On The Road

I haven't written on much else aside from baseball in the past months, but my friend Abbott pointed out to me that today is the 50th anniversary of On The Road. Considering this is my favorite book I am going to leave the diamond for a moment to comment on what this book has meant to me since I first read it in my high school English class.

I had that high school English teacher. You know the one, she threw parties at her house and invited a few students, swore like a sailor, wrote poems about her bong and was involved in a torrid love triangle with the principle and the school secretary. So its no wonder that Jack Kerouac was required reading. Now I have never been a drug user, a poet, or even a hipster for that matter so I started reading with a sense of indifference, but was immediately sucked in. My teacher harped on what the beat generation was after, something different, not knowing your place, and breaking with social norms. But what really got me about this book was the pure sense of adventure that came along with sticking out your thumb and hoping you get lucky.

So I tried it, and I got addicted (hitchhiking that is). I would hitchhike home after sports practice even though I lived less than a mile away from school. I would hitch rides to my buddies houses even though I could have ridden my bike. I was Jack or so I thought (minus the pills). Then I took an infamous long distance trip with a friend of mine that came close to resulting in my death three times.

The goal was to make it to Canada, cross the border, and return home. Everything started out fine. The first driver to pick us up was a Russian immigrant who was training to compete with the US Biathlon team. We were also biathletes so we had a good talk about his training and his chances for the Olympics. Then things started going down hill. The next guy who picked us up started snorting blow going 80mph on the highway. He wasn't too happy when we turned down his offer of nose candy so he dropped us off in one of the most desolate, and under traveled places he could. We waited there for at least two hours, keep in mind this all took place in northern Vermont in February so we aren't talking about the tropics in terms of weather here. Finally a respectable looking Audi pulled over and let us in. In our minds we were thinking, ok an Audi, this guy obviously has some money and probably has more to lose by killing us than he does than by just taking us where we want to go. The conversation with him went something like this:

Audi Guy: So how fast do you think we are going right now?
Me: I don't know, I'd say about 30
Audi Guy: Nope, 58, this car is awesome you can't feel a thing
Me: Wow, how long have you had it?
Audi Guy: I had a friend who owed me a favor so I went over to his place and gave him a bunch of coke and he gave me this car
Me: You can let us out right up here, thanks

Two coke heads back to back. We should have just turned around then, but we were only 10 miles from the border. So we decided a bit more selective with our next ride which turned out to be an older Canadian couple driving a minivan on their way back home to Canada. Perfect, we could make it to the border and then just turn around and hope for an illicit drug free ride somewhere close to home. What we didn't realize is that you need to be at least 18 to enter Canada without parental approval. The couple was allowed to pass through the border, but we were not. In fact we were detained. Do this day I still recall the customs agent talking to my dad on the phone and saying the words "so you were not aware of this trip?" That ended my hitchhiking career for years.

But then I got to college and fell into the typical freshman year self evaluation. To top it off my college writing professor was also that teacher. He looked like a cross between John Denver and the Hippie teacher from Beavis and Butthead. The assignment was to read (or re-read) a book that somehow inspired us and write a creative piece. I was in that in between phase between the new and the old. Not unlike the way the beat generation was a bridge between the conservatism of the late 40's and early 50's to the hippie generation of the late 60's. On The Road was my natural choice.

I only made it about one hundred pages in before I realized that I needed to take another hitchhiking trip. So I had my roommate drop me off next to the on ramp of the highway and I stuck out my thumb. My goal was St. Johnsbury Vermont, about a three hundred mile trip from my college. I was a little older and wiser, but given my past experience I was sure that there would be at least one brush with a recently released convict. I was pleasantly surprised to only have one bad experience on that entire round trip. A man who seemed to be more interested in my leg than on driving the car. But aside from that I accomplished three goals, I made the trip unscathed round trip, I wrote a great paper about the experience, and I decided that unnecessary risks are not to be toyed with.

So thanks Jack, your book inspired me to take a few adventures, but also helped me to get out of those early phases in life where the only way to learn something is by hitting the road and testing things out for yourself.