Bringing back the great American road trip
“Road trippin’ with my two favorite allies / fully loaded we got snacks and supplies / It’s time to leave this town / It’s time to steal away / Let’s go get lost / Anywhere in the U.S.A.”
– Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Road Trippin'”
“Goin’ places that I’ve never been / Seein’ things that I may never see again / And I can’t wait to get on the road again.”
– Willie Nelson, “On the Road Again.”
When it comes to understanding the joy of a road trip, perhaps the songs say it best.
After all, in addition to special insider knowledge on the economics of heroin, musicians may know better than anyone else the excitement of the open road.
My own summer asphalt adventures began last May when, sitting in class one morning, I was suddenly hit by the realization that I had, tragically, never been to the land of my nativity – Tacoma, WA. As the story goes, I was born the night before one of my dad’s finals at the end of his first year of law school. My parents were apparently so happy they actually considered naming me after my dad’s professor. His name was McClary. That probably would have gotten me thrashed as an adolescent, which of course, never happened with a cool, unmockable name like “Matt” which, despite popular opinion, does not rhyme with “cat,” “bat” or “fat.”
Determined to return to my roots, I talked one of my favorite allies (Nate) into making the journey. We set a weekend and made a plan that, in its entirety, was to drive my 1994 Mazda Protoge (named “Scarlet”) to Tacoma. In an attempt to offset the gas prices (which even then cost roughly the same as a liver transplant in Canada), we set about getting “gas buddies,” who are basically people tagging along for the sole purpose of providing funds. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be. Here’s the play by play:
Step 1: Locate a gaggle of college students, often found sitting in “herds.”
Step 2: Ask if anyone wants to take a road trip to ______ and jot down names (college students, caught in the herd mentality, are up for pretty much anything).
So, with our new friends Josh and Amelia (neither of whom I had previously met), we agreed to meet at 6:30 p.m. on the day in question and set about making preparations (finding a pillow, getting some clean underwear, etc.). Our evening departure was due mostly to work and schedule problems, but we figured that driving all night couldn’t be that bad…really.
Because Josh didn’t have a driver’s license and Amelia couldn’t drive a manual, Nate and I took sole operating responsibilities. Approximentaly 11 hours, 815 miles and a metric ton of caffeine later, we arrived at a Chevron just outside Seattle and, after making camp at Amelia’s parent’s house, set out to discover “The Emerald City.”
Basically, Seattle has a lot of coffee, a lot of fish and a lot of little dogs wearing clothing. Nearly every city dweller walks around towing these “dog rats” in sweaters – you may think I’m kidding. Trust me, I’m not. As for the rest of the city, well, the Space Needle was cool, the food was great and the Pudget Sound was, in the words of someone famous, “freakin’ gorgeous.” The street musicians were out in full force, Pike’s Market was swimming in sushi, and the food was seriously delicious.
We actually toured the city on one of the sixteen days the weather gods allot for sunshine (most likely some city dweller sacrificed their rat dog to science). The next day (after the best sleep I’ve had in the last year), we tripped it down to Tacoma (a scant thirty miles away) to enjoy the rest of the continental weather.
Little did we know that the city was under siege by Russian sailors. Tall, swarthy men with a pension for strong drink, they were.
As it turns out, we visited the city on the last day of the “Tall Ship Festival” which brings together boats like the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria from all over the world. There were commodores, captains and lots of would be pirates.
In the land of my birth, we watched street performers, ate at a fantastic local shop called “Ravenous” and took a ferry to this cool island in the middle of the sound.
The trip was fantastic and the road music kept us pounding with energy. On the way home, we stopped in Twin Falls for a visit to the Shoshone falls.
Inspired by the view, we took a bottle, wrote down the name of one of our friend’s on a piece of paper under the sentence, “for a good time call” and threw it into the river. Several weeks later, he recieved calls from people “looking for a good time.”
We may have found some new gas buddies.
Matt Wright, a.k.a.”Fatty Matty,” is the Diversions editor at the Utah Statesman. Comments can be sent to him at mattgo@cc.usu.edu.
Road trip stories will appear monthly.