What is this website about?

This site chronicles my adventures on the road as I drive my car literally "from coast to coast", starting in my hometown of Belleville, New Jersey and ultimately reaching the Pacific Ocean along the Californian coast. What makes this trip unique is the lack of an itinerary. Instead, I lived on 4 rules:

  1. Plan no farther than 1 day ahead
  2. Reach the Pacific Ocean
  3. Arrive home by August 3 to start my new job
  4. Leave with my car and return with my car

By trip's end, I returned without a scratch and 8542.3 miles added to my odometer. Re-live my adventures through the hundreds of photos, video, stories and maps scattered throughout the site.

Who did you travel with?

I did most of the travelling alone. I did travel with friends from Denver while in Colorado, and one of my college roomates who now lives in San Diego took me around San Diego and Baja. But 99% of the photos, even the ones where you see me walking around the wilderness are self-taken - with a tripod, timer and remote control.

What inspired your roadtrip?

I can't claim that this trip was a life-long dream. In fact, the roadtrip started out as last minute as it was executed. When I heard that my friend Alan planned to go to Kenya and my friend Veena to India for 3 months to do humanitarian work, the thought of joining them and bagging another exotic country to my world-travel list was alluring. However, things didn't work out and excitement turned to envy then to despair. I attempted to find other candidate countries to visit, but July monsoons, heatwaves and peak-seasons thwarted any safe, affordable or comfortable options. With my one month of time off from work approaching, I decided to suck it up and just drive... to drive without aim except to see what our country America has to offer and visit friends along the way. Little did I realize just how massive and amazing our country really is.

How has this trip changed you?

Being on the road, being alone and seeing things most people in this world or even in this country have not seen, has changed me (for the good) to a degree that I've come to re-examine why we do things and how we look at people. The world is a smaller place, and "America" is my backyard. Each pocket of America has its own culture, those cultures change or die, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. What we do does impact everyone else, to varying and exponential degrees. It's easy to forget why we do things, but I learned to find happiness in even the simplest things.

What was your scariest experience?

The scariest experience I've had was camping out in the desert in Joshua Tree National Park. It was almost 10PM when I pulled into a campsite and started to setup camp. I had read warnings about mountain lions and rattlesnakes, and according to the Crocodile Hunter remember them being most active at night. The bats that circled my head as they chased giant moths didn't help the matter. Except for a camper van parked a few hundred feet away from my site, I was alone in the dark, in the wilderness and not a single man-made light shone. It was my first night camping out alone in that type of desolation. And my imagination was my worst enemy.

What was the weirdest place you've been to?

Nevada. I took Highway 50, which I discovered was dubbed "The Loneliest Road" in America, to cross from California to Utah. I recall counting only a few dozen cars and trucks for a span of about 400 miles. In the middle of no-where-Nevada, there's a sign for "Basecamp". It looked like an abandoned military installation. However, a hitchhiker that I picked up along the way affirmed that it was active as he described first hand accounts that conjured images of Area 51.

What is your favorite place?

I don't have a particular favorite place in mind, but I will say that "you can't have a favorite until you've seen them all."