Road Trip: Day One

Geneseo, NY to Delaware, OH

The car is packed, campgrounds have been reserved, our route is set. Today Courtney and I set off on our epic cross-country drive from Geneseo, NY to Davis, CA.

Lots of people say they want to drive across America, but many never do. We’ve said it ourselves several times, but now we really are doing it because later in September Courtney is starting her PhD in English Literature at the University of California, Davis. If we’re going to move all that way, we thought, we should see a slice of the country.

When Courtney first mentioned the idea I agreed, but with one condition: I wanted us to average four to four-and-a-half hours per day on the road. For an American a drive of such duration is trivial, but I’m not American. I come from an island so small that in certain places four hours is ample time for a journey from the east coast to the west. Split into Englishman-friendly chunks, our road trip will take just under two weeks to complete.

In his book, Roads, Larry McMurtry writes that rivers used to be the arteries of America. Now the big roads, the interstates, pump its lifeblood of commerce and migration. Life on the roads, like life on the great rivers of less industrialised countries, is very different to life a few miles away from them.

… villagers living only a mile or two from the Ganges know almost nothing about it, while the river men are similarly ignorant of conditions even a little distance up the shore. River and village, roadway and forest are two realities that seldom merge, however close they may lie to each other geographically.

For the next two weeks, Courtney and I will be as McMurtry’s river men, caught in the flow of petrol and the spinning of the wheels. Our focus will be on what lies to the sides of the road, its tributaries and diversions, but nevertheless we will be travellers, strangers, a degree removed from the settled communities we pass through.

We will start in Geneseo, New York, head west into Ohio, southwest through Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas to Dallas, Texas. From there we strike out west through New Mexico and Arizona, and into southern California, where we will head north through the eastern Sierras to Davis. Along the way we plan to see the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Mammoth Caves, Nashville, Graceland, Hot Springs, The Grand Canyon, London Bridge, a ghost town or two, the mighty redwoods of Yosemite, and maybe, just maybe, the world’s largest basket.

And when we arrive we start all over again, putting down roots, working our way into the fabric of yet another community, making a place for ourselves 2500 miles away from Courtney’s home, and 5000 away from mine.

8.35am
We left John and Gidget’s house just before 8am. I’m glad it’s going to be a long time before I have to deal with its eccentric electrics again. Every night, last thing before I get ready for bed, I run through a little five-minute ritual of confusion. There are about nine identical light switches scattered across the walls of their kitchen-dining-living room. A number of them seem to switch one light on and another light off. Worse is that they’re not always what they seem. Over the sink there are two light switches: one controls the spotlights over the sink, the other operates the very noisy garbage disposal. It whines, it whirs, it gurgles, it vibrates. Without fail, while creeping around the quiet, dark house, trying to extinguish all illumination, I flick the wrong switch and give myself a scare. Last night I felt sure I’d woken everyone in the house. I hope our apartment in Davis is more logically-wired.

We’ve driven the first leg of today’s journey, the stretch to Buffalo, several times before and as recently as yesterday, for my green card interview, so we’re really excited about this leg of the trip. About ten miles out of Geneseo there’s a tiny town called Retsof, which sounds like an an anagram. Batavia, the next place of note along the route has lots of buildings with planes painted on the exterior walls. Something to do with an airstrip on the outskirts of town. In Batavia we join I-90, a toll road which will pipe us over to Buffalo in about an hour.

In The Lost Continent, Bill Bryson writes of how frustrating American local radio stations can be. If I remember correctly he theorises that by switching between radio stations at the right time it should be possible to hear nothing but Hotel California for your entire journey. Having been here six months, I think his theory is probably correct. I am heartily sick of the Eagles. In the words of Jeff Bridges in the Big Lebowski, "I just hate the fuckin’ Eagles, man!"

Eagles excepted, almost every radio station plays a ratio of seven parts shit, three parts shinola. I’ll try to provide one shining example of lyrical excrescence every day.

Laughable lyric of the day:

Don’t give me no hand-me-down shoes
Don’t give me no hand-me-down love
I don’t want it and I really don’t need it

9.00am
Near Buffalo a Canadian jazz station sneaks across the border to tickle our ears for a few miles.

11.02am

Still on I-90, we spot our comedy business of the day: Quaker Steak ‘n’ Lube, Erie, Pennsylvania. What? I can get a steak and an oil change at the same time? Bitchin’!

13.00pm

We arrive in Cleveland, Ohio, for our attraction of the day, the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame. Although the concept of a Hall of Fame isn’t very rock’n’roll, it isn’t the cheese-fest it could be. Apart from the likes of the Beatles, Hendrix and Pink Floyd, it is pleasant to see how much space has been dedicated to lesser-known names such as Les Paul, jazz musician and inventor of the solid body electric guitar. The funked-up Trabants from U2’s Zooropa tour make a spectacular foyer centrepiece, there is a fabulous exhibition of Supremes frocks, and a fascinating selection of Hendrix’s doodles.

A couple of blocks away in downtown Cleveland we saw the world’s largest rubber stamp.

17.30pm
A horsedrawn buggy was plodding across one of the local road bridges that crosses I-70 south of Mansfield. Looking as closely as I could, I caught a glimpse of a woman in a dark headscarf. Our first Amish sighting of the trip.

Today’s mileage: 407 miles