If I’m going cross-country, I’m picking the car. Not because it’s romantic, let’s not lie to ourselves, but because it’s the only option that lets you stop when something actually interesting happens. Airplanes are efficient, sure, if your life goal is to teleport from one overpriced coffee to another. Trains pretend to be poetic until you realize you’re just staring at the same blur for hours. A car, though, gives you friction, detours, bad decisions, and the occasional moment that feels like a photograph waiting to exist.
There’s also something deeply suspicious about trips where everything is scheduled. You board, you sit, you arrive. Congratulations, you’ve successfully behaved like luggage. Driving forces you to negotiate with reality: weather, roads, wrong turns, questionable motels. It’s inconvenient in the best possible way. The kind of inconvenience that produces stories instead of Instagram captions that read like they were generated by someone who’s never been outside.
And yes, a bike would be more “authentic,” if by authentic you mean physically broken by day three and questioning your life choices somewhere between two identical fields. A bus? That’s just surrender with wheels. So I’ll take the car: imperfect, inefficient, and full of potential for things to go slightly wrong, which is exactly where anything worth remembering tends to happen.
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