June 22, 2006: And they're off!

...like a herd of turtles. We imagined getting to southern Oregon tonight, but here we are at my aunt Harriet's home in Vancouver, Washington, just across the Columbia River from Portland. It's a lovely place, one we've visited many times to see Harriet and her kids: Scott, Ann, Todd, and Lisa. They all have kids of their own now; Ann lives in Seattle and Todd lives in Phoenix.

Tommy's found a great climbing tree in Harriet's yard, Danny's on the swings at the playground in the park across the street, and the boys have already explored the woods next to the park with their mom.

Feral rabbits are hopping about everywhere. The weather couldn't be more pleasant. If we get an early start in the morning, we can reach my brother Jim's place in Woodland, near Sacramento. The boys are looking forward to playing with their cousins Evan and Amanda.

I'm helping my aunt update her virus protection and download over 10 MB of photos from her son Todd, a very slow process on a 28.8 kbps modem. I'm also trying to figure out why the photo uploading feature at Blogger isn't working for me. Blogger is the otherwise easy-to-use web-based application we use to create our blog (and which you can use to create your own blog).

Our trusty steed, a red 1998 Toyota Sienna minivan, has been serviced (our starting mileage: 106,360). We have maps and addresses and phone numbers and a basic itinerary (which I will not disclose just yet so as to reserve a few surprises).

So why did we get such a late start? It turns out it's not so easy to disappear for nearly two months. Not only do bags need packing, but library books and DVDs need returning, emails need sending, supplies need buying, and the house and bills need looking after while we're gone. We really appreciate all the help we're getting from Debbie's parents in this regard. I guess we'll have to send Bob and Dorothy (and my mom) a postcard or two. Everyone else will have to make do with this blog.

Another delay took place in the city of Tacoma, where we were stuck in a horrendous backup for half an hour, partly a consequence of construction, and partly the result of a spectacular accident involving a horse - or at least I think it was a horse. I couldn't be sure, since its remains were distributed for a hundred yards along the freeway.

In the car, the boys put state stickers on a map of the US. Before he fell asleep, Danny played excitedly with the digital camera his grandparents gave him today, snapping blurry shots of everything in sight. Tommy read a novel: Magic by the Lake, part of Edward Eager's Half Magic series, a book my sister Peggy gave him for Christmas. Not having read it, I asked Tommy for a synopsis. Was it like the Harry Potter series, which Danny has been rereading? "Well," Tommy told me, "they're both high fantasy, and the main characters are kids: Martha, Jane, Mark, and Katharine. But they don't have magic powers. Instead, they find magic." His teacher, Ms. Alsdorf, would be pleased.

Then there were the many decisions we needed to make on the road. How to access the internet? How to keep the boys happy and entertained, not torturing each other (and us)? How to persuade the cop not to give us a speeding ticket? (Two out of three ain't bad.)

It's easy to understand why we got the ticket. The speed limit was 70 miles per hour, so I set our cruise control to 75 to make good time yet avoid getting caught for speeding. Just as we entered the Vancouver area, Danny began to proclaim, again and again in a keening whine, that he had to pee. I therefore missed the sign announcing a reduction in the speed limit to 60 mph. Both an inauspicious and an ironic start to our trip.

I use the word "ironic" advisedly, as should anyone who blogs in the wake of the Internet brouhaha that erupted over Alanis Morissette's song "Ironic." People around the world weighed in on the subject of whether the singer knew the first thing about this particular trope. I also have to be careful since I have siblings and colleagues who, like me, are literary sticklers that will jump all over a person if he or she calls something ironic when it isn't. For the record, then, a speeding ticket is simply unfortunate, but the fact that I got one as a result of trying to avoid one is ironic.

It occurs to me that we're really giving short shrift to the Northwest on this trip, but then we live here and make this drive to and from California every winter. And I could wax poetic - nay, rhapsodic - about the overwhelming greenness of the states and the many awesome places we've visited here. We took my mom to Mt. Rainier and Mt. St. Helens last summer, and the year before we took in the Oregon Dunes and Crater Lake.

Hey everybody! Come up and see us sometime!

June 21, 2006: Casting Fate – and Carbon – to the Wind

It’s summer, and gasoline costs more than $3 a gallon, and Al Gore is telling us we’ve got to become “carbon-neutral.” So why is the Davis-Douglas family leaving on a seven-week, cross-country drive?

Well, our extended family, like many American families, is spread out all over the country. We have siblings in California and Kentucky, aunts and uncles in Washington and New Mexico and Florida, and cousins from Arizona and Colorado and Tennessee to Virginia and New York and Illinois. Our friends are all over the map, too, from Oregon and New Jersey to Massachusetts and Ontario (O Canada!). We think it’s important for our sons (Tommy, 9, and Danny, 6) to meet and stay in touch with them, and we want the boys to develop geographic awareness.

Besides, it’s a rite of passage. I made the trip with my family when I was about Tommy’s age and my brother was around Danny’s age. It helped to make me the traveler I’ve become, and my wife Debbie has fortunately gone along with my wanderlust. We were married in Japan, where we taught English, and spent 15 months traveling around the world as a honeymoon. We’ve twice taken the boys on Caribbean cruises and twice traveled across Europe to visit our many friends there. Last year we made two trips to Hawaii.

Another reason to take this trip now is that I’ll soon be changing jobs at Seattle Central Community College, from teaching to an administrative position that affords me far less vacation time.

And finally, at the rate things are going, the American road trip will not be nearly as available to the next generation of Americans. When gas prices rise to European levels, as they surely will, such journeys will become much less common. (Though driving 12,000 miles, even at current prices, will only cost us about $1800 in gas – about what a single, round-trip, coast-to-coast flight would cost for a family of four. And the loss of a quarter of my annual salary exceeds that amount several times over.)

We may get grief from ecologically-conscious friends for this act of environmental profligacy. But we’re not as extravagant as all that. We’ve never owned more than one car, and on most days I commute to work by bus. Living as we do in Seattle, our electricity comes almost entirely from falling water, and we recycle or compost the vast majority of our waste. And while the carbon we release on this trip will tax us with a fair amount of liberal guilt, it’s a drop in the bucket compared with what many American families consume in an average year – or, for that matter, with the carbon produced by 1.3 billion Chinese, who build a new coal-fired power plant every week or so.

All of which is a lame defense, I agree, but the open road calls to us and we cannot ignore it.

What constitutes a classic American road trip? Here’s my definition: it should reach all four corners of the country and touch at least half of the states . It should last at least a month and visit a substantial number of national parks and monuments. And it should connect as many family and friends as possible. (Ours will transport us to over 30 states, at least half of which contain friends and family.)

So follow along with us as we take our little reality show on the road, and please feel free to contact us as often as you like with greetings, comments, or suggestions. At least one of us will respond, I promise. And we'll be posting a variety of photos, links, musings, and other bloggable curios from our journey on a daily basis, so come back to this page often!

Since this blog’s address is americanroad.blogspot.com and since I have my iPod with me on this trip, I’d like to offer two 20-song play lists by a few of my favorite singers and groups. These lists, on the themes of “America” and “Road,” constitute a kind of soundtrack for our summer and, should you wish to burn a couple of discs, each fits very neatly and conveniently on a CD:

America

• All the Way from America, by Joan Armatrading

• America, by Simon & Garfunkel

• America the Beautiful, by Ray Charles

• American Girl, by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

• American Music, by The Blasters

• American Pie, by Don McLean

• American Tune, by Paul Simon

• American Without Tears, by Elvis Costello

• American Woman, by The Guess Who

• Back in the U.S.A., by Chuck Berry

• Born in the U.S.A., by Bruce Springsteen

• Breakfast in America, by Supertramp

• Happiest Girl in the Whole U.S.A., by Donna Fargo

• I’m So Bored with the U.S.A., by The Clash

• Jesus Children of America, by Stevie Wonder

• Sigmund Freud’s Impression of Albert Einstein in America, by Randy Newman

• Somewhere in America There’s a Street Named after My Dad, by Was (Not Was)

• Surfin’ U.S.A., by The Beach Boys

• The King & Queen of America, by Eurythmics

• Young Americans, by David Bowie

Road

• Any Road, by George Harrison

• Bright Side of the Road, by Van Morrison

• Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, by Lucinda Williams

• Country Road, by James Taylor

• Down the Road Tonight, by Bruce Hornsby & The Range

• Every Day Is a Winding Road, by Sheryl Crow

• Farther Up the Road, by Bobby “Blue” Bland

• Hit the Road Jack, by Ray Charles

• King of the Road, by Roger Miller

• Middle of the Road, by The Pretenders

• On the Road Again, by Willie Nelson

• On the Road to Find Out, by Cat Stevens

• Refuge of the Roads, by Joni Mitchell

• Roadrunner, by Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers

• Six Days on the Road, by The Flying Burrito Brothers

• Take Me Home Country Roads, by Toots & The Maytalls

• The Long & Winding Road, by The Beatles

• The Road’s My Middle Name, by Bonnie Raitt

• The Road & The Sky, by Jackson Browne

• Thunder Road, by Bruce Springsteen

PS - I hope you caught the references to two Grateful Dead songs at the top of this page: Truckin’ and The Golden Road.