Monthly Archives: September 2012

Reflection on the Journey

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The coast-to-coast road trip that my brother and I completed was a special one because of many reasons. It was the first road trip for both of us that covered the entire span of the country from the West Coast to the East Coast. It was the first road trip where the journey and the route we took was the star attraction in itself. And for my brother, this trip marked a closure of the California chapter in his life and the start of his second New York City chapter (not long after this trip he ended up meeting his wife, purchasing a home, and now expecting a child — so pretty much settling down as a New Yorker now).

Looking back at the trip to complete this blog series, I have some thoughts that came to mind. On planning for such an epic trip, here are some things to consider:

  • Transportation Options: Many people would do a coast-to-coast or other long distance trip like this as part of relocating from one place to another. In such cases, the transportation option is given (e.g., using one’s own private vehicle). Otherwise, you need to consider either driving round trip (double the distance to cover), or perhaps driving one way and then flying the other way (in which case you need to think of what to do with the car for the road trip part). In our case, since my brother was going to sell his car in CA before leaving and he was relocating, we decided to fly to LA from our respective city, meet there, and rent a car one way.
  • Drop-off Fee: Beware of the fine prints when looking for rental car options. Some rental car companies institute a ‘drop-off fee’ when you plan to pick up the car in one city and returning it in another city in a state that is not adjacent to the pick-up place. The drop-off fee would be calculated by distance traveled, and it was about 25-40 cents per mile at the time of our travel. Not a big deal if you travel short distance, but when you go for more than 2,000 miles like us, that drop-off fee ends up being even more expensive than the quote for the rental car itself. We ended up using Hertz, which had slightly higher rental cost but no drop-off charge.
  • Theme for the Trip: To make the trip memorable, think of a theme for the trip and plan the places to visit along the way based on the theme. That would allow you to come up with a nice story about the journey rather than simply a long drive from one place to another with rest stops in between. In our case, the theme was obvious once we selected the particular route, Route 66. To make it even more fun, we decided to also do a ‘scavenger hunt’ and locate the places that inspired the animated movie Cars.
  • Time Management: When planning the trip itinerary, my tendency is to try fitting in as many activities as I can to make the best use of my limited travel time. When planning for a long road trip, you need to take account several factors. Consider the drive for each segment of the trip. That would consume part of your available time that otherwise you could use for sightseeing. If you choose to be more efficient and start the day early and/or end it late so you can cover longer distance and do more things, but keep safety in mind and ensure that you do not drive when fatigue sets in. Make sure whoever is driving has enough rest (or stop if you need some). Also consider allocating some buffer time for traffic if you go through major metropolitan area especially during the rush hours. Lastly, consider time zone change if you are traveling across time zone boundaries. If you go east bound, you will gain an hour every time you pass a time zone boundary, and conversely you will lose an hour if you travel east bound.
  • Places to Stay: When you are doing a multi-day road trip, you need to consider places where you stop, get some rest, freshen up, or even visit as a destination. The options can range from stopping at a rest stop or parking lot and sleeping in your own car, camping at a camp ground, staying at a budget motel, staying at a boutique hotel / bed & breakfast, staying at a luxury resort hotel, or if you happen to know someone along the route, staying at their place. Consider your budget (time and money), how important is the place itself as a destination or part of the experience of your trip, and also how easy or difficult it is to make reservation. In our case, we ended up staying at budget motels because we wanted to drive as far as we could on the first couple of days and only needed a place to rest and freshen up. And then for one night we stayed at my brother’s friends’ home, and on the last night, we stopped at my home.

On the road trip itself, here are some thoughts from reflecting about it:

  • Authentic Americana: When we started with the idea of going through this route, I was wondering exactly what kind of experience we would have as we seem to be going through mostly small town and rural areas of the US that on my previous trips I would drive past as fast as I could to get to the destinations of my trip. The perspective changed once we looked at these places as the ‘star’ of the trip; these are places that authentically represent the American culture, especially in the rural areas. The people were not pretentious, and many of them had been living in the same place for a long time that they represent the culture and heritage of the place.
  • Local Cuisine: You can find fast food chain restaurants along the way, but you can also enhance your experience by eating your meals at local restaurants that focus on regional cuisines that also highlight the ingredients grown locally. Within our route, we could find fish tacos in CA, prickly pear salad in AZ, Mexican food with red and green chile sauce in NM, steak and barbecue in TX and OK, snoots in MO, and red hots (Chicago-style hot dogs) in IL.
  • Story Behind a Place: When you visit a place, try to find out the story behind it: the history how it came about, the people associated to the place past and present, and how it impacts the culture both locally and beyond. We learned some interesting history about a ghost town that was founded after a gold rush, a hotel built as a home away from home for Hollywood stars coming to shoot western movies, and the place that claimed to be the origin of a food/snack that is now popular around the country.
  • Route 66 Characters: Along the journey on Route 66, you can also learn and meet some people play an important role in keeping the Route 66 story as an important part of the American culture. The folks treasure the history and culture that was shaped by the existence of the Mother Road and they work tirelessly in promoting and preserving the history for future generations, and we have them to thank for.
  • Enjoy the Journey: In the end, the most valuable lesson about life I was reminded of by this trip was to enjoy the life journey and not just focus on the destination. While getting to the destination or goal is important, the majority of time spent is in the journey to get there. It makes life richer and rewarding if we can also enjoy the moments and the steps along the way.

The photo below was taken in Santa Monica, CA, at the beginning of our trip. This is the official marker of the West end of Route 66 (traditionally people would travel the route from East to West). We took this photo to mark the beginning of our journey. Unfortunately we could not find a similar marker in Chicago, IL, at the East end of Route 66, but we did get another photo taken to mark the end of our journey in New York City.

West End of Route 66

New York State of Mind

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After a lunch stop near Toledo, Ohio, we continued on our coast-to-coast road trip east bound. We considered driving straight through to New York City, but it would’ve been quite exhausting and logistically then I would have to figure out a way to get back home to Washington, DC. So we decided to take a little detour and end our fourth traveling day in the suburb of Washington, DC, where I live, and to continue on the next day with the last leg of our trip. From home, I would drive my own car separately from my brother and then I would continue on with a couple more days of road trip to New England on my own.

So on the last day of the trip, we got up early again to start driving on the last leg of our coast-to-coast road trip. Each of us drove a car and we tried to keep close to each other since I had GPS and traffic notification in my car. We used the Motorola Talkabout two-way radios to communicate between the two cars.

The drive from DC to New York was not that memorable, partly because we were driving with only few hours of sleep the night before, and because we were focused on getting back to New York as soon as possible. We had to return the car that day, and before that, we would have to unload my brother’s belongings first, so we thought we didn’t have much time to spare.

We finally reached New York City, and after unloading my brother’s belongings in his apartment in Brooklyn, we went to Midtown Manhattan to return the rental car that had served us well during the coast-to-coast road trip.

After returning the car, we went for a late lunch in Chinatown at a restaurant that had become one of my brother’s favorite restaurants in New York City. Then we went to the South Street Seaport area to find a place where I could take another photo to bookend our trip. We started with at the Santa Monica Pier on the West Coast, so I thought it would be appropriate to finish at the Pier 17 near the South Street Seaport with the iconic Brooklyn Bridge and the Brooklyn area, my brother’s new home, to finish the trip.

While writing about this last part of the trip, I couldn’t help to remember how much our view of New York City had changed over the years. I remembered when I visited New York City with my brother for the first time how after half day of sightseeing on the Grayline double-decker bus, my brother commented that he didn’t like New York and wouldn’t want to live there. Not long after, I also spent a couple of months working on a work project at my company’s New York office. I enjoyed visiting the city, particularly going to the Broadway shows, but I didn’t really think it’s a place I would like to live in.

Several years later, my brother was ‘forced’ to move to New York City to pursue his graduate degree. Then he got a job that allowed him to stay in the area, and along the way, he came to love the city and its unique lifestyle. After I moved to Washington, DC, I could visit my brother more frequently, and during those visits, I came to see and appreciate what it was like to see and experience New York City from the perspective of its resident. Now my brother lives with his family in Brooklyn, very much a New Yorker. I still don’t think I could live there (for the same reason I wouldn’t like to live in downtown DC either — I rather live in a suburb with easy access to the city than live in the heart of the city itself), but it’s becoming a place that I do like to visit.

Brooklyn Bridge

Adopted Family

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We reached Chicago, which was east end of the Route 66 part of our coast-to-coast road trip. That ended the more exciting part of our journey, but we still had quite a long distance to to reach our actual destination, New York City. And my brother had to be back home for an event in a couple of days, and we had to return the rental car in New York City before we get penalized for going over. So the rest of our journey was about making it back to New York City within the time constraint. But we did have at least one more ‘meaningful’ stop along the way. Since we would be passing Toledo area around lunch time, I had made a lunch plan with a family that was influential in my life — yet more ‘life-long friends’ to meet during the trip.

I considered this family my adopted family as they were the family whom I stayed with around 20 years ago when I first came to the United States as an exchange student from Indonesia. When I applied to spend one year of high school in the US, I was matched with a host family in a small town in Southeast Michigan. It was quite an experience as I came from an urban life in a city of more than 10 million people, and I was placed in a little village of 300. For my host family, it was an experience as well as prior to my arrival, they knew almost nothing about Indonesia.

It ended up to be a great experience for all of us, and my host family also played an important role in convincing me to go to a college in Southwestern Michigan for the next four years. During that time, my host sister and brother also went to college at a school nearby, so we were able to keep in touch a little bit. Years later, my host siblings got married, and I came to their weddings from wherever I happened to live. In many of those occasions, I met their extended family, and everyone in the family pretty much considered me as one of the members of the family. So it felt really like my adopted family away from my real family back in Indonesia. A few months before this coast-to-coast trip, I did a road trip in Michigan and visited the family for a couple of days. Some of the family friends in the little village also still remembered me, and going back there to visit really felt like a homecoming.

Since my host sister and her family lived in the suburb of Toledo near Interstate 80 that we would pass on our way to the east coast, we thought it would be nice to be able to meet them even only for lunch. We timed the lunch meeting so my host sister could pick up her daughter from preschool and her husband could join us during his lunch break. My host mom decided to take the afternoon off from work and drove about an hour away to meet us as well.

We made it there within less than half hour from the original target time, so it was not too bad of a timing. Just like the dinner we had with my brother’s college friend the night before, the actual lunch itself was not that memorable. But it was nice to be able to spend even only an hour with old friends whom you consider as family. These were the times that you’re grateful to have people in your life that enriches your experience and make life worth living.

Adopted family

The End (or the Start) of the Route

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After three long days of driving, we finally reached Chicago. We had a great time catching up with my brother’s old college friend, but we were quickly reminded to get at least a few hours of sleep before we had to leave again in the morning to continue our journey.

We left quite early in the morning as we’re planning on meeting up with some more friends in the suburb of Toledo for lunch. I wanted to make sure we could get out of Chicago without getting caught in morning commute, and we also wanted to make one more stop to complete our Route 66 journey. We started the journey three days before at the plaque near the beach of Santa Monica, CA, that marked the west end of Route 66. We thought it would be appropriate to also stop at the east end of Route 66 in Chicago.

Both my brother and I had been to Chicago many times, and we were somewhat familiar with the downtown Chicago area. But neither of us ever noticed seeing any sign there that marked the east end of Route 66. I looked through guidebooks about Route 66, and I found information about either it’s located at the intersection of Michigan Avenue and Jackson Street, or it’s somewhere near the nearby Grant Park. So we decided to just drive to that area, park our car, and perhaps walk around a little bit to find the marker.

We parked at the underground parking on Michigan Avenue nearby our destination, and we were greeted by something unexpected that we should’ve known and anticipated better. When we got out of the elevator from the parking garage, we were greeted by a cold and windy Chicago autumn weather. Here we were, wearing light jacket and sweat and sandals. That was fine when we were traveling in California and the Southwest, but not in Chicago. So my brother’s comment was about finding this Route 66 marker quickly and then perhaps get hot coffee and leave.

We reached the intersection of Michigan Avenue and Jackson Street, and we couldn’t find that end of Route 66 sign. The only other info I had said the official east terminus of Route 66 was the Grant Park. Well, that’s not really helpful as Grant Park was quite a large park. I told my brother, ‘how about walking around the park a little bit to look for the Route 66 sign’. My brother said, ‘why don’t you go ahead and do so; I’ll just wait at the coffee shop around the corner because it’s way too cold to walk around outside.’ So I did go to Grant Park and walked around looking for the Route 66 sign, but couldn’t really find it. Finally I ran out of time (and it was getting too cold out there), so I decided to just cut my losses and took the photo of the Chicago skyline to show that we did reach the east end of Route 66. It would’ve been nicer to bookend the trip with another photo of a Route 66 plaque, but unfortunately this one would have to do.

Grant Park

Old Friends

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During different seasons of life, we meet people whom we end up building friendship with. Many of these friendships would only last during a particular season of life; once either of the person moves on to the next stage or place in their life, the friendship kind of die out and eventually these folks are out of your life. Out of sight, out of mind.

There are also other friends who are special because you have close relationships with them. Usually these are people that you’ve grown to be close with because you share a life experience or interests with them, and you know them well enough that you treat them almost like family. The word sincere comes to my mind in describing such friendships. It means genuine, without pretense. These are friends whom you can count on to be there for you when you need them, and they would give without expecting anything in return.

When my brother transferred out from a college in Texas to another school in Iowa, he found himself among a small group of Indonesian students there. The group was very close-knit; I think partly because everyone was in the same situation of being away from home, and they shared the same cultural background of being from the same home country.

One of my brother’s friends there was older than he was, but in a way she and her then fiance treated my brother like their own brother. I met them when I visited my brother during his study there and during his graduation. But one thing I remembered of her was the one (and only) time she called me. It was on September 11, 2011. That day I was in Washington, DC, area, and my brother had just moved to New York City area to start his graduate study. She called me frantically because she had just found out about the attack on the WTC towers, and she couldn’t get hold of my brother to find out if he was ok. Somehow she found my cell number and called me. At that time of the day (late morning, a couple of hours after the planes hit the WTC and the Pentagon), the phone system for calling NYC area was overloaded, so no one could get through. Finally I was able to get hold of my brother, and he was doing fine as he was not in Lower Manhattan when it happened. That’s what I remembered of her, and I really appreciated her concern for my brother’s well-being that day.

Fast forward many years later. I had not talked or seen my brother’s friend or her husband since 2001. But my brother kept in touch with them, and when she found out that we would be traveling past Chicago area, she offered to have us staying at their home in the suburb of Chicago. It was a no-brainer for my brother, and we gladly accepted the offer.

We reached Chicago area quite late at night after a long drive that started in Oklahoma. During the day, we kept her updated on our journey so she knew where we were and when she could expect us to get there. When we arrived, it was like seeing an old friend or family; they connected immediately and there were a lot of things to catch up on. We went to a local Denny’s restaurant for a late dinner. That was the only place nearby that was still open that late in the night. Nothing to write about the dinner itself, but it was great to catch up with her and learn about her life in Chicago.

That’s one thing to consider when you’re doing a long road trip. Sometimes you may pass a place where you know of someone who live there. It’s worth to set aside some time to meet them, and sometimes they wouldn’t mind that you stay with them. It allows you more time to spend with your friend, and also save some money from the trip (you could use the lodging money to treat your host in a dinner instead). Best of all, you get to catch up on life with them.

Old friends