Country Stroads, Take Me Home

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I am becoming increasingly convinced that all American drivers should have their licences revoked. 

Not you. 

If you are an American driver reading this I'm sure you're a wonderful driver. 

It's all the others on the road that are psychotic or drunk…….or possibly both. I am not willing to rule that option out. Especially since many Americans seem to view speed limits as a challenge and don't even get me started on box junctions or stop signs¹. 

Now I know you are all waiting to hear about what I've been doing on my road trip and not just my gripes but I've been spending most of my time in the car so haven't done that many interesting things in the last week. I'm writing this update from California and have slowed down now so you can look forward to a big sum up next week. But it's taking me a little while to edit it so please bear with me. 

If you've never been to North America it's very easy to ridicule Americans for their car dependency. But there are two key things you are fundamentally missing. 

Firstly is the sheer scale of the US. The other day when I drove from the Petrified Forest National Park in New Mexico to Flagstaff, Arizona which took 1:40 hours I received the instructions 

"Drive for 112 miles east on I-40"

Time to put the cruise control on and see what saucy poetry the 6th century poet Venantius Fortunatus² wrote to his boyfriend, the Bishop of Paris, in today's instalment of The Dark Queens by Shelly Puhak³

Secondly almost all American cities look more or less identical. In a few of my previous posts I've used phrases like "historic district" there's a very good reason for this. Once you get out of the areas built before cars most American cities look remarkably similar. 

The late, great George Carlin had a skit about America the beautiful. Here was this beautiful country with prairies full of wildflowers, stunning mountains, beautiful forests and lakes and we paved it all and built malls on it⁴. And he was right. 

I've driven across half a continent, braving the interstate system (which I think may have also been designed by someone who was also under the influence). And if you were to drop me on a street corner of most of the cities I've been to I really couldn't tell you where I was. 

Accents⁵, gift stores, and geology have been the biggest indicator of where I am. Unfortunately I left my tame geophysicist at home so I’ve had to be rely on accents and gift stores. I mentioned this to my parents when I called them a few days ago. When you drive across Europe and the UK, you'll drive through several different architectural styles on your way. Red brick, drystone, thatch, slate. The buildings and even village layouts will look different. It's subtle but a Sussex village will look noticeably different from a Scottish croft. In the outskirts of american cities it's not uncommon to feel either like you're driving through industrial estates or on A roads designed by someone who was told 10 minutes before the pitch meeting.

The US does have its own unique architectural style, which I actually really like, but it was largely abandoned in the 1900s for cheaper industrial buildings a

The countryside has more variety but I swear I have seen the exact same barn in Ohio, Texas, and California now.

Now you make arguments that the US is a young country, barely 250 years old. People that bring their culture and architectural styles with them when they migrate.I call bull on that. 

You know what else I've seen in Ohio, Texas, and California? 

Home Depot. 

I think I found where the barn is from.

Driving down paved roads watching prairie turn to mesa to mountain and back again with signs to the same restaurants offering their wears at interstates I can't help but think that George Carlin was right, we've paved America the Beautiful to build a mall.


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