This was a pretty sedate road trip. I was more introspective than a good road trip partner should be, with long quiet stretches. Part of that was because I didn’t really take that quiet time for myself in the weeks leading up to the trip. But Phaux was built with the emotional sense to let me be. Thank you, Phaux.

I’ve been to all the places we visited on our road trip … this time we took a different path to get there. Even the drive to Whistler was repaved for our travels — Fuck it, I’m sick of metaphor and aphorism. I can’t even continue with that thought. Vomit.

The posts … those events that reached some level of noteworthiness … only tell part of the story … these were my highlights:

I like your parts more than you like mine.
The last time I was down this road … I was in love.
Who knew hairspray could provide so much amusement (read comments)
Who knew I had worn those jeans for 7 days?
Enjoy my awesome leather jacket .. it’s yours now.

Phaux, thanks for being an awesome friend, for picking up the slack when I was letting it loose. Of any cohort (who I’m not going to have sex with) I could choose for a road trip, the mohawked sentographer is certainly the best. RT4 is in the books. Already looking forward to the Great Lakes.

But as I started to empty the list faster than I could add to it, I still had an inconsolable emptiness. It was the emptiness of knowing that I was less than I had ever hoped to be. So I paused the list. I took a different tact, and embraced an ascetic life, a quiet and mundane existence. I left behind those things that others might have seen as an extraordinary life and replaced them with the daily repetition of the ordinary.

I found a girl, lived in one little city, worked a somewhat regular schedule, hung out in the local bar. I had date night, poker night, bar night, my phone time with a few friends around the country.

Eliminating the constant distractions let me see that it was not the bricks that mattered, but the mortar. The people who accompanied me for all those accomplishments. The opportunities for self-examination in those hours waiting at the airport.

The road trips are one of the few obviously extraordinary weeks I have each year. But as much as I look forward to them, it’s what they do to the 6 months in between. How they gild the mundane, remind me to relish my own smallness, magnify what is important to me — magnify it to ignition.

The last time around, I needed a push — there’s no doubt that I got it. This time around, I don’t need a kick in the pants, I’m not looking for anything but to enjoy time with a friend (and maybe grief some Mennonites). I know it will remind me that I am right where I’m supposed to be.

I’ve removed all but one last goal from “my 50″. Phauxtog, keep an eye out for feral cats.

First, we started with a bang in Omaha, then I got to talk to a future mad scientist.  I got my ass kicked in virtual kung-fu under the stars.  We really did see The Most Amazing Road On Earth.  There was no you could plan this.  And we opened up the vault and found a great surprise.

There were so many more moments, but those are my top 6 … only two more posts from me before I close the door on RT3 and start looking forward.

From the myriad of people we met on the road, to our friends, fans and family back home, thank you all.

We’ll be posting more very interesting stuff we just didn’t have time to pull of while on the road in the next week or so, so keep checking. Plus, a super-secret special opportunity of a lifetime.

Well, today, I hit 500 pushups for our trip.

I feel a little better about myself, but one of my heroin-skinny shirts won’t button over my chest anymore. Here’s me remembering to do pushups in the Albany bar in Cheyenne. That’s brown lightning, baby.

– zoo

Zoo Says:  Driving Cross Country Without having to touch New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and any of the south is cool.

Zoo Broker lives in San Francisco, I live in Dobbs Ferry, NY.

The distance between our homes is 2,926 miles.

And guess what? You can’t make this shit up. It happened on this road:

Later on when the Vimeo movie time-lapse is up, you can see where we get out of the car and do a little victory dance. We just drove the equivalent of going from California to New York. Awe-some.

I think I remember Zoo shouting something like, “Top of the world!”

Zoo Says: Um, the quote is “I’m the King of The World”, but I didn’t even say that.  I said, “Do I look fat up here?”

But seriously, you can’t do this kind of thing with just anyone. Why would you? Good friends with an open mind and a lust for the open road and the new experiences that come along with that are paramount on a journey like this.

Elko: Whores, 24-hour access to alcohol and gambling, all-you-can-eat steakhouses.
SLC: Mormans, 24-hour access to group prayer, and all-you-can-marry churches.

We’ll give you some more details on Salt Lake City after we hang out a little tonight …

20081002095128

“Produced Something Astounding”.

Not bad words for my tombstone, now if I could only get someone to say it about me! For sure, this is a wake-up call. This morning I contrasted Spammer’s ACTUAL art production to my own. I said: “People are my canvas” .. which conjures up a better catch phrase: “The Audience Is the Canvas”. Good catch phrase, even though it’s MEANINGLESS.

For fuck’s sake, what I do, although not lacking in skill or imagination, is NOT art. I gotta get on it.

In the summer of 1993, I felt like a minority for the first time. At that point, I’d been a minority for all of my life, “the only brown around”, but it didn’t occur to me that people thought or acted any different based on that. To me, racism was something confined to history books, South Africa, and a few counties in Alabama; crossing the river into North Platte, Nebraska, I suddenly realized that the haven of blue-state America had evaporated about 1200 miles before when I left California. Cops hassled and followed us. People stopped everything they were doing and stared. A motel tried to refuse a room that had already been booked.

That was my first road trip, from San Francisco to Baltimore and I was hooked. I had found something so utterly alien from anything I had experienced in the 17 years prior – it was obvious: “there must be some really crazy shit out there”.

It was my first time seeing the Rockies and the Salt Flats of Utah. We crossed the Mississippi just as the Great Flood of 1993 was getting underway. I saw drops of rain so large and so driven that when they pelted the road, they exploded in what looked like a million enormous glass butterflies.

And that was just 4 days.

On the eve of another road trip, it’s hard not to think about those previous journeys across America, Canada and South America, the roads and the towns, the people I’ve met, the things I’ve learned. But before this trip, more than ever, I’m looking forward more than back. Maybe it’s because I just broke up with my girlfriend. Maybe it’s where I am in life, directionless and stagnant, without purpose. My best friend said to me a few weeks ago while we were looking through pictures: “Where’s the fire? Where did that guy go?”

It’s wrong to blame my relationship; the flame had been extinguished before that. Now all that remains is a barely breathing pilot light. Fuck! that sounds bathetic. But right now, that’s what’s inside.

Going on a road trip looking for anything in particular, unless it’s made of concrete, metal or stone, is a bad idea. You’re guaranteed to miss out on things that are right before your eyes when you’re always looking over the horizon. But this time I am looking for something – my bearings. I can’t think of anyone better than the Spammer to search with, someone who is dedicated to self-awareness, self-improvement and the careful examination of one’s self that goes with it.

The road trip is tinder. Here’s to the fire.

.

– Zoobroker