The only thing to do was go: a defense of the American road trip

Your group chat is discussing spring break. Everyone is fixated on the mystical “Japan trip,” speaking in currency exchange rates and saved up frequent flyer miles. 

One problem: Your current savings consist of $5 in your back pocket, the neon blue Jolly Rancher you got from the Student Involvement Fair and the cobwebs holding your wallet together. Are you doomed to a spring break filled with dorm-room solitude?

No, and here lies my petition for the road trip. There’s nothing wrong with traveling to other countries, nor am I disparaging those who do. But when was the last time you did a road trip through the American interior? When was the last time you watched the landscape melt into a blur past your fingertips as you merged onto I-70?

Where to go

A road trip is about how the thin white lines slip past you at 70 mph and the way a conversation wavers into comfortable silence. Pick a national park, pick some random landmark in Delaware, pick some town whose name sounds funny. 

The point of it all is not arrival but how you slowly remind yourself of scale. Remind yourself that there are cornfields that do not care about your LinkedIn or whether you’re “Open to Work.” Remind yourself that there are gas stations that make coffee so strong they affirm your faith in humanity and skies so wide your deadlines seem devoid of meaning.

Refamiliarize yourself with boredom. Between terrible cell service and dying batteries, somewhere between mile 83 and mile 212, jokes lose meaning and the psyche starts stretching. This is good.

Transportation

This is fairly simple; get a car. Yes, trains exist; buses are noble yet optimistic, but something freeing exists in choosing the exits you take and who gets aux. 

Be practical with the car; choose something with enough space. Compact sedans are cute until mile 150 hits and someone’s foot is poking at your kidney. Conversely, please choose something with good gas mileage; do not fund an oil conglomerate’s yearly salary in the name of wanderlust. 

Remember that driving is accountability. Try your best to not take wrong turns or miss exits. You’ll discover that the scenic route is scenic in theory. But none of this is tragic; it’s just another digit on the odometer. 

Food and lodging 

If you enjoy back problems, car camping is an option; put on directions for a rest stop, push the seats back and find a makeshift pillow. But if you like your vertebrae intact, split a Holiday Inn. Put to rest your concerns about bedbugs, and fall asleep to the hum of ice machines that sound like distant thunderstorms. 

Abandon your pretensions for food. Eat at diners with laminated menus and unique places; order specials and try new dishes, especially when the waitress says the chili is good. The food will not care for aesthetics or your Beli account; today, there are far more important things, like Waffle House. 

Music

It is tempting to curate the perfect roadtrip playlist, whether that’s Fleetwood Mac, Los Ángeles Azules or my dad’s ‘90s Tollywood mix. As frustrating as it is to relinquish the aux, let it oscillate between genres (and a song your friend insists is “niche” but is really just Radiohead).

Windows are down, volume is up, someone is singing off-key. Eventually, you will drive in silence as the tires smooth into percussion. The music isn’t about taste but instead about proclaiming to the dusty plains around you; you were here, you were young, you were moving.

Now what?

None of the places on your phone like Paris or Shibuya Crossing will evaporate, but something quietly radical exists in choosing the interior. So bring the cash for tolls; bring water bottles for dehydration; bring patience for friends and family. You might argue about directions only to reconcile over cold fries. And as the sun sets in a place whose name you cannot pronounce, we will all briefly remember that the world isn’t arranged for our consumption but instead for our passage.

What can you optimize, post or prove? Kerouac said it best: “There was nothing to talk about anymore. The only thing to do was go.”

Thansi Garikipati is a freshman majoring in Biophysics from Edmond, Okla.