The troublesome things that a wayward traveler sees on the road are not there to shake his psyche or even put pits in his stomach, however, they are there to be seen, and, once they are seen, it is the wayward traveler's duty to report what he has witnessed and how it has made him feel.
Recently I drove around the United States with two of my best friends, Winston Churchtree and Frederick "Falling" Rocks. We dubbed the voyage "The American Loop" — drive through the northern half and then swoop down through the South, with more than 8,000 miles of driving in three weeks.
I am not going to take you through the entire event because that would take far too long, and frankly I do not have the energy for it. However, like a broken-down, dirty presidential candidate, I would like to tell you about some of the specific people I met and shed some insight into some of the places I visited. Be warned, in embarking on this trip, we did not seek out the normal, the healthy or the privileged. Our ship, which was a 2009 Honda Fit, was steered in the direction of the strange, the indecent and the misunderstood.
