Prelude to the Gas Pedal

The wide world beckons.
In a year where “gas prices” are on the lips of every talking head and other flunky in the media, we have decided to drive from the San Francisco Bay Area to Portland, Maine, down to Tampa, Florida and home. Having taken time from work and school for this, knowing that a gallon will never be two dollars again, and seeking to experience that road trip young married couples embarked upon in less dire times, we will set out at the end of July, and loosely follow the inner arteries and capillaries home again by early September, 2008.

We will travel in our new wheelchair-accessible Honda Element, to accommodate foot, wheel and paw. Armed with research and notes, stocked with cheap, healthy nibbles from local sources along the way, we want to find the most ecologically responsible way to travel, all the while discovering universally accessible life experiences for all travelers of America’s vast landscape.

More and more that landscape is infected with franchise-stuffed strip mall after strip mall, the airwaves dominated by corporate radio playlists echoing monotonously coast to coast. Fewer places look like themselves- more and more they look like each other. A point is fast approaching, it would seem, before our identity as Americans dulls to one form of gray, boiled down from the myriad of culture and life that slower times cultivated in all regions. It will take hard work to find America, buried in the glut of logos, chains and disposable wares of our times, but we are up for the task.