Super Nerd Sundays Presents: Off the Path Again!

When we depart from the path laid out for us we encounter trouble.

I’m writing this from a coffee shop in Matowac, a small town on the western edge of Lake Michigan. It is purportedly blanketed in Wi-Fi. It has a pair of attractions – a ferry and a maritime museum. There are two, that’s right two, bike stores. There’s a home brew store and something like five bars on the main drag. There’s a library that shames most of the public libraries I visited in Portland, a massive two level affair impeccably maintained by an impressive staff. This is just in the section I walked through, too. There are a staggering number attractive young college students in the coffee shop I’m in, and the couple (I assume they’re a couple) who run the shop would be perfectly at home in Portland. This place is strange, and I would never have discovered it if the ferry I’d tried to ride in Milwaukie had been operational.

My path was set. Of the two paths recommended to me by the internet for each leg of my journey I chose the more remote one, the one that would show me unexplored territory. I wanted to see more of the country, new places I’d yet to visit. I was excited at the prospect of exploring South Dakota, never having to visit Wyoming again, and seeing Michigan fading into the sunset.

Instead I’m sleeping on a ferry and driving from five in the AM until I collapse tomorrow. Maybe I’ll stay in a shit motel in upstate New York because I’m just too tired to drive a full fifteen hours. Maybe I’ll be cavity searched while entering or exiting Ontario and will, as a result, be detained for a full day, rectum distended, stuck in Canadian jail where I understand you are all too politely raped by very nice people. Maybe I’ll make it back to Massachusetts in one good run, one long trip interrupted only by the occasional tollbooth and brief, uneventful border crossings.

But none of this would’ve happened if I’d stuck to the path I knew, the journey that had been selected for me the first time I crossed the country.

Turns out there’s a consensus on how to generally get from place to place in America. The interstate highway system mostly asks people to stay within the country and drive through the same shitty parts of the world as everyone else. It sets up regular little places to resupply, which in turn dot the highway with insultingly great frequency. It guides you through towns that seemingly exist solely to serve those poor fools stuck on the highway strip. It moves you along the same trails, time and time again, the same ugly settings littered with people who want easy trips along pre-determined routes.

The end result is a gray, polluted slog occasionally broken up by bits of beauty. Northern Wisconsin and Montana, for example, are beautiful beyond belief. Northern Idaho would be a perfect place if not for the bulk of people who live there. But Indiana, Ohio, eastern Washington and North Dakota are all depleted repositories of nature left out to dry by the side of our interstate highways. They’re drab, dying places strewn along the roadside.

The first leg of my journey focused primarily on the prettier parts of that previous trip: mostly Montana and Idaho. When the time came for me to enter North Dakota I decided I’d change my route up and run along highway 212, a lovely, if desolate, strip of road running through the center of South Dakota. It treated me to some breathtaking visages, some amazing little towns cut off from the rest of the world, some surprisingly racism and a handful of surreal sights. For example, I saw a tractor parade holding up traffic just outside of Watertown, South Dakota. I have no idea what it was for, but the lead tractor had an American flag on his helm, so I can only assume it was general patriotism.

I ran into a snag when I was around one hundred miles from Minneapolis. A detour side-tracked me for a whole half an hour. In a ten hour day of travelling a half an hour might not seem like a lot, but it’s absolutely infuriating when you’re making your last big push for a particular leg of your journey and it comes out of nowhere. But it’s nothing compared to a ferry shutdown adding what could be an entire day to your travel time during the home stretch of your trip.

That’s exactly what my current diversion has done. But in addition to that I’ve found a really cool little coffee shop, a place that might as well have come out of a Charles Baxter novel. I’ve found a wonderful main street with all of the comforts of any big town, thrift stores and bars abounding. I’ve found a maritime museum I probably should visit that I definitely won’t. I’ve found a small town the like of which I never would’ve dreamed, filled with small town hippy kids and businesses that are closed on Monday. I’ve found pockets of culture that seem out of place, sights that make me think I’m still in St. Paul. I’ve found a place and had experiences I won’t forget.

I’ve driven a piddling seven hours today, which seems like an absurdly long period of time to any rational human being. But I’ve had to wait in this town for a total of eight hours just to catch my ferry, to put it all in perspective. That’s eight hours where I have to stay awake and stay occupied, eight hours where I smell like I’ve been driving for four days straight and eight hours where I’m walking around town smelling like I slept in a heat wave for the last two nights without air conditioning.

If I’d stuck to the interstate I’d be passing Chicago now. I’d likely be settling into a motel in Indiana or Ohio in a few hours, exhausted and cursing my luck to be stuck in such a shithole state. Instead I’m watching a psychosexual drama play out a few tables away between a group of college kids (who ostensibly aren’t fucking) hell-bent on reading each other’s text messages. I’m decompressing and taking in the middle of the country after a four day tear across the United States.

And I wouldn’t have found any of this if I hadn’t tried to wander off the path. If I hadn’t responded to each hurdle by wandering a little bit farther off each time. If I’d stuck to the trail set for me I’d be bored out of my skull, perfectly calm and collected and well on my way home. Instead I’m kind of a little lost, ostensibly still on the right track and planning to do some truly horrible shit to myself the next day. I’ve been enjoying my surreal journey, my trials and tribulations, and I’ve been appreciating Planes, Trains and Automobiles a little more with each passing hour. And I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Does this relate to video games? Does it relate to stories? Of course. Stories are most interesting when they veer off the rails, when they enter unexpected territory and revel in it. Sometimes they don’t end up at their destination. Those are the best times, when stories come to new conclusions that we’d never dreamed of, conclusions we were completely unprepared for. I don’t think that’ll be happening to me. Maybe this will be my last will and testament, a document that will somehow survive my brutal murder by Canadian hill people and/or Mounties tomorrow. More likely I’ll just get home a little later than I would’ve liked. I might be tweaking a little when it happens, too.

For now this essay is just an aside, a cop out piece to fill in a weekend while I’m driving across the country. It’s a missive on just how strange and wonderful the middle of this country is, how fantastic it can be to get off the beaten path and how important it is to roll with life’s punches. Never step back from a side trail when it takes you off the path. No matter how it ends, you’ll never regret taking it after it’s happened. Or, if you do, at least you’ll have a good story.