This is the second chapter of a year long story I am sharing on Arriving Somewhere. If you missed the introduction, you can read it here. You may also find it easier to read on the Substack app. Personally, I transfer newsletter updates I receive into Readwise so I can read them later on a device rather than at my computer. Because I’m aiming to be a little more intentional, each chapter will also have an audio version, which you can listen to here.
In Travels with Charley, John Steinbeck has to wait until Hurricane Donna passes to start his road trip in search of America. It was an unexpected delay, as Steinbeck lived on Long Island, where direct hits from hurricanes were not (and still not) common. A little over 60 years later, I found myself also waiting for an unusual hurricane to pass before starting a road trip. My trip was not necessarily in search of America, but it was definitely in search of something.
Hurricane Nicole was unusual because it was a November hurricane. Though not a strong storm, it was large and not particularly in a hurry. It made initial landfall to our southeast, crossed the peninsula, and made landfall again to our northwest, before taking the path I was about to take: north through Georgia.
For the past twenty years, heading north on I-75 is how most of my road trips begin.1 As is my custom, I leave before sunrise, usually based around when the nearest Starbucks opens, which happens to be 5am. Though Albi always enjoys going for a ride, he has to settle for a walk and breakfast before I leave him and Ali behind for what I plan to be a two week journey.
A couple of hours later, it’s still dark (because it’s November) and it’s also raining because I’ve caught up to the remnants of Nicole just south of Georgia. I’ve dialed in the perfect soundtrack for this kind of driving in the dark, a new concept album from a metal band that I’ve loosely followed throughout the years.2 Though I achieved flow somewhere south of Valdosta, the prospect of driving across Georgia in the rain left me less than enthusiastic about the day ahead.3
I already had a general sense of foreboding about the elements, which as I saw it, were going to figure prominently in the rest of the trip. The destination for day one was Knoxville, but it was just the first stop. From there, it was on to Kansas City for the night before continuing on to the final destination in Denver. Cold was a guarantee, snow was a distinct possibility, and getting there without issue or delay was not a foregone conclusion.
I had been planning the trip since the previous November. That year’s ETS conference was in Ft. Worth, a long but much easier drive from Florida.4 In 2022, the same conference was in Denver, hence the final destination. Normal people probably wouldn’t consider driving since flying exists. But, I had memories from my first road trip in the late 90’s that began by driving from Knoxville to Denver. I also a brand new car thanks to recently being rear-ended, and a very intense need to clear my head.5
As I was reflecting on this in the early morning darkness and rain, I wondered if there was a thread tying all these sorts of trips together. Maybe the opportunity to clear my head, experience flow, and visit places old and new was enough of a drive to keep hitting the road. Or maybe I was looking for something else.
Aside from an awkward rest stop encounter just outside Knoxville, the first day actually ended in sunshine and safe arrival.6 After spending the next day watching football and getting supplies for the rest of the journey, I woke up a little too early the following morning feeling awful with a mixture of anxiety and a hint of a cold coming on.
After talking with my dad for a little while about it, I decided to still head out, but see how I felt once I was on the road. I made a pit stop about an hour outside of Knoxville, to consider my options and decide whether to keep heading west. I stopped because there was a Buc-ee’s, but there also happened to be a Wal-Mart, and the digital thermometer I got there suggested a fever might be in my future.
So, as I mulled my options in a town literally called Crossville, I decided the prospect of getting sick on the road, more than a day’s drive from home was not attractive. But, neither was turning around and heading home less than 48 hours after arriving. After about a half hour of deliberation, I decided that I should probably head home, as in both back toward Knoxville, but then back down I-75 until I was safely back in Florida. My mind had planned what I thought would be a great trip, but in the end, my body said no.7
The first time I made that drive down I-75 was September 2003. I was headed to Word of Life Bible Institute for what I thought would be a second gap year before actually starting college at Middle Tennessee State where I had a full ride scholarship to major in recording engineering.8
During that year, I made the trip home several times, usually leaving after class Friday and getting in late, and then turning around and driving back through the night Sunday night to then sleep all day Monday (when we didn’t have class).9 This only worked because it was actually me and my friend Steven sharing driving duties and switching whose car we took.10
The year turned out to be more pivotal than I planned, and I found myself committing to the second year program, which was in upstate New York.11 That year ended with a drive from upstate New York to Florida, which thankfully stopped over in Knoxville.12 My friend Matt joined me for the drive to Florida, and we spent the summer working at camp, something I would come back and do again in 2006.
After that summer, it would be a while before I returned to Florida, and when I did, it wouldn’t be down I-75—at least not through Georgia. In August 2007, I moved to Dallas to start working on my ThM at Dallas Seminary. At the end of the first year of school there, I decided to try and drive from Dallas to Tampa to visit my friend Todd, who was lived where I had worked at camp.
This was also the first time I hung out with a girl that I had been talking to for over a year. When I left Florida, I headed up I-75 to see my parents. Somewhere between Atlanta and Chattanooga, I realized I had feelings for her. At the end of the fall semester, I went home for Christmas, and then headed south down I-75 with an engagement ring in my pocket.
Since then, because we moved to Florida after I graduated, I’ve made the drive up and down I-75 so frequently I think I have most of it memorized. But, that season may have come to an end.
For the first time since I’ve lived in Florida, I actually flew to Knoxville instead of driving. I was originally planning to drive, so that I could see my parents and then head down to a conference in Toccoa, Georgia.13 I’m still getting a road trip out of it (from Knoxville to Toccoa and back), but no part of the journey intersected with I-75.
It’s a fairly minor thing. How I get from my current home back to my old home certainly has to change over time. And yet, it has been a significant part of my life to drive home with some regularity, often from Florida. The flight, while way more convenient (and quick!), doesn’t have the same effect for me.14 And, more importantly for this story, there’s a different symbolic value in a flight that doesn’t turn out as expected, especially since that might entail you are not around to reflect on the experience in writing.
Since I’m reflecting on road trips and not flights, I can use the different types of trips, both accomplished and failed, to think about life. In the past, I’ve mostly used the time on the road to think about life. Now, I’m thinking about the trips themselves as a way of making sense of my life. All of us are arriving somewhere. Sometimes you know the road ahead intimately, and sometimes its a journey into the unknown.
There’s something about that November trip that didn’t happen as expected that resonated with me. It started out with a lot of excitement and hope, but at least where I stopped the story above, it ended with disappointment and discouragement.
However, the story doesn’t end there.
It ends on a different note, in a different destination—one that was part of the original plan, but arrived at by a different route. It’s a story I’ll return to and finish in a few months, leaving you to wonder how it resolves.
Before getting there, I want to explore the different ways that road trips work as symbols for life. For most people, I imagine road trips function as brief escapes, something less than a day’s drive that is an opportunity to break up life’s routines so they don’t become ruts. Both before and shortly after my time at Word of Life, that’s how they functioned for me at least.
Living at the crossroads of two major interstates allows for excursions in almost any direction. And that’s just what I did for a few years in the early 2000’s. At the time, the trips weren’t necessarily in search of anything in particular, and were often equally divided between business and pleasure. But, one of those trips would set the stage for later adventures, creating a template that I would keep trying to follow, even to this day. And that’s what next month’s chapter will unfold in a few weeks…
This was even true when I lived in Knoxville as the youth group trips that I most looked forward to involved heading to amusement parks like Kentucky Kingdom, King’s Island, and eventually Cedar Point, all of which required an initial trek north up I-75. It’s still true because most of my road trips are either to Knoxville or Dallas, and both of which start out the same from Orlando: north on I-75.
I’ll tell you who the band was next month.
ETS is the Evangelical Theological Society. While I’ve been to several regional ones, and presented papers at them, 2021 was the first time I made it to the national conference, and it turned out to be a rather pivotal trip. You can read about the outcome here.
That original road trip story will be part of a future post. You can read about the crash here. I’ve alluded about the need to clear my head, but never really explained what was churning in the background during 2022. It was a particularly messy interpersonal situation that intersected with my work, church, and home life, that while not involving me directly, impacted me significantly. The details are not really my story to tell, but I think I can say that the situation reached a provisional resolution in late 2023 and has thus far not followed me into 2024.
As you can see from the picture at the top. At the rest stop, it was my fault for violating one of my rules for navigating rest stops. Never park on the fringe, or the person really on the fringe may ask you for something (like jumping their car) and then you’ll end up in an awkward conversation where they explain their hard knock life story (that may or may not involve being shown their concealed carry) while you trying to calculate your escape route. It was thankfully a crazy-awkward person and not a crazy-scary person. However, it was an encounter that would have hit different a) after dark or b) in a different state
I have a slightly different understanding of what happened and what this means, but it’ll have to wait until I tell the rest of this particular story.
That represents the first major counterfactual in this story. It’s not something I particularly dwell on at this point, if for no other reason than my friend Steven did go there after our year at Word of Life, only to transfer out of the program within a couple of years because it was so basic. I imagine I would have done something similar.
After one of those trips this time twenty years ago, I caught the worst stomach flu I’ve ever had as it had began sweeping through campus over the weekend we were gone. It’s not a story I’ll put in print here, but I can regale you with tales of explosive vomit in person if you so desire.
Our record in these trips was Knoxville to Tampa in 8.5 hours. My car could make it from Knoxville to Valdosta on a single tank of gas, so other than a brief stop in Chattanooga, that was the only other stop we made. There’s no traffic in the middle of the night, but you also can’t see all the state troopers hiding in the woods, so it is not without a new set of risks.
I’ll return to that particular season and route later in the story.
The closest I have ever come to a wreck on a road trip happened in the late night/early morning hours of the drive down from New York. Once again, you’ll have to wait for that part of the story though to know more.
I’m actually writing this section from a Starbucks in Toccoa. The conference is the regional version of the national conference that I mentioned in footnote 2. I’m here to present a paper on Justin Martyr’s understanding of demons, which actually happened last night as I’m writing this.
Even sitting at the gate for almost two hours before leaving to fly back to Florida still meant getting from Knoxville to Orlando in roughly 3 hours instead of the usual 9-10. That’s pretty hard to beat, as long as the cost of a flight stays significantly lower than the price of gas.