Date:
9/6/2013
Day: -21
Location: Home
Miles Today: 0
Total Miles: 0
I am thinking about what it will be like being gone for a
long time. There are, as always in life,
pluses and minuses. This is how we know
we are a fallen race.
When Professor Tolkien was asked what motivated him to
embark on the enormous task that was creating The Lord of the Rings, he said he wanted to try his hand at a
really long story.
[I recently read the suggestion
that the greatest single work of human imagination was Wagner’s Ring
Cycle. Assuming the four operas to be a
unity and not in competition with a chunk of Shakespeare, this is plausible
enough. The Ring is overwhelming; a mass of inexpressibly wonderful music and
many, many hours of libretto. And you can whistle the tunes as you
walk out! It is stunning to think that
the avalanche of words, music and stage craft spring from a single brain. That said, and with a respectful nod to Wagner
both nasty and great, I suspect Tolkien takes the biscuit in this regard. TLOTR is a more complete story with (what I
find to be) more plausible albeit mostly nonhuman characters. It exists in a world furnished with a more
detailed back story, multiple complete languages and is ultimately about the
struggle against distilled evil. That he
was doing unsurpassed work as an academic literary critic while he created this
universe is boggling. You are, of
course, welcome to disagree.]
I have always imagined taking a really long road trip. Not a Neal Cassidy type trip, running away
from or towards something undefined, leaving destruction and unhappiness in my
wake. Nor either a Travels with Charley type trip, with the clear if unexpressed aim to leave a travel book as residue of the
undertaking. I have always imagined a
trip determined only by fancy and happenstance.
I once had a few days ‘at leisure’ in Canada with a car someone else was paying for. For much of that
time I took every third left turn just to see where the road might go. It was liberating.
This trip, the aim and title of which are One Lap, is to
make that long trip approximately around the perimeter of the continental United
States. In draft, the plan is
simple. Even someone who was once an
infantry Lieutenant can manage it without, probably, getting much lost:
- Drive north from Oakland to Seattle, turn right. People speaking Canadian indicates having gone too far.
- Drive east to Portland, Maine, or until the tires get salt water on them, turn right.
- Drive south to Key West or, again, until the tires get salty. Turn around, drive north on a different path.
- Drive west at the first plausible opportunity which avoids the Gulf of Mexico to San Diego or…..the wet tire thing again.
- Drive north until the best place on earth appears.
- Stop.
A trip defined by the absence of Canadians or salt water. Seems simple enough. More details to follow before the departure date of 9/27/2013.
No comments:
Post a Comment