I'm in Florida now. My bus from Florida to Los Angeles leaves in 52 hours. This will be the fourth time I've crossed the country by ground transportation. The first time was when I was eighteen years old, fresh out of high school. I took some of the money I had saved from my Bar Mitzvah and bought an Amtrak pass that allowed me to stop in any three places in the US or Canada. I chose Montreal, Vancouver, and San Francisco. It was my first trip out of the country. I grew up in a rather drab, highly atomized middle and working class suburb outside of Philadelphia. Family outings consisted of going to the mall, or, if we were really lucky, to a buffet in Lancaster. Family vacations were always to Disney World or to my paternal grandparents' condo at the Jersey Shore. I went to Disney World five times as a kid. Once would have been sufficient, and twice more than enough for me. My dad believed that it was inappropriate to take kids on vacations to anywhere but theme parks. Actually this was his excuse for avoiding vacations to culturally significant locales that bore little interest for him. I enjoyed the vacations to Disney World only because they were among the few times that my dad put his abundant anxieties aside, along with his incessant and harping criticism and voluminous rage, and acted like a civil and decent human being. I mean, once he lit up a joint on "It's a Small World," which precipitated an announcement on the ride's PA system alerting patrons to extinguish any lighted cigarettes immediately. But we would all have been relieved if that was the worst thing my dad did during the course of a 7-day period.

My upbringing took place within the confines of a cultural vacuum. At dinner times we were forced to watch whatever television program suited my dad's fancy at the moment, usually vapid shit like Married With Children or The Rockford Files, and mealtime conversation was strictly proscribed, except during commercial breaks, lest my father be disrupted in his boob tube induced reverie. Every once in a while we were granted a reprieve when my dad would take an interest in something mildly stimulating like All in the Family or Taxi. But watching All in the Family in silence was about as stimulating as my home environment ever became.

By the time I was 18, this environment was constricting me to a degree I could no longer tolerate while maintaining my sanity. So I bought a train ticket, stayed in some hostels and other dingy accommodations, drank a ton, and got away from my family for 36 days.

My first destination was Montreal, where I had reserved a room for 5 nights in the McGill University dorms, which were (and probably still are) rented out to budget travelers when the university was not in session during the summer. The air-conditioning broke during the train ride to Montreal, and it was the middle of summer. When I got to my room, I opened the window to cool down a bit, only to find that there was no screen and immediately below me was a flood light that attracted every Francophone gnat in the North American continent. My room flooded with these noxious beasts, the dorm reception desk had closed just after I arrived, and I would not be able to get another room until the next day. Being a resilient son of a bitch, I bought myself a liter of red wine, on this my first day outside of the USA and the first day on which I could legally purchase booze, and I drank myself into a gnat-infested oblivion. But I remember even more poignantly than this uncomfortable night the exultation I felt at being able to wonder around the streets of Montreal, free to do with myself whatever I pleased, liberated from the confines of my home environment.

I started crossing the country not in order to get somewhere but in order to get away from somewhere. Within myself, getting away from that place was never as simple as hopping on a transcontinental train. When I was 18, I wanted it to be that simple. I thought that if I worked hard, got high grades, and gained admission to a first-rate college, I could make a clean break from my place of origin. I equated physical with mental space. Life's journeys are never as simple and straightforward as hopping on a train to get from Point A to Point B. And they have an odd way of bringing you back, unexpectedly, to the place where you started.