Deep down, we all want to be on the road

[Taverner]

It calls to us, the open road.

Even if we like it at home, we hear it beckon us in the strangest ways. We see a Greyhound bus, or a car with skis on its roof. This is usually during our commute, which is far from the real road - at that point you are traveling the tedious road - that one that leads to heart attacks and the madness that affects generations.

Our mythology speaks reams of the open road. Song of the Open Road by Whitman. The On the Road To... movies with Hope and Crosby. Easy Rider, Runaway Train, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Fandango, Lord of the Rings, Vacation, Thelma and Louise, Midnight Run, Silver Streak and many others are all bona fide Road Movies.

Even our greatest works all have elements of the Road Story. Take Star Wars. If you map out the places they go, it kinda is a road movie, even though it's not brought front and center like Primary Colors.

The road beckons us homo sapiens because the road, in itself, is as close to holy as you can get with fiction. The road can introduce characters, kill characters, provide money, take away money, go awry (and they always do) and usually just G O.

So - Your favorite Road Story?

Mine's Fear and Loathing, of course...

[elleng]

1. Travels with Charlie

Undaunted Courage
+++

[Taverner]

3. Love that book!

[Ptah]

6. A long paragraph from Travels With Charley:

        The service did my heart and I hope my soul
some good.It had been long since I had heard such
an approach. It is our practice now, at least in the
large cities, to find from our psychiatric priesthood
that our sins aren't really sins at all but accidents
that are set in motion by forces beyond our control.
There was no such nonsense in this church. The
minister, a man of iron with tool-steel eyes and a
delivery ike a pneumatic drill, opened up with
prayer and reasurred us that we were a pretty sorry
lot. And he was right. We didn't amount to much
to start with, and due to our own tawdry efforts we
had been slipping ever since. Then, having softened
us up, he went into a glorius sermon, a fire-and-
brimstone sermon. Having proved that we, or per-
haps only I, were no damn good, he painted with
cool certaintity what was likely to happen to us if
we didn't make some basic reorganizations for
which he didn't hold out much hope. He spoke
of hell as an expert, not the mush-mush hell of
these soft days, but a well-stoked, white-hot hell
served by technicians of the first order. This rev-
erend brought us to a point where we could under-
stand it, a good hard coal fire, plenty of draft, and a
squad of open-hearth devils who put there hearts
into their work, and their work was me. I began to
feel good all over. For some years now God has
been a pal to us, practicing togetherness, and that
causes the same emptiness a father does playing
softball with his son. But this Vermont God cared
enough about me to go to a lot of trouble kicking
the hell out of me. He put my sins in a new per-
spective. Whereas the had been small and mean
and nasty and best forgotten, this minister gave
them size and bloom and dignity. I hadn't
been thinking very well of myself for some years,
but if my sins had this dimension there was some
pride left. I wasn't a naughty child but a first rate
sinner, and I was going to catch it.

[elleng]

20. ...

:thumbsup:

[MiddleFingerMom]

2. Maybe not my favorite... but I've always liked, "The Gods Must Be Crazy". n/t

[Taverner]

4. You probably love more road movies than you think

Our American Story is a 'road' story, even if that road is the Atlantic Ocean.

[Taverner]

5. Lemme put it this way: Great Escape was a road movie

Even though a small part of it actually occurred on the road

It was all about the build-up to the road

[bluesbassman]

7. Lost in America

Say it! Say it! Say 'I lost the nest-egg'. Go on, say it!

Classic rant from Albert Brooks!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyaB0THe2UQ

[Taverner]

10. :) nt

[MiddleFingerMom]

11. This Albert Brooks scene is one of my favorite EVER...

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
...and probably THE definitive Quaaludes scene.
.
.
.
.
.
"I don' like thissong. Makes me sad."
.
.
Terrible quality -- GREAT funny.
.
.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVA4kTwA0x0&NR=1
.
.
.

[pinboy3niner]

8. The Grapes of Wrath

An especially arduous journey from Oklahoma to California. Great book, great film.

[Taverner]

9. And an excellent road story nt

[handmade34]

12. uh...?

ya want my job... 6 years moving every three weeks around the U.S.... I never wanted to leave home... just got into Colorado; the mountains will be fun

[Taverner]

13. That's not THE road, that's A road

Big difference

[handmade34]

14. ......

:) ;) :hippie: :toast:

[david13]

15. My own.

My favorites are my own, where I get out there.
Now, do I love the road. Yes and no. I'm a home body, a nester, and all that, but I do get the open road calling me, the itch to travel, wanderlust, etc.
So I have to go.
The Thompson title or snippet from several titles, fear and loathing, I use a lot. Fear and loathing, in not going. Or fear and loathing, getting out there and going.
I think I have the loathing, I hate everybody, equally, but not really the fear.
Tho' when I return from the road, and I'm not dead, I'm not killed or caught, I feel good. Like I dodged a bullet.
Like I was shot at, and missed. Ah, they didn't get me, I made it back alive.
dc

[Taverner]

17. Awesome - I can get that

[MilesColtrane]

16. La Strada...Fellini

[PassingFair]

18. "The Adventures of Roderick Random"

by Tobias Smollett.

Still the best road novel (and the first!).

[elleng]

19. How STUPID of me! On the Road, Kerouac

How could I fergit???

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Road

[Mopar151]

21. Oddly enough

The "War Stories" series, run over the holidays by a drag racing website Competition Plus, has LOTS of great road stories

http://www.competitionplus.com/drag-racing/news/16322-war-stories-race-

If you like this sort of thing, dig in their archives - John Force was their first champ!