The end.

Well, the end is not as important as the beginning. I know that now.

So how did it end?

It honestly ended in an unremarkable blur. We drove and drove with sleep-bogged minds that had been churning since our New Orleans cots, 1313 miles previous. Scattered remnants of New Mexico’s nighttime sounds and smells attempted to reach my brain, but mostly all I could absorb was another black road slowly creeping toward the next sunrise.

My heart churned as we passed the sign welcoming us to back to Arizona - a place I’d built up a childish prejudice toward growing up feeling there was “never anything to do.” It was a sight that filled me both with relief and a feeling that this too was a strange place now that I’d seen the places I’d always dreamed were better than here.

A brief layover in Tucson turned the “we” into an “I,” and I numbly made the final stretch to Phoenix in the Viral Van very much alone.

Like I said, the end is not nearly as exciting as the beginning. But it did speak more of reality. Big plans crumbled into small ones. Ambitions brought down out of the clouds and into the real world. I saw a lot of roads, but I also passed a lot of roads. I barreled ahead toward a nameless goal I thought sure would bring answers but in reality only brought more questions.

Whatever the “it” was I was looking for, I didn’t find exactly. At least I don’t know all that I found right now.

Regardless how it ended, what I do still have is my belief in “the beginning.” A belief that anything is possible with an open mind, a full gas tank and the desire to see it all, to absorb it all, and to write it all down.

Go [here] and [here] to read from the beginning.

The end was zooming towards us, laying only hours away. The road is blackened all but a few feet in front of the headlights as the seemingly infinite Texas sky engulfs the travelers in the tiny tired van below. I couldn’t see it yet. but the end was zooming closer and closer.

Time seemed to hang in the starlit road, as hours were gained and lost and paused as we zoomed though time zones, construction zones, and twilight zones. Driving makes me feel as infinite as the sky. But infinity is a big place.

I embarked on this blog, and this journey, to write about adventure, expectantly my own. I wanted to write what it feels like to be a young American post-grad mixing manifest destiny, the post college road trip and the age of instant information. I wanted this blog to be about the smell of cornfields, hidden highways, kids making sand castles, and broken windows. I wanted it to be about West Coast juggling rivalries and Katrina survivors. I wanted to see it all with my own eyes, write everything down, and truly have felt the depth and breadth of my foray into the vast American countryside. A blog about crossing distances both digital and physical. But one distance I realized I haven’t yet crossed is the distance to myself.

The plan for this journey was hatched on a back porch in Tucson a few days after I graduated college. After I flipped my tassel and got my paper I was facing an existential meltdown. The “real world” had been like a runaway train barreling towards me for weeks, and after all the confetti cleared from my moment of triumph, I felt instantly lost. My whole life up to that point had a plan. Grade school, high school, college. Check check check. Done. Sitting on that porch I realized I had absolutely nothing to do and all the time in the world to do it in. It was the most liberating and terrifying feeling of my life. So I decided to do what I always dreamed of - go on “the trip of a lifetime” across the country. So I did. I turned that dream into a project. A blog. A journey. An admittedly overly romanticized vision quest.

But what happens when you reach the end of that? What do you do when all that’s left is a few more miles? The end of the trip, the end of what I’d hoped would be my answer. The true end of all the plans I’d made up to this point in my life.

What happened was the Texas sky scooped me up and kept me there, lost and still looking down the last stretch of road.

Waking up with the New Orleans jazz still buzzing in my ear, I hobbled down the creaky wooden stairs to say goodbye to the India House and the city. The day was already hot and humid and I knew it would only get worse as we piled in the van for the penultimate stop in Austin, Texas.

I expected nothing from the Texas town, and when we arrived dripping and disgusting 13 hours later, I found my expectations blown away. We were planning on staying with a woman from couchsurfing.org, but sleeping through the cool night only to wake up and drive though the desert heat seemed foolish. So the trip was set to end as it began – driving all day and all night. But we decided to meet our host anyway, to thank her in person for offering us a crash pad.

Before we knew it, we were eating bizarre Korean candy in her apartment as she told us she was helping build an art instillation for Burning Man. She offered to have us go with her for a few hours and help. I shrugged – “whatever!” At this point in the trip I was down for just about anything.

And what a something it was.

We drove to the middle of a nice unsuspecting Austin neighborhood and walked into a rather ordinary looking house. But the house opened up into a wide backyard piled high with stacks of elaborately carved wooden panels a walkway led to an airplane hanger roaring with the clamor of saws. When I looked inside there were several ShopBots busily carving the panels I’d seen outside. Scattered around the hanger were other curved panels of wood that seemed to link together like a puzzle.

Now, I’ve never been to Burning Man, though my little hippie heart has always longed to be a part of it, but I did have a general grasp on the idea. It is a big art and music festival out in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, and at its conclusion most of the large scale art, including a giant wooden man, is burned. There’s lots of hoola hooping, and camping, and varying levels of questionable behavior.

And somehow I’d found my way into the back yard of this year’s artist, commissioned by Burning Man, who was building the massive “Temple.” From the small model I saw, it looks like it will be a series of rooms and passages made out of the carved wood panels with a mushroom-esque top made of wooden waving flames. Visitors at the festival will write or tape their fears or other things they want to let go of on the walls, and they will be burned away when the temple goes up in flames. And ¼ of a wooden faux flame spindle was glued and screwed together by none other then yours truly.

As we worked, my gluing guru Mack told me why he’d dropped everything to help build the Temple in that Austin backyard. “I just heard about it and really felt this is what I need to be doing. This is something I need to be a part of,” he told me.

The backyard studio was adorned with the signs of life that people leave behind when they love a place. The kind of comfortable leftovers and personal touches that make it their sanctuary. And the yard was a blur of sawdusted bodies moving finished panels, or piecing together spindles. Several in-charge-looking people told me what to do, and I got to work, forgetting the stiffness of the past 13 hour drive and ignoring the thought of another to come.

I was comfortable with the tools, after four years of building theater sets, and we worked with the dozen other volunteers under the florescent lights for over an hour and a half.  I easily could have stayed longer, and a part of me really wanted to. I could see myself there. Sending Dan home with the van without me. Tying a bandana around my head and grabbing a drill. Pushing away my constant  mental clamoring about where I am going in my life, and just being a part of “something”. And a part of something that for a few days will stand tall and beautiful in the desert sky and then be burned to ash. It was metaphorically overwhelming and I was heat drained and delirious.

It was like a little magic world plopped suddenly into my life - like stumbling into the Narnia of hippie communes. It was ironic and encouraging that one of my favorite experiences of the whole trip happened just hours from home in a town I’d totally written off the map.

New Orleans was the first town where our couch surfing plans fell through, and we pulled into the India House international hostel instead. Even though we’d set out to only stay places for free, it turned out to be a good, safe decision that allowed us to have the freedom to do whatever we wanted without worrying about a host.

The India House hostel was adorable and I kind of wanted to stay forever. It is a converted old French house covered in bohemian art and eclectic knickknacks. Fellow backpackers were lounging around everywhere, most traveling from outside the United States. Except for pockets of the room where the air blew cool from a window unit, the house was hot and sticky with the New Orleans summer air. I chose a bed right in front of the air conditioner in the upstairs girls dormitory. For most of my stay there was only one other person in the dorm with me, and her bed was decorated and covered in possessions. I later figured out that she lives and works at the hostel, as all the employees do. The hostel was a great respite from the crazy town of New Orleans, and we often stumbled back there for some rest, even during the day, to get out of the heat.

I would say that New Orleans is a town that still hasn’t recovered from Hurricane Katrina, but a more accurate description would be that it is a town that hasn’t recovered in general. It was a strange mix of beautiful architecture, culture, art and a layer of disorder and decay from multiple natural disasters and a severe crime rate. Mixed into the classic French houses are hundreds of abandoned and crumbling buildings, and it is hard to tell if it is from Katrina or just general decay. Everybody we met told us not to go anywhere at night except the busy parts of the French Quarter because it was so unsafe. A cab driver even told me that on his second day of the job he was held at gunpoint and robbed.

The city had two very different sides to it. Bourbon Street is like a miniature Las Vegas strip. The bars never close, there are strip clubs and all sorts of debauchery. Marti Gras beads still hang from all the buildings, some are even grown into the trees or melted into the buildings. Our first night out we hit the main touristy drag of Bourbon Street. I had this unrealistic vision of what to expect. I thought the air was just going to be dripping with jazz and NOLA blues, but as we walked down the street we heard mostly club music and cover bands. I did get lost a bit in the Maison Bourbon club where we found a good “traditional” jazz band. The trombone player was about my age and played beyond his years. It made me so jealous and miss the amazing high you get from blasting some good grooves on your horn. This trip has made me realize how much I still need music in my life.

Standing in stark contrast to wailing trombone music was the ruined Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans still in shambles from Katrina. Some places were thriving and rebuilt and others were still in rubble. We saw stoops that led to nowhere, houses with walls caved in or roofs fallen off. Row after row of houses were marked with the FEMA marking system “X” outside the front door. There were busses of young volunteers still loading debris into trucks. Some men were sitting outside theses abandoned houses smoking and watching us as we drove through.

It seems to me a flawed concept to rebuild a city to be flooded and destroyed over and over. But there is a New Orleans pride that I don’t understand. We ate at a local restaurant called Liuzza’s, where I had my first muffaletta sandwich, and we noticed a picture on the wall of the restaurant flooded above the door. When we asked the waitress how the restaurant could possibly physically recover from that, she said it was stripped bare and built again.

When she spoke of the restaurant she called it her “life,” recounting the whole history of it and the family that owns it. There seems to be a notion of “survival at any cost.” Like the city is determined to never go under and never surrender, even to mother nature. It seems to me to be an impossible thing to sustain, and especially when so much of the city is still in ruins and struck with poverty. But I could see and feel that New Orleans “spirit” in the faces of the locals, logical or not.

Our New Orleans experience was also spiced with an international culture as we met and swapped stories with travelers from all over the world. I didn’t think that America had much of a hostel culture, but at the India House we were surrounded by people just like us who were exploring a country  that was foreign and exciting. I’ve heard of many Americans backpacking through Europe after college, but I’d never really thought of European kids taking off to the wild West.

I wandered around and talked to everybody. I wanted to hear their stories. Many of them were taking trains and busses to get across the country. Some had automobiles like us, and were taking advantage of the “cheap” American gas. Some, like a French-Canadian trumpet player were traveling by hitchhiking - something I’d been taught to fear in the post-Kerouac era America. One girl I met was about my age and took off on a trip to America all by herself. It was encouraging because I’m always told how dangerous it is for a woman to travel by herself. And maybe it is dangerous, but more power to her just the same.

I eventually found myself crammed in the back of a taxi cab with them headed out to Frenchman Street to find some good music. Communicating in a blur of accents, we hit the French Quarter once again, and everybody seemed to be looking for the “real” New Orleans. We were looking for it in the music, we were looking for it in the beer, in the vibe of the people around us. A gang of internationals and one American girl hopped from place to place under the night sky laughing at each other and looking behind us to make sure the scary part of New Orleans wasn’t creeping up behind us.

All and all, it was a wild goose chase. We walked from one end of the French Quarter to the other peeking our heads into different clubs and hole-in the wall places, waiting for the magical New Orleans to find us. But we couldn’t find the “real” New Orleans. Perhaps we were guided from one tourist trap to another. Maybe we didn’t know what we were looking for, or maybe it doesn’t really exist. Maybe the romantic idea of the New Orleans culture has been washed away or absorbed up into the modern dance clubs. Or maybe we heard it and walked right by. Somewhere off in the distance maybe there was a trumpet blowing the answer we were all seeking, blowing the sound of the city that won’t give in until the water pulls it under.

Passing through the Florida swamps after staying the night in Tallahasse, I fell into the sweat-soaked Zen mode of the road. I’ve kept this blog pretty impersonal, but as I drove I realized there are several stories to tell here beyond my daily wanderings. This blog is also about what it is like to be young and lost in America - right now - in this digital, economic meltdown, post-9/11, Obama-era, apathetic, complicated time.

I am part of a generation caught in a crossroads. Pulled in one direction by tradition, the work ethic of our fathers, and the slow progress our world and economy was built on. We are also pulled in another direction by the hyperspeed world of rapidly evolving technology. Always outdated, constantly evolving, and impossible to keep up with.

That is the crossroads where I find myself. I am both “viral” and “van.” The world is spinning under my tires in the classic mini van and the real American air is in my lungs. All the while the viral world of instant information is at my finger tips, and the internet is floating in the air across America.

I am at the crossroads of deciding when to follow the metaphoric GPS’ plan, and when to just turn it off and wing it. As we found today, sometimes when you just try and wing it, you get lost trying to find food in Pensacola, Florida. But it is just my nature. I always want to see what’s over the next bridge, and I get tired of following the digital purple line to my destination at 70mph.

This trip is also my story. The story of feeling alone, and searching for my something. Feeling like I don’t fit in anywhere, and looking for a place to belong. I have been dropped out of every comfort zone I’ve ever known and now am venturing out into a world of so many choices and forks in the road. Even the freedom that a post college road trip is supposed to bring is anchored by my plans to firmly place my feet back on some unknown soil and make my own way in the world.

Driving across enormous bridges spanning rivers and lakes in the sweaty bayou, I felt like I was flying past the enormous pressure to succeed and to make my degree useful. On the road, life is simple. You have a destination, even if it is a vague one, and you do whatever you want to do in between. Driving is a time when I feel in control. I am moving with direction toward the next great something. I don’t know where I’m going but I know where I’ve been.

Using the GPS as our guide, once again we hit the road again, and headed West for the first time. With a car stuffed full of cookies from Dan’s grandmother, we rolled out of North Carolina headed for Tallahassee, Florida. During our day of recuperation we replaced a few things that were lost or broken when the van was vandalized. I’ve become addicted to the cigarette lighter power adaptor in the van, so I bought a replacement to use and keep for my future travels. The window of the van has been fixed, but no longer rolls down, which will be unfortunate going though the southern part of the country with no air conditioning.

I was pretty tired, so I don’t remember much of the Carolinas as we drove through them. It all passed in a green blur as I nodded off in the passenger’s seat. I took the helm for the second shift and got to experience another amazing scenic drive. Outdone only by the Utah sunrise highway, the second best drive of the trip was going through the back roads of Georgia. Because we were cutting straight down to Tallahasse, instead of taking the larger coastal highways, we went on little two lane interstates through small towns and farms. It was a gorgeous scenic drive with hilly roads rising and falling between quaint towns.

I personally have little desire to move to the South, but driving through those towns I fell in love with the quaint country villages a little bit. There is so much to love in America, and I want to see it all. Today was another one of those days I wish we could have slowed down. I wish I could have stopped and explored Long Lonely Drive or bought some of Ned’s Flowers (“just knock, two doors down”). It is all just flying by so fast.

Well, I’ve made it down to North Carolina to meet up with Dan and resume the road trip. Since he had the van, and it would have been a really long walk, I took a Greyhound bus for a whopping 15 hours to get here. For a seasoned traveler like myself, 15 hours would normally be cake, but compared to the freedom and connectivity of the Viral Van, the antiquated bus was tedious and grueling.

Just getting myself aboard the bus was an epic expedition. When I left Phoenix I had debated between taking the slightly bigger rolling suitcase and the more space efficient square bag with no wheels. I chose the smaller bag to keep myself from “over-packing,” but that turned out to be a horribly bad decision as I suffered and heaved and kicked the damn thing all the way from South Brooklyn to downtown Manhattan.

I took two subways and drudged though the maze that is Port Authority bus station all with my heavy backpack strapped to my sunburned back, a pillow and blanket under one arm, and the other attempting to carry the suitcase, and failing horribly every 10 steps. Although quite comical I’m sure, it took me so long that I almost missed my bus. If it wasn’t for the kindness of a few strangers along the way who grabbed the other handle and helped me drag my suitcase down the long tunnels, I probably would have never made it, or seriously injured myself trying.

I originally had all sorts of grandiose plans on how I would get myself to North Carolina. I considered everything from renting a one-way car, to taking various buses and trains so I would be able to see the countryside I missed between New York and North Carolina. But, once I started doing research, I saw the dollar signs flying by. Like Don the traveling flutist told me in San Diego, “To get what you want sometimes you have to give up what you have.” What I wanted was a little of my own adventure, and what I have is my backup money. In weighing my options, I decided it wasn’t a good idea for me to give up my money just for a few days of solo sight seeing. If I had my own car it would be different. I’d just take off into the sunset. I haven’t been able to roam the open range as much as I would like on this trip because of our schedule, but it’ll happen someday. This will not be my last adventure across the county.

The bus was once again a voyage into the technology void. With no plugs, I couldn’t power my antique laptop, and as my cell phone began to die, I stuffed it into my backpack to reserve power. I tried to read but I knew my light was bothering the other passengers on the red-eye bus ride, so I just tried to sleep. I’d hurt myself trying to carry my suitcase, and I was sunburned all over from lounging on Coney Island the whole day prior. Needless to say, it was not a very fun experience. The two hour layover in Virginia at 5 a.m., doubly so.

At least the people on the bus were funny and entertaining. It was definitely the most sociable form of public transportation I’ve experienced. Everyone was nice to me and excited to hear about my travels, even if the Greyhound workers were some of the nastiest and most unhelpful people I’ve encountered on this trip. There is something about being crammed like sardines that brings out the best and worst in people. Even though I was sore and exhausted, I gave up my better seat to a women who had been separated from her son. I had been shown such kindness by the strangers who’d helped me with my suitcase I wanted to pay it forward. A little bit of compassion makes so much of a difference in this world.

Now that we’ve hit the two days of rest we’d planned for in North Carolina, we are only a little more than halfway done with the trip. It feels like making it to New York was the big climax, but the reality is that we still have to make it all the way back across the country, and though much stickier foreign lands. The road from here will take us through the deep South, across Florida, down to New Orleans, and then it is the home stretch across the Texas and New Mexico deserts to Arizona.

In any case, I feel happy that we are turning towards “home.” I don’t really know where home is anymore, even thought I have a family who always welcomes me with open arms. I’m a weird limbo phase where I’m feeling like I don’t really fit in anywhere. The “home” of my childhood and the various places I’ve called “home” when I’m off at school are drifting away from me now. I can never really go back to those times, nor do I honestly want to. I know it is time for me to start making my own way. As I look at the road that leads me back to Phoenix, I see job applications and a dwindling savings account. I see my sky blue bedroom at my Mom’s house and my beater old car that’s brakes squeal like a dying pterodactyl. In a few weeks a lot of my friends will be going back to school, either finishing their undergrad or starting a masters degree. Reality is growing larger in the distance as the van makes its way out West. The adventure has been life changing, but just like I told the lost girl on the subway: you always need to be able to go home.

The other people on the boat couldn’t see him as we pulled into the dock. Their cameras were clicking capturing broad smiles splashed across lips blabbing in a myriad of languages. They had their backs turned to the statue, grinning alongside her somber face. Nobody but me saw the blue sailor’s uniform silhouetted against the grey sky as Second Class Gunner’s Mate Roger Calamaio climbed on top of the Statue of Liberty’s torch.

Nobody could see him because it has been over 60 years since my grandfather broke away from his tour group and hoisted himself up off the platform and into the flames of the famous torch that had welcomed his father’s boat from Italy.

Today the 354 step journey to the crown is as high as most can travel, and that is exactly where my devil-may-care grandfather found himself on his first liberty leave from the U.S. Coast Guard in 1942. The staircase to the old torch had been closed since 1916, but as my grandfather stood there he noticed a man working above him in the old stairwell up the statue’s arm.

“A workman was up there so I shouted ‘hello’ to him and he said, ‘come on up here sailor!’ So I went up,” my grandfather told me several years prior to his passing this December.

He chatted with the worker on the old observation deck of the base of the torch for a while before looking up at the torch flames and deciding to go all the way up. He carefully found handholds on the metal and glass torch, and climbed to the very top.

“From up there you could see…everything,” he said as his hand panned across the invisible New York skyline, his ancient eyes remembering the sights.

It was in his honor that I braved the sweltering heat and massive crowds of tourists to quest after my family history that lay on the two famous islands in the New York Harbor.

I felt a little bit like I was going through Ellis Island myself just getting through the intense security checkpoint to board the ferry to the Statue of Liberty. I hadn’t realized that since September 11th, the interior of the statue has been closed, only reopening to the public a few weeks ago on the 4th of July. Apparently my keychain pepper spray that I’ve carried for years posed a threat to National Security, so it was abandoned in a trash bag near the gate.

After the wobbly boat ride, I choose not to disembark on Liberty Island. I had a spectacular view from the top deck of the boat, and judging from the size of the line to get back aboard, I made the right decision. I sailed on to Ellis Island in search of my family name.

Although the architecture was beautiful, Ellis Island gave me the heebeegeebees. Black and white eyes seemed to peer out the pictures and speak of tired journeys, big dreams, and lost hopes. Behind the gentle din of the crowd I could hear the silent prayers of my family standing in inspection lines waiting to see if they would be allowed to pass through the guarded golden door. The youngest Calamaio child at the time was deaf, and would have been likely turned away, as many were, but his mother snuck him though the health inspection tests using hand signal cues instructing him to nod and respond at the appropriate times. She would tug on her skirt with either her right or left hand depending on if he was to nod “yes” or “no.” He was just young enough that it worked.

In the courtyard behind the building, I found their name. “The John Calamaio Family” was engraved in the Wall of Honor monument located between the building and the freedom of the New York shore. What there was no monument for was the thousands of unnamed rejects sent back to their countries of origin. The “homeless and tempest tossed” not welcomed by Lady Liberty’s lamp.

Since this country’s beginning, Americans have always tried to keep foreigners out of “their land.” Almost every nationality has been discriminated against at one point or another in our nation’s history, and though few people are denied jobs today for being Irish or Italian, racism still closes gates to people seeking the American dream today.

I’ve lived in Tucson the past four years, a hop skip and jump from the U.S.-Mexico border and the sector with the most illegal migration apprehensions in the United States. I’ve seen firsthand the hatred some Americans have for migrants. “Minutemen” cars line the deserts surrounding the city hoping to capture immigrants themselves. I’ve seen Mexican flags burned by men with guns in the streets of downtown Tucson. I’ve interviewed children wearing American flag bandannas who’ve told me they hate Mexicans.

Everybody seems to have an opinion about who should be let in and who should be kept out, but what many forget is their own history. I am only a 4th generation American, just as many of the Minutemen likely are. But yet there is a culture of hatred still alive and well in America, no matter how many people walk though the Ellis Island museum and comment on how horrible and racist of a system it was.

The Calamaios that made it though Ellis Island were the lucky ones. The immigrants allowed to pass through the “sunset gates”. The ones allowed live and work and have children who would someday climb to the top of the welcoming Liberty flames and shout to the world. They were the ones whose great-granddaughter would be free to travel across the country in a van and stand where they stood to say, “thank you”.