Long journeys across the U.S. are a somewhat strange experience. Hours upon hours, stationed within a fast-moving car, train, or even a bus, and the landscape changes ever so gradually. Fields, fields, and more fields. Agriculture’s presence in America is still very much evident, even after graduating from school.
Oddly enough, the agricultural vocabulary of the de facto national language (for now) seems to be rather meager, compared to Hebrew. Israel, whose society is still very much agrarian, especially for a first world country, lacks these expanses. Nevertheless, English is the language of the never ending farmland.
There is something rather monotonous about watching these fields. It all feels like one big tract of farmland, separated only by the small, picturesque towns and rest stops that dot the countryside. Yet driving in the US is generally goal-driven, there is a destination to be reached. And so, stopping in unknown towns along the way is counterproductive. The destination must be reached. Stopping? That’s what rest stops are for.
Rest Stop in Ohio, by r.j.wagner
Rest stops are a curious concept. Each state, or interstate highway, seems to have an individualized style when it comes to their rest stops. Yet they are anything but different from one another. One can stop at every single rest stop in Ohio along I-80, for example, and not be able to tell them apart. Perhaps a few are mirror images of the others, but that is truly a distinction without a difference.
One’s concept of time seems to change, as well. A 10-hour Indian train ride from Haridwar to Amristar may be wholly enjoyable and even refreshing. Yet, there are no rules – people stare, inquire, touch, and yell, but it is the experience that draw one to travel in the first place. The three and a half hours from New York to Washington, D.C., on the other hand, are at times, unbearably long when people refuse to follow the rules.
You Can't Look Out the Door on Amtrak
Naturally, there are rest stops on the other side of the world, but these are not the cookie cutter creations of the American interstate highway system. From my experience thus far in Asia, the bus driver will stop at a family-run roadside food stand in the middle of nowhere. His choice is bottom-line driven – he generally gets a certain percentage of the money spent, during the 20 minutes allocated for the meal. But these places have real character – people yell at you incomprehensibly for “ordering wrong,” and no one asks you if you would like supersize anything. Run very efficiently, but with only one or two items on the menu, the westerner’s desire for choice will likely not be fulfilled. A lot of patience is necessary, though. Patience one does not have when trying to “make good time” driving from New York City to Chicago.
Overall, domestic travel has a very different feel from travel abroad. Like I said, domestically, a destination is to be reached. Traveling the world, the endless hours between places with names like Kathmandu and Kasar Devi can be taken in stride, and enjoyed. And on these roads, there is talk of the short trips back home, that will no longer just be tolerated – the hour between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv will fly by in an instant.
The Flat Tire
I have had those same thoughts many times. How bad can a couple hours of loud, poor quality, mizrahi music possibly be, compared to a entire day of horrendous karaoke videos on a bus trudging through the mud? Nevertheless, standing somewhere outside of Varanasi, while three of us were waiting for our driver to fix the flat on his autorickshaw, hoping we won’t miss our train, I knew that back home something like this would happen, and an hour of domestic travel would once again feel exponentially longer.
