American Road Trip: The Beginning

SOMETIME DURING THE SPRING SEMESTER of my senior year at Notre Dame, I decided I wanted to travel around the country during the summer. I�m not sure where the idea actually came from, but I recall hearing that my Uncle John, Mom�s brother, was thinking of driving to California with my aunt and two cousins. I did some rough math � the only math I do these days since the two consecutive Cs I got in freshman calculus � and figured, based roughly on Johnny�s age, that it would be 20 years before I had a chance to do this again. This is when I first thought I might actually do it.

It was maybe April, and I started telling people of my plans, partly as a way to see who might be interested in joining me. My roommate, Bryan, considered it, but then he found himself a job in Boston a month after we graduated, and two weeks before I planned on leaving. Jaime, a friend from high school I�ve stayed very close with, also thought about coming with me, but then she received an offer to do some graphic designing for a small company near Philadelphia.

So it was just me and a 1986 Volvo.

I came home from a week in New England for two graduation parties, and had an invitation to visit Laura, a fellow graduate from Maryland�s eastern shore who spent the summer as an intern in Washington, D.C. Other friends in our clan � Bryan, Mia, and Kathy � were planning on staying with Laura to celebrate America�s birthday at Beer, Hog and Crabfest V � Beermageddon. That�s where I decided I�d start my trip. The timing was perfect because I wasn�t going to leave before June 28, a date for which we had tickets to see the Mets and Yankees wrap up their three-game series at Shea Stadium. It turned out to be the only game the Mets won.

So that�s how it came to be that I loaded up the Volvo and headed south right around noon on July 2 to begin my summer tour of America.