Just do it
I’ve always wanted to drive across America.
I’ve always wanted to drive across the continent’s vastness, through its byroads and highways, down its country roads and over its bridges. I’ve always wanted to go from California to the New York Island, from the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters, stopping occasionally for a root beer float.
And when I say always, I mean always. As long as I can remember daydreaming, this is one thing I daydreamed about. The coast-to-coast goal has remained; only the vision of how it will unfold has changed as the years have passed.
The Great American Road Trip
As an adolescent and high school kid, my vision was driving from Denver to Boston in a Volkswagen van with a peace sign on the side and a tie-dyed shirt draped around my shoulders. Next to me, riding shotgun, would be a girlfriend in a slinky tank top with some long-haired, stubble-bearded buddies of ours riding in the back.
That vision – a product of the Woodstock era, reading Jack Kerouac, and listening to Simon and Garfunkel sing about going off “to look for America” – was about as realistic as my going to the moon. My folks would barely give me permission to take the family car to the Buckingham Square Mall [in Aurora, Colorado] located 20 minutes from my home, let alone consent to my driving across the country with some deadbeat friends.
And I was not the kind to act against my parents’ wishes. I read Jack Kerouac novels; I did not become Jack Kerouac.
AS A young married man, my vision was to drive with The Newlywed Wife in a rented Chevy from where we got married in Chicago, through the Nebraska cornfields to sheva brachot hosted by family friends in Denver, and then on to New York. By then, I didn’t need my dad’s permission but I did need his wallet, and I didn’t feel right asking for it for something so frivolous. Israel awaited – I’d need his wallet then – and, besides, it was time to get started on real life.
As a young father, I fantasized about the coast-to-coast trip with the whole family, only changing the itinerary a bit. Rather than hitting as many national parks as possible —starting with Yosemite in California and ending with Acadia in Maine — we would hit as many amusement parks as we could, beginning with SeaWorld in San Diego and ending with Disney World in Orlando.
That, too, was unrealistic. I had neither the money, time off from work, nor patience to drive 3,000 miles with small kids kvetching about being hungry and arguing about who has to sit in the dreaded middle seat. Heck, I hardly had the patience for that on a trip from Jerusalem to the Golan Heights.
And then, as an older father, I romanticized about taking the trip with my older kids, this time renting a trailer. We’d start in the Mid-Atlantic states and drive West, me explaining Civil War history and America’s story as they sat enraptured all along the route.
Of all the different visions, this was the one that looked like it could actually happen, except for the part about me explaining America and them sitting enraptured.
I’VE TALKED a lot over the years about grand personal projects – such as figuring out the metric system and moving up North – but have acted on very few. The kids, as a result, have taken all my talk with a grain of salt and humored me.
“Sure, Abba,” they would say with rolled eyes any time I would talk about an American road trip. “Sure, any time.”
But then something happened.
Last summer, my nephew visited from Lakewood, New Jersey, and the whole road trip fantasy came up in conversation. When I mentioned that the cost of renting a vehicle large enough to fit the entire family was prohibitive, he – the father of nine – offered me the use of his van.
“Really?” I asked excitedly.
“Really,” he said generously.
“Sure,” the kids mumbled skeptically.
But unlike so many other similar ideas, this one didn’t die. Rather, I thought about how it would be possible to combine a speaking tour with a road trip, driving with the kids from city to city instead of flying.
And then something else happened: Oct. 7.
AS FOR everyone, Oct. 7 changed everything. It changed plans and perspective. It changed plans because who could plan on anything with everybody not knowing what would be with this war and who would be in miluim [reserves] and when? And it also changed perspective because who could put things off anymore, not knowing what tomorrow would bring?
So, as my three boys and my daughter’s husband were all fighting in Gaza this winter, I resolved that this time it would happen. No more talking pie in the sky, no more waiting for another day, another year, or another decade. This time, we would do it.
And, indeed, this time we did.
Okay, it wasn’t everything I imagined. It wasn’t four weeks but four days. It wasn’t across America but through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. And it wasn’t all the national parks but one awfully nice one: Shenandoah.
“Shenandoah National Park?” the youngest son said quizzically when I related my plans to him soon after he got out of Gaza. “Where is that? Never heard of it. Can’t we go to Yellowstone? How did you come up with that one?”
Easy: I Googled it. I would be speaking in New Jersey, wanted a national park nearby, and Shenandoah came up when I queried which one was the closest.
HAVING GROWN up in the West – where when you say “national park,” you think Rocky Mountain, Grand Canyon, Bryce, and Zion – I’d also never heard of Shenandoah. Nor, in fact, had most of my friends from New York. Still, it was the closest national park to New Jersey.
“How bad could it be?” I asked my son, trying to relieve his skepticism. “They’re all the same. Trees, trails, rivers, maybe some bears. What else do you want?”
So we went: the whole family – well, the whole nuclear family plus one daughter-in-law, but without another daughter-in-law, a son-in-law, and the grandkids. We did what we could for as long as we could. Another lesson of the war and a good slogan for a brand of sneakers: Just Do It.
It might not be for as long as you want nor be everything you want, but just do it – for as long as you can and however it works. Because who knows when the chance will come again?