All 36 entries tagged Travel

The Roadtrip Back (CA to PA): Day 7: Horse–riding in Winter Park and the Rockies National Park

The need to be born again, a fierce need to reinvent the self, is what drew me to America. For me that is the promise of this country, a promise, crossed with blood. (Meena Alexander, Poetics of Dislocation, p. 134)

Winter Park, Colorado

: 11 Aug 2010 21:24 |  Tags: Travel |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The Roadtrip Back (CA to PA): Day 6: The Colorado Rockies

Gunnison, Colorado: Cowmen Parade

: 11 Aug 2010 21:14 |  Tags: Travel |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The Roadtrip Back (CA to PA): Day 5: Mesa Verde National Park and the Million Dollar Highway

: 11 Aug 2010 21:05 |  Tags: Travel |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The Roadtrip Back (CA to PA): Day 4: Navajo National Monument and Monument Valley

: 11 Aug 2010 20:54 |  Tags: Travel |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The Roadtrip Back (CA to PA): Day 3: Grand Canyon

: 09 Aug 2010 22:50 |  Tags: Travel |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The Roadtrip Back (CA to PA): Day 2: Into Arizona

Sunset Crater

Flagstaff, Arizona

: 09 Aug 2010 22:34 |  Tags: Travel |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The Roadtrip Back (CA to PA): Day 1: Driving Through California

: 09 Aug 2010 22:28 |  Tags: Travel |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Random Acts of Kindness

I’ve been back from my roadtrip for just over a week now, but one thing that stays with me are small acts of kindness from random people.

Like when we were driving through Kansas and our beat-up old Subaru Forrester started making some very strange noises. We pulled off the freeway at one of those junctions without a shop in sight, just long rolling plains as far as the eye can see. The car coasted on down the road and the only building was a run-down old garage.

A mechanic came out and briskly looked over the car. He told us that all we needed was a bolt and he probably had one inside. When he came out again, he had a box of tools and the bolt and he proceded to fix our car for the price of the bolt: 10 cents.

We filled up on gas and glass bottles of coke from a rusty freezer in the dusty shop. I said thank you many times, but the mechanic never looked at me or acknowledged what I said. I wondered whether he was used to being thanked.

We drove all the way to California from there and then back again to Pennsylvania. The 10 cent bolt held all that time.

: 02 Aug 2010 21:09 |  Tags: Travel |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Roadtrip from Pennsylvania to California: Day 9: From LA's Griffith Park to San Diego

Los Angeles, Griffith Park

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California, Route 5

: 27 Jul 2010 19:09 |  Tags: Travel |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Roadtrip from Pennsylvania to California: Day 8: Driving Across the Desert to LA

Las Vegas Desert

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of ‘history’ it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened . . . There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning . . . And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave . . . So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back. – Hunter S. Thompson
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California, Route 15

: 27 Jul 2010 19:02 |  Tags: Travel |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem