For some reason I always find it a bit of a conversation killer when telling people that I wanna drive across America... "Just for the hell of it".
Apart from the Grand Canyon and dropping by family and friends I have Stateside - I'm not actually interested in going anywhere in particular. It's all about the drive.
It gets even worse when I then start going on about how there's nothing more important than finding a car with a preppy engine and a manual gearbox. It takes a very special kind of audience to understand this kind of motivation.
My earliest memories have always been about the journey.
I know my Dad took us on a whole bunch of family holidays when we were lil tykes - a friend's villa in France, my cousin's flat in Hong Kong, the Lake District, Disney World Florida... yet my clearest recollections have always been the moments in transit. Lying on the backseat of the car looking up at the sky go by in the Lake District, The Beatles' Hard Day's Night slowly making me carsick (to this day I can't listen to that track without feeling queasy). The kiddies meal tray on the Cathay flight to HK, in particular the section with the Wotsits crisps in the corner. Eating my first ever hash brown (McD's) in the back of our rental minivan in America.
Can't remember the foggiest about the things we did when we got to wherever we were going. But the things we did on the way there? Those are what sticks with me.
But very few people seem to understand the full breadth of the reasoning; "I'm just doing it for the drive."
I guess that makes me one of the special ones... =P
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