11 lessons from a 5,011-mile drive
11 lessons from a 5,011-mile drive
Insights on maintaining fitness, gear tactics, the downsides of modern life, travel nutrition, dogs, and more.
Post summary
I recently traveled across the country and back.
We’re covering 11 lessons, tips, and ideas from that road trip.
They range from health and fitness tips, to thoughts on the downsides of modern life, to recommendations around gear and travel nutrition.
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The post
Leah and I recently drove 5,011 miles—from Las Vegas to New Jersey and back.
Complicating this already way-too-long drive, we brought our dogs with us.
Stockton: a 9-year-old German Shorthair Pointer who enjoys consuming anything containing calories, cuddling stuffed animals, and chasing small creatures.
Conway: a 8-year-old mix who likes sunning herself, listening to The Cure, and eating Vietnamese food.
Seventy-two hours of sitting in a car gave me way too much time to think, learn, and observe.
Today’s post covers 11 brief lessons, tips, and ideas from our voyage. Topics include:
Travel gear insights.
Thoughts on the nutrition of a nation and downsides of the Paleo movement.
How to offset excess sitting.
My favorite magazine story of all time (which occurred in a place I drove through).
How to combat back pain.
What we lost when we became able to travel anywhere quickly.
Reclaiming your attention in a world of tech.
How I eat on the road (and thoughts on hunger).
An uncomfortable but fruitful way to improve relationships.
Two useful tips for traveling with dogs.
Let’s roll …
1. Pack a go bag
I’m not talking about the type of “go bag” that prepares you for the zombie apocalypse (not if, but when).
Leah and I put our bare necessities—underwear, toiletries, computers—in my custom GR1.
That’s the only bag we’d bring into our hotel room. This streamlined our trip and saved us from lugging heavy luggage in and out of hotel rooms every day.
Related to that…
2. Wear the same sh*t
While prepping gear for a month in the Arctic to report The Comfort Crisis, I planned on packing a change of clothes or two.
Donnie Vincent looked me dead in the eye and said, “Michael, you don’t need extra clothes. We’re going to wear the same sh*t every day.”
I deployed the same logic for this trip. I wore the same pants, shirt, and socks every damn day.
Again: We’re streamlining and trying to avoid lugging luggage.
I wore:
PROOF’s 72-Hour Merino. You can wear anything in the 72-hour line for—you guessed it—72 hours straight without stink, thanks to merino wool. Also, long sleeves protect your arms from the sun.
Taylor Stitch’s Apres Pant. They’re comfortable like sweat/lounge pants but don’t look, let’s say, like lazy old sweat pants. Think of them as the type of elevated lounge pants Kendall Roy from Succession would wear.
GORUCK Challenge Socks. Jason McCarthy wore these for a month straight without washing them. They held up and, he claims, didn’t smell. Plus they’re great for rucking.
Leah, meanwhile, rocked a sort of full-body Vuori Performance Jogger + Zip Hoodie tracksuit. Picture Gwyneth Paltrow meets Paulie Walnuts from the Sopranos.
Also, I know what you’re thinking. Don’t worry. I changed my underwear. Extra pairs went in the go bag.
3. Wheat is incredible
We drove across Kansas, which is, from what I saw, one giant wheat field. Amber waves of grain flanked us for hundreds of miles of driving.
Kansas grows more than 200 million bushels of wheat annually, enough to bake 35 billion loaves of bread. If you loaded all the wheat grown in Kansas in one year into train cars, the train would stretch from Kansas to the Atlantic Ocean.
Wheat gets a bad rap in fad diet circles. It’s banned by many diets like the Paleo diet.
But wheat is, “the grain at the center of civilization,” explains Rachel Laudan, the brilliant food historian.
Wheat allowed cities to rise. It allowed armies to form. It led to empires. We wouldn’t be here, reading text on screens, were it not for wheat.
Here’s a fascinating piece Rachel wrote. In it, she questions the historical validity of the Paleo diet movement and makes a strong case for why wheat is wonderful.
4. Stretch at every stop
These four stretches will improve your mobility and help you avoid getting “stuck” during long drives and flights. I did them at every fill-up. They’re also great to do during the work day.
A related tip: On a long drive or flight, bring a ball with you, like a lacrosse ball or baseball.
When something aches—like a spot in your back, hip, or shoulder—jam the ball between that spot and the seat. That stimulus will lead to relief, likely by distraction and the complex neurology of pain.
5. Read this story
On the third day of driving to the East Coast, we passed through Zanesville, Ohio.