Sarah E. Moffett

Took a drive up America’s spine recently. It was one of those, “I can’t be here,” “me either,” kind of trips. So we threw hastily packed bags into the trunk, three dollar gas into the tank, and found ourselves driving.

We were on a road trip. We were off to escape. And we were “escaping” by crawling up the I-95 spine of East Coast America’s brown winter back to the smells of diesel and sights of bareness. We quickly learned that corporate America’s Alcatraz extends a bit beyond a single day’s drive. The only things that broke up the slag road and monochromatic horizon were the orange detour signs that peppered the highway and one billboard in Baltimore that read “Sprint. Coverage like old bay on blue crab.”

Nice to see someone’s creative mind was working. Mine, on the other hand, was not. 

The past month it’s been an attack of the T’s—trial, taxes, technology, temperatures, and TB (not really, but it felt like it). If one’s right brain doesn’t atrophy after weeks of corporate excitement, then it must already be gone. Thankfully, we live in a world of experiential defibrillators. Within hours, I was circling Rodin’s Burghers of Calais at Rodin’s Museum, sipping martinis with inventive names at the Continental, tasting flights of Filipino appetizers in a converted 19th century colonial bank called Cebu, walking cobblestone streets that legitimately qualify as old, and buying barrister bookshelves made on the right side of 1850.

But I wasn’t there yet. I was in the car, and this writer’s mind was overflowing with a world of non sequitors-Nietzsche was pushing against the status of Brady’s ankle (and now ego), James Dean was somewhere between Heath Ledger’s death and Van Gogh’s absinthe ingestion, and everything else was sandwiched between the sky of a Federal Rule 26(a)(1) disclosure due Monday and the earth of an impatiently waiting half done manuscript.

This, of course, means my mind tripped over itself straight into Kerouac’s lap.

“Where are we going Dean?”

“I don’t know, but it’s the open road man.”

“But why?”

“We just go to go.”

For the first time, I really got why Dean just had to go.  So we’re going.

And upon arrival, we were greeted with a massive billboard declaring, “Coverage like cheese on steak.”

I think it’s about time to start looking West.

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