In the fall of 2010, I drove across America with my wife and a friend in a silver Volvo 850 we bought in Athens, Georgia. Two months heading west, chasing what so many had chased before us. The American dream. Route 66, the Mississippi, the Grand Canyon. The thing about America is that you know it before you get there. I grew up on American junk food and junk culture. It became my personal mythology long before I actually went.
Everything was right where the movies had left it. Diners, neon, long flat roads. And so many cracks. What surprised me was the melancholy. The decay felt like an ending. Like watching the sunset of a powerful culture. Americans are good at moving on. The places they leave behind remember everything.

Driving west felt like being reunited with a long-lost sibling I had never actually met.

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