Mile 1

This book is about the road. The quintessential North American road, the simplest, straightest road, a road in between places. My companion, Bulent Akman, and I set out east from Toronto. For seventy-five days our bed was the back of a 1988 Buick Electra Estate Wagon, and our intention was to circumnavigate the continent. These roads show the face of the continent; its inventiveness, its fantasies, and its follies. Along these roads, we both sought and fled identity, carrying out our pursuit of happiness. As John Steinbeck once said, "The highway was their home and movement their means of expression." Things didn't go exactly as planned. Setbacks included enormous automobile repair costs, sickness, and ultimately a disastrous car crash in the mountains of New Mexico. The Buick was destroyed, and Bulent was forced home due to a then-unknown bursting appendix. This book is a chronicle of the journey.