Feel the Miles

We've met a few other overlanders on our journey. Most are surprised to learn how fast we're doing our trek: 3.5 months to zip from Alaska to Argentina. It is a bit crazy, truth be told; and it leaves very little time for taking in the sights -- let alone taking in the culture. Many don't see the value in all the travel when there's no time to appreciate the places we're passing through.

And I totally agree. When the Marine Corps sent me to Japan, I went from mild disappointment to deep enthrallment over the course of three years. The longer I was there, the more I enjoyed being there and the more I appreciated time's ability to enrich my experience of the culture.

But this trip isn't about that. Certainly, there's a desire to experience the places we're traveling through, but we knew going into this that we wouldn't be able to see it all or do it all. This trip is about feeling the miles. It's about making 18,000 miles more than a calculation, more than a line on a map. It's experiencing destinations and all the points between them.

Many years ago, my cousin moved to the Kansas City area to start her family. That was right around the time I started doing much highway driving on my own. I remember going to her place, and "Kansas City" became "just off of I-35 at 119th Street" to me. Later, I visited the City Union Mission Family Center after volunteering at their Camp In The Ozarks (CUMCITO). My brother began working there full-time, so Kansas City became "just off of I-35 at 119th Street" and "just off of I-70 at Prospect" to me, with only a thin line of interstate connecting the two.

Eventually, I discovered the Kansas City Juggling Club and spent some time here thanks to the USDA. I developed an array of disparate, scarcely-connected, segments of the City. It wasn't until I moved here in 2012 that the interstitial areas began to fill in and I began to appreciate the relationships between these various areas and appreciate their connectedness.

That's the idea with this trip: not only to catch glimpses of the variety of the Americas, but to feel the distance; to experience the vastness.

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Thanks to Kasper (Together On Wheels) for capturing this concept so well in a single, succinct phrase. We met at the Kaluz Hostería in Ecuador and were chatting later that night. When he uttered this phrase, it stuck a chord, encapsulating not only the drive behind this trip, but also others I've taken: the length of I-35 south to north and Hwy 71 from the Canadian border to my house in KC. I've been on every mile of Hwy 24 in Kansas, but have often pondered doing it all in a single trip...just to feel the miles.