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MY BEST ROAD trip was driving America’s most iconic and historic highway.
Who: Sean Kelly, NBC’s News at Ten, originally from Shrewsbury, England
Route: Los Angeles to Chicago
Distance: 4,025km
Time: 5 days
When: January – February 2016
Vehicle: Audi RS4
To many, the idea of “getting your kicks on Route 66” is nothing more than a cliché, one of those things that sound wonderful only in theory. I openly admit I was one of those people.
My motivation to drive Route 66 was born of necessity, simply because I was moving house. Driving an iconic route was just a way of relieving boredom over the ensuing 2,500 miles, but my early cynicism was soon overcome.
Driving my Audi RS4 away in the uncharacteristic heavy rain at Santa Monica Pier, I drove what could be considered the “wrong” direction, west to east. Anyone with experience of Los Angeles will know Santa Monica Boulevard takes about an hour to negotiate thanks to the dystopian level of traffic. Only once you are out of LA does the fun begin.
Turning north toward Las Vegas, you meet the sort of road your mind conjures when somebody says “Route 66”. Open, undulating, and as fast as you can get away with, what grabs you is that yes, this IS driving freedom. That is if the road surface doesn’t rattle your teeth out, or you don’t drive off the end of the road in the desert when a 10-mile straight concludes with a random 90-degree left turn, as I so nearly did.
Sunset at the diner in the ghost town of Amboy (deserted 1972) is a prelude to the most demanding section of the entire route, the Sitgreaves Pass mountain road at Oatman, Arizona. It was dark when I arrived and freezing rain was setting in, and perhaps it’s best that I couldn’t see how far I’d fall if I went over the side….
Resuming in Flagstaff, passing the Meteor Crater and then unashamedly standin’ on a corner in Winslow Arizona (as expressed in The Eagles song “Take It Easy”), the asphalt runs out at 702 miles, and you find yourself on mud at the New Mexico border. Simultaneously the most fun section and the most expensive, I lost a few bits of bodywork but trust me it was worth it!
A snowed-in Santa Fe was my second overnight stop, a prelude to inevitable Tony Christie references driving the freeway-heavy way to Amarillo, Texas, containing the bizarre Cadillac Ranch, a load of cars placed front-first into the ground (!)
A spiritual epiphany strikes once you reach Oklahoma. No matter your moral persuasions, once you’ve experienced gun-toting Nazarenes and realise you’re on the same road where you passed gay hipsters in West Hollywood, only then can you truly appreciate the diversity of the United States.
True driving nirvana is found in the pre-1952 section at Rock Creek in Sapulpa. The tree-lined banked corners make it more Monza than Midwest USA, ending on a glorious bridge seamlessly welcoming you to Tulsa. From the sublime to ridiculous, the 9-foot-wide “Ribbon Road” stands as a testament to engineering ingenuity in 1922: an improvised long narrow road when the budget would have otherwise meant a normal road of only half the required length.
Blink and you’ll miss the 12-mile section through Kansas, but you can’t miss the 2,000-mile mark at the Gateway Arch in St Louis. The run to Chicago is an unexpected treat, as many parts of the original 66 were bypassed in the 1940s and 1950s.
Because of this, the well-signposted 1920s sections are deserted and fantastic to drive, the long sweeping corners through open countryside coming straight from a 1950s Grand Prix venue. Petrol stations have a retro look, and the brick road segment is a nod to the original Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
The old roads of Illinois are such a pleasure that Chicago, one of the great cosmopolitan cities of the world, is almost a letdown – especially as the only fanfare to greet your arrival after 2,500 miles is a single sign that says “End Route 66” at Jackson Blvd and Michigan Avenue.
Against expectation, ’66 was life-affirming, full of memorable driving experiences (I drove on wood, asphalt, dirt, gravel, ice, brick and through a river), but perhaps more importantly, culturally enlightening in a way I could have never envisaged.
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If you’re a normal person you can mess up your entire life with some small-time laundering, but if you’ve in the Golden Circle you can gut the whole nation walk away smiling.
Stop telling these kids they have to work hard to get on top, they know its not true.
Right now a lot of young people feel they have no future already. House prices, the mounting debt the country is getting into and the lack of proper social skills in the correct environments.
@Full Circle: yeah 12 year old girls are really worried about that and not buying clothes
@Craic_a_tower: Zoomers are very much occupied with the fact they hace no future, actually. Can’t ignore it you see
@Craic_a_tower: Zoomers are very occupied with the fact they have no future – can’t ignore it
@Dylan Byrne: anybody labelling a whole generation with a lazy name has no concept of the real world. People have not changed that much. The 80s were not exactly a great future outlook no jobs and impending nuclear war. We survived and weren’t that forward looking at 12-16 which seems to be the target group
@Craic_a_tower: Anybody who lazily assumes teenage girls have no concerns except clothes shopping during a Pandemic has no concept of the real world. Go talk to aome Zoomers out there in the real world, the world is not the same as when you were growing up. Obviously.
My parents grew up working class in the 80s, nobody had any money but everyone was a hell of a lot happier. My parents feel so sick I could never have the teen years/early adulthood they did, even though they had nothing. Times have changed.
@Dylan Byrne: your parents did but you didn’t. I did so maybe my real world experience of the time beats your memory of what your parents told you. The outlook in the 80s was very grim and unemployment was huge. In school they would tell us when we leave Ireland to remember to buy Irish products to help the country.
Easy money is appealing and not understanding the consequences is as tempting to the immature mind. There are always gloomy teenagers like yourself. I was a Goth so I get the enjoyment of wallowing.
@Craic_a_tower: You really don’t get it do you? Zoomers KNOW they have no future, which is a far stretch from just having a grim outlook.
The world has been plundered since your time. They aren’t growing up in the same society as you did, reducing it down to ‘teenagers bein moody’ misses the point
As each day passes the future looks darker and darker, and the past just looks so much brighter.
@Dylan Byrne: just eat a Xanax sandwich
@Charmaine ☘ Irish: why would you say that? Is that how you cope? What he’s saying isn’t a lie.
@Dylan Byrne: you can’t get it because you don’t know what the 80s was like but think you do. We really didn’t see a future then either. I can relate to how you feel because that is how people felt then. You telling me things were better in a time you didn’t experience that I lived in is ridiculous. You have no idea the quality of life is so much better now. AIDS and nuclear war were huge fears. The thought of being able to live in Ireland was a dream for many. You simply don’t have the experience while I don’t experience the world as you do now I am quite familiar with human nature. There is nothing unusual going on and you aren’t unique in your view for anybody of your age looking at the future
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists had this to say on the subject,
“Big Banks shift money for people they can’t identify and in many cases fail to report suspect transactions until years after the fact”
Banks named in the ICIJ report included JPMorgan, HSBC Standard Chartered, Deutsche Bank and New York Mellon.
And we’re talking trillons.
As far as I can find out none of the bank executives involved have been jailed.
But hey. let’s get those kids. Jail them, brand them for life and take away their ability to function normally in society. That will teach them about law and justice.
The obvious contradiction in that story weakens the argument. In one part the article states that people who are used as mules don’t gain financially from it while further down it advises parents to watch for their children spending extra money on clothes and technology etc. What extra money? Where did it come from if they didn’t get paid for being used and exploited ?
They know exactly what they’re doing. Make an example of a few is the only way.
That money was just resting on my account.
Jail them.
Jail them
@john s: we heard you the 1st time.
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