My Big, Scary All-American Roadtrip

Read the full series of interviews, stops, and Roadtrip adventures

“Wow, through the South? Be careful.”

“We need it, but it won’t be easy. Good luck and god speed.”

“You’re driving THAT CAR? What if it breaks down?”

“This is going to be epic — you have to post updates. Are you on Instagram?”

“[An experiment with] no safety net of reputation other than the one you create in real time…an excellent test of your ability to connect with Americans, without the crutch of our normal constructs…”

All of these reactions, and so many more, have come up when I describe my roadtrip across a divided USA and parts unknown.

Timeline:

mid-September 2017 — mid/late October 2017, the changeover from summer to fall.

Launch Date Target:

September 15th from Albuquerque, New Mexico heading East. T-minus 4 days at the time this post was published.

Route:

New Mexico to Pennsylvania and back again. Overshooting into New England and wandering all over the deep South on the way. My 2nd post will have a full (and flexible) path on which I’ll wander.

Cast:

Travis Kellerman as the listening traveler + anyone he meets along the way

Michael the welder and family on a test drive (he brought my rusted-out trunk back from the dead).

The Background, The Lofty Mission:

Once upon 2016, I returned to a strange America from an intense 2-year stint in SE Asia as a serial entrepreneur (i.e. lost startup dude). The bold, big data experiment and over-work of multiple timezones had nearly broken me.

A week after landing in LA and making my way back to New Mexico, it hit me:

My homeland felt more foreign than anywhere abroad.

I could still identify with it — just barely. The places and people were familiar, like an old hangout spot with a strange, new, unclear meaning.

My time abroad clarified my view. I re-entered the US with a fresh lens. A change was felt as soon as I hit LAX.

There was a collective fear in the many, shifty eyes. We were in the throes of widespread “us versus them”. Clashes of hateful, stubborn American minds carried their set beliefs awkwardly IRL from online mobs with an insincerity occasionally masked in semi-politeness.

What happened?

Where did the people go?

A few months of reintegration and deep conversation later, I realized:

We’re still here. Of course we are. It just takes some talking and some time to remember and reconnect.

This is our reality. It will change.

Familiar food, gatherings of people I knew, and smaller roadtrip adventures performed a reintegration—and an exorcism of the doubt. I was ready for the bigger route.

Once upon 2016, I had a plan to map a theoretical conflict-resolution process to real life. The goal: to test, refine, and use my method to resolve *some* of the hyper-polarization between Americans.

i.e. Trust → Understand → Be Practical & Act

As usual, I was too ambitious.

I tried it out. Woof.

Testing the process left me exhausted as a moderator, playing the role of some zen’d-out, unflappable… non-human. It does not scale. The heaviness will burn you out (hats off to therapists and arbitrators of all kinds — barbers, bartenders, servers, hair and nail techs, drivers, good friends.

But I was ready to hit the road with some virtuous purpose. To listen and learn and see the people in-between.

Continue reading the full series of interviews, Green Book stops, and Roadtrip adventures

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The sun started in the canyon It passed over the green peaks, spilling down and filling up the valley. Laguna’s disparities and eccentricities began to wake up. Nina had fallen back to sleep, in the fallen apartment, behind me. A few hours before, the soup kitchen had...

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