Thought: On Driving
Monday, June 25th, 2007To pick up, incongruously, where I left off, I went to visit some friends in Pittsburgh, mostly to get away from “the House Where My Ex-Wife Used to Live” …”of Doom!”. I also wanted to see them, and see Pittsburgh, because I haven’t seen many Midwestern towns outside of Ohio.
So I drove out there, across I-70 from Columbus through Wheeling, to Pittsburgh. For most of its length, I-70 follows the Route 40 …er… route across the eastern states. After the divorce, I’d been thinking about taking a road trip from Atlantic City to San Francisco, across the great American wide-open…. I’d see the small towns, eat at the greasy spoons, wave at people… really experience rural America.
Hogwash! Here’s a fact: Route 40 is usually less than 3 miles from I-70 as it crosses westward from New Jersey. And I-70 is an endless two-to-eight lane trench, speeding America along, gathering up its small towns as it gains speed to 80 miles per hour, then dropping them off at intermittent intersections so they can build strip malls and cine-plexes.
Not to get all regionalist slow-food commie on you, but the great American road trip has been ruined by interstate highways. It’s all about the destination now. And those destinations are homogenized so when people get to where they’re going, they can go out for a very special dinner at Olive Garden.