The War Between Reality and Romance
A year ago, I was driving to Maine from my home in California. The trip was very romantic. I spent three months exploring the country, sleeping in an old truck, and looking for truth among the mundane parts of America. I made lasting memories and found romance from the sweaty, dry desert to the Northeast storms. I also have a confession to make. I might be a complete fraud.
It’s a curious thing privileged people do, a thing I do, ditching lives of convenience for short periods of time. Abandoning a bed to sleep on the dirt or, in my case, the back of a 1987 Ford Ranger. Perhaps I wanted to see things with my own eyes. Perhaps it was simply a reminder that I can quit a job and drive to Maine. It was a middle finger to a shitty boss. A reminder to myself that I’m not trapped. An exclamation of my freedom and a desire for intimacy.
One of my favorite books, and one that initially inspired me to set sail towards Maine, is Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck. The book is a diary of Steinbeck’s roadtrip across the United States and his search of the real America. Steinbeck writes of his experiences with such grace and virtue.
He inspired me to take side roads, to truly see and connect with the real America.
“When we get these thruways across the whole country, as we will and must, it will be possible to drive from New York to California without seeing a single thing.”
He inspired me to be authentic and emotionally open to the wilderness, different cultures, and less-touched parts of America. I would avoid the ipad selfie tourists driving through Yosemite. And I wouldn’t be tempted by the song of the sirens of Instagram, luring me with the inauthentic cyber attention of #vanlife.
“Again it might have been the American tendency in travel. One goes, not so much to see but to tell afterward.”
‘The whole thing only has value if it is authentic,’ I tell myself. There is value in showing respect towards different communities, history, and nature as a visitor. There is value in traveling to learn rather than for the validation of others. And there is value in allowing oneself to be bored in a world where we more often fill every empty space.
So I quit the tech job I hated and sold the Subaru that I loved for the sake of that authenticity. I needed a vehicle for creating the feeling that I was putting the work in, getting my hands dirty. So I bought my truck with the hopes of working on it myself, finding zen in the art of vintage Ford Ranger maintenance. Hello, Big Brown. And then I did it, I drove to Maine. And I drove home. And I did find authenticity, inner-peace, and romance with the open road and with America.
But I feel it’s important to tell the whole story because I’m also a fraud.
In reality, it was incredibly difficult to work on the truck. It would not stop burning oil, and all of my efforts to figure out the root cause were in vain. The truck wasn’t going to drive 100 miles without needing another quart of oil, let alone the entire country and back. In the end, I paid a large sum of money for a shop to completely rebuild the engine.
After getting it back, I scrambled to build the sleeping platforms and shelves in the bed of the truck, and I hit the road. Still with optimism of completing some romantic objective.
Two days into the trip, I pulled over at some sand dunes off of Highway 50 in Nevada, known as the “loneliest highway in America”. After taking some photos, I got back in my truck, turned the key, and nothing. The engine didn’t turn, not even a click. After some diagnosis and attempts to push start the truck, I concluded that the engine had mysteriously seized and I was shit out of luck.
I called my dad (step one to solving every car issue) and explained the situation. In the end he borrowed a flatbed trailer from a friend, I spent a sad night in a broken down car in the desert, and the next day we drove the long 9 hours back to the shop in San Jose. (Note, my father had knee surgery the week before).
And just like that, I thought the trip was over. I had a sublet for my room in San Francisco, so I figured I would need to just stay with my parents for the summer. I was embarrassed and I was sad. And there is very little freedom or romanticism found in living with your parents for a summer after telling everyone of your plans to “drive to Maine”.
After spending two full days of self-loathing, I got a call from the shop. The truck was running fine. The starter had got caught and broke off, jamming the flywheel. I was told that if the car had been rolled in reverse, it likely would have unjammed and been totally fine. They replaced the starter, and I could pick it up any time. Not only did I misdiagnose the issue, I made it way worse than it actually was.
I almost didn’t go on the trip at all at that point. I figured all authenticity was lost. From relying on paying someone to fix the burning oil, to a complete misdiagnosis of the breakdown, and then relying on my father to drive 9 hours to pick me up. I am the biggest phony of them all, Holden Caulfield. But I realized it would be even more selfish not to go at this point. My dad insisted on driving 9 hours a week after knee surgery not because he was ashamed, but because he loved me and wished he could drive to Maine in an old Ford Ranger.
I did go, and I created many storybook memories. I went to church in the deep south, struggling to understand the accents. I drank daiquiris in New Orleans. I read books recommended by a small bookstore in Manchester by the Sea. I found a dead body in Indiana. I snuck up on yipping prairie dogs in the Badlands. I found peace within the woods of coastal Maine. I found solace in the boredom of long, Midwest highways. I allowed time to take me past boredom to a place where the hum of motor synced with the hum of my inner self. The self that isn’t anxious. The self that is unscathed from shame and insecurities. The self that simply exists, observes, experiences, but is usually drowned out by the rest of my thoughts. Boredom and exploration and loneliness helped me learn to love that inner self better.
I found freedom on the open road. The freedom that so many of my favorite artists sing about. Thunder Road, Born to Run, Take it Easy, Old Town Road. But even though I felt freedom, I spent so much time trying to validate the authenticity of the whole thing. Perhaps writing this is only further grasping for validation. How authentic was the whole thing after such a selfish, privileged beginning? I’m coming to terms with the arrogance of judging the way others travel, while myself being such a phony.
I’m quick to validate the artists who inspire me. But Steinbeck was a phony too. His stories were most certainly fabricated, and I assume he was somewhat of a pretentious asshole. Bruce Springsteen is a rich rockstar from New Jersey who fakes a Midwestern accent and writes songs about other people’s lives. But I still love them, and they still inspire me. So I’m going to show myself that same grace. I had put so much pressure on some sort of ideal, when the whole point of the thing was to listen. I judged others and I judged myself.
Driving across America made me happier, more thankful, and a little more at peace living on this earth. The value came from the friends I visited and made. The value came in the form of love and respect for places that I will likely never go back to. The value came from connecting with my dad and hopefully making him proud.
So this a confession. I admit my fraud. But it is also a love letter. A love letter to my inner self that isn’t anxious. A love letter to the open road. A love letter to my Dad. To Bruce Springsteen. To John Steinbeck. To my 1987 Ford Ranger. A love letter to Maine, and the romance I found on the road.
“I am happy to report that in the war between reality and romance, reality is not the stronger.”
