The great college road trip

Aug. 10, 2008

Part of every college student’s education is a summer road trip: either around America or Europe, or even on to Africa and Asia. Those who take the plunge come back with the kind of education they could never receive in the classroom.

The West has held an allure since the beginning of European colonization. Idyllic visions of westward travel have been infused into our culture, thanks to the likes of Daniel Boone and Jack Kerouac. For a restless young college student, west was the only direction to go this summer.
My traveling companion was Abraham Morrison, who I met in 3rd grade at a Christian elementary school. We started planning this road trip as soon as we realized that someday we too would have cars. Unfortunately, gas prices tripled since our original plan, so an alternative method had to be devised.
Thanks to a friend at Horizon Books, Abe stumbled on the America Discovery pass: $750 for 60 days of unlimited travel. The only catch was that it would be on a Greyhound bus. So, despite the protests of well-intentioned friends and family, on May 20 we set off on a bus and within 60 days had traveled over half the circumference of the earth.
In my 19 years of existence, I have not been out of Michigan very much, so seeing the rest of the country was quite the experience. There were these very odd grassless hills in California I was fascinated with; and speaking of odd, I still have not been able to fully comprehend the delightful weirdness of the Badlands. Gangly, grotesque shrubbery sparsely covering the tiers of multicolored soil. This place looked like a scene from Star Trek.
For the majority of our trip we were living as transients, rarely staying more than a day or two at any given area. There were plenty of long hikes with heavy bags, followed by sleeping on the side of a highway, and we even acquired our drinking water for a few days from a running stream. The mental and physical exertion required to make it day-to-day was something I had never been exposed to before, yet it was refreshing in an odd way. For the first time it felt like I was in control of my life. Who was there to answer to? No parents, professors, bosses, girlfriends, and the cops only bothered us once in Arizona for trespassing. Remember kids, sleeping can be a crime.
Everywhere we went there was someone new and interesting for us to hang out with. Many of the days passed by with the sharing of stories, food, and tobacco -- mostly Abe’s tobacco, since it is hard these days to find a fellow pipe smoker. Unfortunately, these people mainly consisted of drunks and vagabonds and not the swarms of very beautiful girls we were hoping for.
On the beaches of Santa Cruz, California, we were hanging out with a burned-out Vietnam War veteran abusing illicit substances with his posse full of “chronic alcoholics,” as one of the drunks put it, instead of chatting it up at the volleyball courts. However, looking back, I am glad things turned out the way they did for this reason: Bikinis are nowhere near as interesting as hearing stories dealing with weird pills, lawnmowers, and household pets. Then there was the occasional philosophical history debate with a heavily tattooed Hispanic or an entire night of talking comic books and their similarities to Greek mythology with the most cynical Canadian I have ever met.
On the way back to Oregon from Arizona, this giant African-American boarded the bus. He had on a big, baggy black shirt, huge jeans, and a do-rag. He looked like a down-on-his-luck illicit substance dealer and smelled as if he may have been delving into his product. Across the aisle from me was a lady with her two kids, one about five and the other was still an infant sitting on her lap; and, of course, this guy sits in the row right in front of her, clutching his big black duffel bag which I was almost positive had everything Greyhound forbids to take on the bus.
Around midnight the bus stopped for a meal break. I have no money so I decide to smoke some pipe tobacco and then rejoin my sleeping companion. This guy goes to McDonald’s and after that goes to the gas station. Returning back to the bus, I notice he has a big bag full of small bags of chips and bottles of juice. Someone must have the munchies. As I sit down he gets back on the bus and walks past the seat, which gives me a small panic. But he pays no attention to me. This guy, who for the past half-day I have been making my target of many premature and rash judgments, gently wakes up the mother of the two kids, puts the bag at her feet, and says: “These are for your kids when they wake up.”
More so than the shame I felt for being a bona fide bigot, I had this moment of realization that true acts of compassion and generosity are not the ones on magazine covers. Generosity is not billionaires giving millions or benefit concerts given by fattened rock stars looking for their last gig before they kick the bucket. No, true greatness lies in the widow giving her last few coins, the drunk offering a swig of a near-empty bottle, or an unemployed trucker buying the unkempt hippie sitting next to him on a Greyhound some beef jerky and apple juice.