“I got no time to get to where I don’t need to be”

If you’re looking for a happy song, you can’t do much better than Jack Johnson. So long as you’re looking for a contented, “what-a-beautiful-life” kind of happiness, that is. Still, you wouldn’t expect a song called “Breakdown” to be joyous, even if it was written by JJ. And yet this makes me smile:

"I hope this old train breaks down
Then I could take a walk around
See what there is to see
Time is just a melody
All the people in the street
Walking fast as their feet can take them
I just rolled through town
And though my window’s got a view
The frame I’m looking through seems to have no concern for now

So for now
I need this old train to breakdown
Oh please just
Let me please break down"

To the best of my knowledge, it’s a song he wrote while traveling by train through Europe. As he rolled on through town after town, he realized that much as he was happy to be headed wherever he was headed, a part of him also wanted to stop and investigate every little place along the way.

What a wonderful notion that seems to me.

I’m not Tony, but I have traveled by train (not since I was a kid) and one of the reasons I so prefer driving is that ability to do what you want when the mood strikes. See something you want a picture of? Pull over and take a picture. Want some food? Get off at the next exit and find something that suits your mood. Nevermind that I like driving, too.

It’s with that in mind that I’ve always yearned to take a cross-country drive. This is perhaps why, against all better judgment, I was charmed by the end of Elizabethtown. I was envious. Driving cross country is one of those things you are expected to do in your youth and that I always figured I would get around to after graduating from college. I had a vague notion of getting a job that didn’t start for several months and – if the job was in California, say – taking a route to get there that went through New York. Just because.

I love driving. I love being out in the middle of nowhere and I love driving in cities. I love finding random and unique shops and restaurants along the road. I love the freedom of having a motel reservation in a city a few hundred miles away and so many hours to kill before night comes.

At one point I had charted a tentative route that I figured might take as little as a few weeks or as long as two months, depending on how I felt. It included some cities where I had friends or family who would be willing to put me up, it included some cities where I’ve never known anyone but always wanted to go. It hit pretty much all corners of the country. I assumed I would do this in summer, so it was also contingent on my ability to stop and catch a game at Yankee Stadium, at Wrigley Field, at Fenway, even Camden in Baltimore. It was my own, mostly secret, dream. It was what I thought might be a graduation present to myself.

But when I graduated from college I was unemployed and so didn’t think it wise to spend what little money I had on a road trip. Plus, I was in love by then with someone who was both employed and no fan of car trips. So instead of packing my car up and heading out on some unknown highway, I just rented a U-Haul and drove to Phoenix. It wasn’t so bad. Friends helped me unpack and that night we all relaxed in the hot tub at the complex. I don’t regret it, you see. But I do still want to take that trip – someday.