The first John Steinbeck novel I read was Travels With Charley. It was sometime in junior high, I believe. Maybe earlier. I marveled at his stories (and odd multi-page diversion into the benefits of owning a mobile home) of crossing the country with his dog in a custom-built pickup he named Rocinante, after Don Quixote’s horse.

Since that first reading, I’ve crossed the country a couple times myself. My experiences were more business-like. I woke up. Drove 8-10 hours. Found a hotel or motel. Slept. Repeated until at my destination. But Steinbeck, he made a journey out of it. That is what he set out to do. I was setting out to move from one city to the other, usually with a job waiting or the dire need to find a job keeping me moving forward with quick stops at fast food drive throughs replacing the campfire socials he held, meeting locals and sharing drinks and stories with them.

On the one long road trip family vacation we took from Virginia to Canada, it was full steam ahead as well. A 12-hour straight drive the first day, followed by a series of two four-hour drives between each three-day stay in different cities. There was no stopping to smell the proverbial roses, just the rest stop gas stations.

One of my solo cross-country trips was when I moved to northern California, the bay area. It was there that my real love of Steinbeck bloomed. I was working at a tech start-up. My weekends were mainly filled with checking books out of the Cupertino public library and driving my small convertible somewhere with a wonderous view and reading. The start-up didn’t pay well, but it got me to California for a year. The first stop at the library found a big display of local hero Steinbeck and I grabbed Sweet Thursday, not realizing at the time it was a follow-up to Cannery Row. Then I worked through more and more of them to where even my lunch hours were spent at a park just down Stevens Creek Boulevard from my rundown residential office-house to get a few minutes of sun and literature. Inspired, I began writing again for the first time since college. 

One huge bonus to my time out west was attending the grand opening of the Steinbeck Center in his childhood hometown of Salinas, California. I met his son Thom Steinbeck (who looked exactly like his father), and inside that beautiful modern building is Rocinante, the very truck he traveled across the country in. I read recently that he fictionalized some of his trip, but I don’t care. He was a storyteller, so that’s what he did.

Almost exactly a year from when I got to California, I found myself on an even longer road trip when I left that overpriced heaven and went all the way east to the D.C. area, where I am to this day, 23 years later. I keep trying to plan another road trip, either solo or with my family, but the nature of taking time off cuts into the idea of three-day travel times each way compared to two-hour flights. I now own a classic car, a 1965 Mustang, that I’ve restored and that has me dreaming of open roads, Route 66, big sky country, and the Pacific Coast Highway. Then I also think of the tow truck bills when a 56-year-old car breaks down, or when my 53-year-old back gives out without the luxury of built-in lumbar support and heated seats like in my modern SUV. 

So, for now, it is short trips. A few hours either in the Mustang or the SUV. My choice of music. My iPad on the passenger if I feel inspired or compelled to write a few words in whatever I’m working on at the time. And always the hope that my son will want to start going on those short, then eventually longer, road trips in the Mustang. After all, waiting for a tow truck would be more fun with company.