclusively hitchhiking.
I’ve mentioned this before, and I will again. There’s an addictive anticipation to these days that aren’t replicated anywhere else: being completely and consciously blind to how the day ahead will turn out. No hitching day has a template; each one is its own mystery with no way of predicting where you’ll sleep that night.
You could wind up hiding from creepy tweakers in patch of weeds or on a million-dollar houseboat that night.
Or maybe you’ll find out more than a year later that Dennis, the guy who dropped you off with Couchsurfing hosts 200-miles in the opposite direction you had “planned” (ha!) to go, would end up a shooting three Colorado cops, killing one.
Or, by God, you might find yourself clinging precariously to the side of a moving freight train.
All these things happened; none were planned.
In 2008, I woke up greeted by elk in rural Wyoming, aimed for Portland, then found myself in Denver 12-hours later. In 2010, I set sail for Maine and wound up in Boise!
This is what Steinbeck meant when he wrote, “we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.” I wish I could share that feeling with everyone; the sense of being intensely alive; not just existing or going thru the motion of life. Walter White hit on this in the Breaking Bad series finale and I wholly identify with what he said. I felt it. All the time! Thankfully, you don’t need to be a meth kingpin to experience this. Just a backpack and courage.
Sadly, no one can give this away. All anyone can do is try to pathetically articulate the sense of being “taken” Steinbeck wrote about. As he said, only those who’ve experienced it can genuinely understand. That’s too bad. It’s transformative and, once you experience this then depart on another adventure you realize that, despite all your visions and “plans” (ha!), you have no idea what’s coming or, if you’re doing it right, where you’re going. Eventually you realize destinations are just the bait. Walter’s blue has nothing on that addictive rush.
Nikolai & Jesse
Saturday’s first trail magic display was delivered by a dingy industrial semi. Once it abruptly stopped, the passenger, a Latino named Jesse, offered me a ride all the way to Chicago! “Seriously? That’s it? I’ll be home in time to have Giordano’s!” Then he said, without irony or humor, “I need a helper.” “Is he kidding?” I cautiously wondered but in the excitement of an easy fix, and despite knowing better, I climbed in the truck without thinking. Just like the day before with Luis. Why? See: the day’s inspiration above. I wanted this trip finished as soon as possible.
Driving the truck was a Russian named Nikolai and, like Jesse, was in his 30’s. This was a liberal’s wet diversity dream! I stumbled over mounds of fast-food bags stuffed between the seats, slid more piles of scattered shit away so I could sit in the bunk, and tried settling in for a 4-5 hour cannonball. What came next was at once sketchy, surprisingly dangerous, and literally obscene.
Nikolai shouldn’t have had a license, let alone a CDL. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’d ignored that little American bureaucratic technicality. The first thing he did was hoist his foot on the dashboard. Now, I’ve done that. I’ve thrown my left leg up to get comfortable. But never the right one! Does anyone believe they can safely drive a truck like that? Nikolai’s demonstration failed to convince me they could and, worse, once he was snug and comfy, he began an intense texting conversation, rarely lifting his eyes from the phone and swerving all over I-80, nearly clipping cars passing him! My convenient cannonball quickly felt like a quest for survival.
Then it got interesting!
Once his critical texting session ended, Nikolai turned his attention not to the road, but to porn. Russian porn. How do I know? Not because he’s Russian, but because he didn’t bother with the courtesy (dignity) of headphones! Pornographic sounds are universal, and his chosen protagonists were Tolstoian in their verbalized lust. Maybe his lady thespians-of-the-flesh were worthy of PornOscar awards and his unwavering attention. I don’t know. What I do know is that their presence in his hand didn’t help Nik’s attentiveness; his wild swerving continued. I was astounded! Not just that he was watching porn in the company of two other dudes, but also that Jesse didn’t blink. I was taking it all in in silence from behind (typing that felt dirty) and, while I thankfully didn’t see any profane acts of interstate self-service, this was clearly their norm.
There was nothing normal about these two or their ride. Soon I began hearing, “I need a helper” in a freshly ominous context. My mind began scribbling horror stories with plot lines like being driven to a remote industrial park in the south Chicago ghetto as an indentured servant then, once liberated via forced labor (what’s Russian for “Arbeit Macht Frei?), having to escape to the Red Line thru Mogadishu in America.
Ultimately my reaction was direct, to the point, and appropriate: “fuck this.”
For the second time in two days, I deployed an improvised escape plan. Channeling Friday’s success, I checked the phone and was again relieved to find a Pilot truck stop approaching. Interrupting Nik’s Russian three way (two girls, if you’re curious), I said, “Hey dude, as much as I appreciate the ride, the coffee and shitty truck stop chicken wings are fucking with me. I’m gonna shit all over your bed if you don’t drop me off at this truck stop.” It’s funny how images of liquified feces seeping into his bed inspires a man.
A horrified Nikolai instantly disconnected Muscovite Fuckfest, dropped his leg to its proper position on the floor, rapidly accelerated (to the speed limit), and drove in a straight line (hooray!) straight to the exit and a Kwik Star travel center.
Some say lying’s a sin. In this case I think Jesus understood. What was the alternative? “Hey man, between the texting and porn, you’re swerving all over the highway. Plus, you two are creepy and I don’t trust you because I think you plan to enslave me in a Southside shithole in exchange for a ride we might not survive. Fuck you auslander sketchballs. Let me out.” From a windowless back seat while being outnumbered in the truck? Yes, Gandhi, I’m sure the truth would have set me just as free. Judge me and my actions however you like, couched jurist, but exploiting fecalphelia has been 100% effective. Ask your doctor if it’s right for you, but I stand by and recommend this tactic if you’re in a similar situation. It works!
You’re welcome.
Nikolai hadn’t even stopped when Jesse flung the passenger door open clearing my escape route. I mumbled something about appreciating the lift then said “holy shitski” to myself as I walked around the front of the truck then listened to the sounds of my Chariot of Porn & International Diversity rumble away. In the aftermath I couldn’t help but laugh. Should I have gotten in that truck? Probably not. Am I glad I did? Now? Absolutely!
The Debrief
There’s a funny thing about experiences like this one. While they may seem to suck in-the-moment, they’re never forgotten. Beyond that, I’ve come to see that they’re nothing less than the essence of living an engaged life.
Walt hadn’t felt alive because everything went as planned. By being tested he discovered who and what he was, for better or worse. Wanderers and travelers have long known that it’s the obstacles and unforeseen challenges that make trips, and life, fulfilling and memorable. Adventures aren’t made from perfectly executed plans. The heroic epic is the most enduring genre of human literature and, while the details differ, they always consist of the same basic themes, one of which being that the hero proves his worth by overcoming adversity. Or he dies trying. The Odyssey wouldn’t have endured a week, let alone millennia, if Odysseus had it easy!
Why is that theme so durable? Because it’s an insight into, and reflection of, a fundamental and essential piece of human nature.
Adventure demands unforeseen, often brutal, adversity. That makes it, quite literally, an ongoing exercise in adaptation and survival. Yet, despite that, people crave adventure! Why? I think it’s because, with increasing self-domestication, our basic survival instinct has been tranquilized. Persevering and overcoming challenges engages our primal, but now mostly dormant, survival instinct. Challenge provokes a sense of purpose. Also, a genuine adventure, peppered with real risk, makes human beings feel alive because we see ourselves as living a story in which we’re the protagonist. We’re the hero on our own epic journey: life. From the beginning of time, flawed people overcoming adversity and finding out who they really are in the process has been the core of almost every story.
To continue the Russian theme, Dostoevsky wrote about this in Notes from the Underground, as have others. Dostoevsky believed that even if Utopia could be built, human beings would sabotage and destroy it out of boredom alone. It’s overcoming struggle that makes life meaningful. Someone said life is safe in a dungeon, but no one wants to live there. Without some element of danger and adversity, we may as well rot in that cage.
I think this general idea applies on a macro scale today. Its effects can be seen in “outrage” culture and the tribal need to fight whomever or whatever we’ve convinced ourselves is “evil.” I’ve traveled enough to accept how good Americans have it, despite its imperfections. I suspect that much of what passes for “activism” and the obsession with attaining a utopian, and unreachable, state of perfect social justice comes from the need to manufacture perpetual adversity because of an innately perceived need to overcome it.
I’m not the first person to say that there’s a crisis of meaning and purpose. My exit from radio and the traveling that followed was triggered by exactly that. I went looking for the meaning and purpose careerism’s hamster wheel lacked. For many, including me in those early travel days, spirituality and religion also helped fill that void. But having nothing, we tend go searching. I found mine in random cars with a backpack. Some people find it in political or social fanaticism. Others never find anything and wind up in a state of what Pink Floyd called “quiet desperation.”
My traveling ended in January 2018. I not only miss it, I’ve also lost something important. A life once lived in 4K now sometimes feels like 480p! That feeling of being alive has receded But I know, too, that I of all people have nothing to complain about. I was the luckiest person I knew for 15-years and continue to be. Another heroic epic theme is “the return”; what you find out there and bring back to the cave. That’s the new struggle. That’s my next chapter. That’s the latest belching dragon to be slain. That’s also for another time!
All this, and it wasn’t even noon! The day had barely begun, would dramatically improve, feature what would prove to be yet another random but insightful character, then end with one of my favorite rides ever.