The Shrunken Planet

You end today's posting with a Jared Diamond "Guns, Germs and Steel" feel, but ask an interesting question in your second graph: What are the best road books?

My two favorites are Texan Larry McMurtry's 2000 "Roads" where he makes a literary driving tour but really doesn't eject himself from the driver's seat except for "rest stops." The second and more liked (by me) is metis William Least Heat Moon's 1982/1999 "Blue Highways" (meaning he takes the byways rather than the highways).

I am fascinated by page 17 in Least Heat-Moon's nonfiction work, his discourse on Kentucky, where he mentions that limestone gives good handmade bourbons their flavor, but more importantly--since I live with a rare genetic disorder that impacts how my body uses calcium--is the mention of the bone health of Kentucky Derby stakes winners, given that these horse wth super bones drink from certain calcium-laden (from Limestone) springs around Lexington. C Craig Venter and Eric Lander and Oliver Sacks, are you listening? (Pretty topical given that Giacomo just won the Derby crown.)

Like you, Joel, I crossed the Pennsylvania Alleghenies late last April, driving solo from Texas to do the necessary research for my book. I had grave second thoughts about the wisdom of my trip after crossing the highest mountaintops in West Virginia (Robert Byrd highway) and seeing that spring was late and the trees were just barely in bud.

I know Kamchatka well. Have you had a beer at the bar at the end of the Homer (Alaska) Spit?

Whom should we blame for our ever increasingly shrinking world? Gilbert Loomis and his work on the early auto in Westfield, Mass. Or those distant cousin Wright Brothers from Kelvedon, Essex, England, and their incredible flying machine? Or publications and TV for increasing our collective Wanderlust? Is there a gene for Wanderlust? Wonder what chromosome it's resident on?

J. Craig Venter, please forgive me for mistyping the first initial of your name--from one old California lifeguard to another...

Maybe this is why the universe is expanding. We need to preserve a sense of the unknown. The more we learn about our immediate world, the further we will need to look into the depths of space to provide sufficiently challenging mysteries (and road trips). But don't ask me how the universe "knows" to expand. . . .

long road trip:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4603576

Linda - I have indeed had a beer at the Salty Dawg Saloon. (reputed to be the only bar with a USGS benchmark inside)

had a steak dinner at the Tustemena Lodge (home of many hats) on the way there.

this may seem like a sidebar, but I think it's illustrative of Joel's point.

I don't know about an interstate novel, but a Rand McNally Road Atlas is a powerful work to me--I get lost in there, I don't know where the time went.

I'm surprised their is no mention of 'Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,' the definitive travel book of the 20th c. in that Agee and Evans are traveling to what was, at that time, the final frontier, and bringing the worldview of southern sharecroppers and the ultimate victims of the great depression (without judgement) to those that had no ability to see that for themselves during the depression era. That the photos of Walker Evans are still widely known, that it took Agee all those pages to do for the reader what the photos did sans caption, makes the novel one of the greatest "road" novels to date.

That's not how "Cincinnati" is spelled.

Help! I'm trapped next door with a few anti-Hollywood squares and I can't escape! I fear the shrunken planet will be nothing compared to my shrinking head. I'll scream if one more sour, right wing, high horse riding humor-deprived fiend blogs up.

Yes the world is thought of as shrinking. So how come no one knows the neighbors anymore?

Is it possible that Einsteins' theory of relativity can be applied here too?

Joel...which edition of the New Yorker has the McPhee article? I'm looking for it and can't find it in this week's (May 16 issue)

"How can we continue to see the world as real, when the self that is determining it to be real is intangible?"
-- Ramtha

"WE are running the holodeck."
-- William Tiller, Ph.D.

[quoted from "What the Bleep Do We Know?"]

There was recent 6-part series in National Geographic Traveler about a road trip from Alaska to Florida.

I've actually done that roadtrip from Jacksonville, Florida to Soldotna, Alaska...1978 VW camper bus, two-three weeks, three gerbils, a cat, five kids, a canoe, your entire house full of stuff... Sounds more fun than it was and was more fun than it sounds - straight across the South - up the West Coast and then ferry to Alaska - through Canada and down the Tok Valley to the Kenai Peninsula...

As for the ride out I-70 to I-68, that drive more than anything else makes me think about how long it took to get place via horse and buggy.

When our daughter was 2 we took a 30 foot Airstream trailer on the road for six months. We started outside Tulsa, went south, drove around Texas for a long time--that is a big state, but less than half the size of Alaska--then went to Denver, Chicago, Boston, (lots of other places in between) and down the east coast, ending up at the end of the road, Key West. Drove the Airstream right into town, past Sloppy Joe's to the Key West Seaport, and lived at the Seaport, in the trailer, for three years. Those were the days.

I think road trips are quintessentially American, and you really learn about the country by driving around in it.

I live between Wash,PA and Morgantown, WV..... and take I68 to I70 on my trips to DC. I agree with the other writer....How in the heck did they make it across "them thar hills" in wagons with horses and the like. That is true determination!

hey joe, are you going to say anything about the fact that the Princeton University Frist Filibuster is coming to Washington, DC?

http://www.princeton.edu/~petehill/filibuster-pr8.html

I highly recommend Bill Bryson's Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America. It is both humorous and chock-full of discussion about driving on highways.

I second Blue Highways as well.

There are still remote places in our universe. They're called third world countries.

Road trip: How about "Travels With Charley" by John Steinbeck? A bit preachy but still love that dog!

Some years ago (at least 10) the Washington Post Magazine did an article on the I95 rest stop/advertising phenomenon South of the Border.

Some nice synergy between this post and the "Einstein for Dummies" post -- "Driving Mr. Albert", by Michael Paterniti, is a terrific road book.

Inuvik, Northwest Territories

map: http://www.yukoninfo.com/dempster/index.html

For a long, adventure drive in North America, the drive from DC to Inuvik is tough to beat.

Depending on the route, you travel approximately 10,000 miles. Almost 1,000 of those miles are on dirt roads.

You pass from the coastal plain of the Atlantic Ocean through several mountain ranges to the coastal highlands of the Arctic Ocean.

If you have the time, you will meet and learn from more native and archaic native people than you ever imagined.

If you need an tour destination event, the Great Northern Art Show is your ticket for wonderful art and food. This show juries the art multiple times, and what eventually is shown in town can be outstanding. Most of the art is from the Far North (above the Northern continental shoreline, though some may be from the south-central Yukon/NWT).

The trip does not require four wheel drive or a truck. A sedan in good working order can pull the trip. Of course, there are some mods to do to any vehicle to make sure your eventful trip remains under your control.

Bring good music, a good friend or two and more than a couple of weeks. Its a great trip!

And it really gets you out of the DC rut.

If you have any questions, drop me a line at dickbarber@gbainfo.com.

Hey, I'm a grad student out in Hartford that is about to embark on what I think must be one of the longest solo road trips ever. I'll start in CT, drive down the coast to Florida, drive across the South until CA, meet up with friends there and go to the Grand Canyon and Vegas, then back to CA and up to OR and WA, across the north for a wedding in MN in July, and then all the way back to CT via upper NY. Anyone beat that? Again, I'm driving alone the entire way.