Travel as Purgatory

Asch talks about traveling by car, bus, and train. Of these, I've experienced extensive travel by car, and a fair amount of travel by bus as well. I've never traveled by train (I don't think the subway counts), but I have traveled a lot by plane - an experience that seems at least somewhat akin to the trains in Asch's day.

Plane rides, much like Asch's train trips, are formal; you have to reserve your seat and, while most people no longer wear their best clothes, there is a sense of officialism to the way you interact (or rather, don't interact) with people around you on planes. I generally don't talk to people on planes, and if I do ever "get to talking with a stranger," I certainly am not myself: I am stiff, aloof, "strained." Plane rides are quick, impersonal, and just generally unimpressive; most of the time I have neither a positive nor negative experience: its just a plane ride, a dull interim period, a sort of traveler's purgatory.

Driving by car with my parents and sister on our numerous family road trips, I saw a lot of the country on the ground. 3 days in a minivan on a trip to Calgary, Canada (just north of Montana) gave me countless views of...nothing. Lots and lots of nothing. Endless vistas of...grayish yellow grass. The sporadic smattering of grazing cows, or sometimes buffalo. Miles upon miles of highway, gray concrete and other cars and giant tractor-trailers. Gas station food and McDonald's. In those days I used to get motion-sickness and couldn't really read very much, so I was forced to spend long stretches of time staring out the window. I went stir-crazy after a day, getting into fights with my sister over who got to stretch out and sleep in the back seat, complaining alternately about it being too hot, or too cold in the car. My trip across the heartland of America was not much to boast about - I certainly didn't gain any appreciation for the Great Plains. I had a similar experience when we drove west to see the Grand Canyon, except this time instead of miles of endless grayish grass I saw miles of endless grayish dirt. There weren't even that many grazing cows to break up the scenery. Sure, the Grand Canyon itself was amazing - but the trip there was excruciatingly boring. I'd have to agree with Asch that traveling by car cross-country is not a great idea - at least not when you're a bored young teenager in a minivan with your parents.

I've traveled by bus a bit, as well. Most of the time it's been short distances, like the 4-5 hour bus ride from Dallas to Austin that I take often. Once, though, I took a 3 day bus trip from New York to Dallas, partly to save money on airfare and partly just to see what a 3 day bus trip felt like. But I soon found it was far from the romantic experience I'd been expecting: I hated the bus ride. After a day my lower back started aching constantly from having to be always sitting; my legs were cramped from having to keep them in an awkward bent position for hours at a time; and I was always hungry: I don't eat meat, so the only food I could find during our harried 5-10 minute pit stops was junk food: candy bars, chips, peanuts. I couldn't even get a sandwich, since they were all pre-made and none were vegetarian. Those "murderous vibrations" Asch mentions are far from relaxing (I didn't ever actually sleep, I just sort of dozed for 30 minutes at a time), and we definitely did not stop every two hours. I tried to look out the window a lot, since at the very least I wanted to see the country as I was traveling through it. There were long stretches of trees as we drove through heavily-forested areas, and some of it was beautiful, but also a lot of it was the usual gray highway. I found myself spending most of my time buried in books, or absorbed in my own thoughts. That was, really, the only redeeming thing about traveling long distances by bus: I had a lot of time to do nothing, and I appreciated being able to sit quietly and read or think, since my life is usually so busy I don't get a chance to do this often. All in all though, the bus ride still felt like purgatory - only unlike a plane ride, this one was far more unpleasant and lasted what seemed like forever.

So if car, plane, and bus rides are all bust for me, how then can I experience this "America" that Asch finds so much joy in discovering? Through my travels, I can't quite say that I've gathered an experience of "America" (if this thing even exists as a concrete notion). I suppose my experience of "America" comes from my life, rather than my travels; I've lived in New Mexico, Texas, and New York, and my experience of this country is gathered from the people I've met in these places, and the moments I've had. But when traveling, the only "experience" I really got was the experience of travel itself, of this period of waiting, of being on hold: travel as purgatory.