There’s a particular kind of restlessness in Americans, and throughout our history that itch has lead us from the first East Coast settlements to what author Louis L’Amour called the far blue mountains of the Appalachians, ever westward, wagon trains of the mid-1800s departing from Kansas City giving way to the smoke-blowing locomotives of the late 1800s and early 1900s, replaced by what mass producer Henry Ford wrought, leading finally to the late 1920s and a thin ribbon of concrete stretching from Chicago to California. The West was open, Route 66 the conduit — like wagon trails and railroad tracks before it — of Americans’ unquenchable wanderlust.

 The bug bit me early, and when I was 16 I left my rural Missouri home early one morning on a trip to see a friend in Nashville, Tennessee. As I was driving on Interstate 70 through St. Louis, the Beatles sang “Here Comes the Sun” as our star broke over the eastern horizon. The wonder of traveling — alone — hit me, and I sang along, happy to be on the road, happy to be driving, happy to be just, you know, going. 

 Twenty-six years and several lifetimes later, I left the interstate behind and stepped into the past as present, traveling Route 66 across Missouri as millions before me had done, two lanes bridging the gap from the late 1920s to today, Americana its lifeblood and nostalgia its currency, the first and last great American road. I left the interstate behind and began my east-to-west journey from St. Louis to Joplin, my long hibernating traveling Jones awakened and ready for adventure.

 But first, you know, I had to actually find Route 66 in St. Louis’ user-unfriendly maze of one-way streets and road construction, and thank you Rand McNally.

I cut ties and said goodbye to an old friend this past winter. First acquainted early in high school, we spent part of four different decades together, but we parted ways just after the New Year. We stuck together — literally — through thicker and thinner, the early ’80s, the 1990s and the ’00s, 2010 another year like all the rest. Sure, we both were showing our age, our once-dark hair becoming more stained with white as the years piled up. The end came suddenly. A few quick turns, and my friend was gone. After twenty-eight years — well more than half my life — I finally shaved off my cheesy mustache.

Our warning came when the baby’s face turned beet red.

We stood Amelia up in her blue whale baby bath, the familiar rinsing position before wrapping her in a towel and beginning the bedtime ritual: new diaper, pajamas, two stories and lights out. The whale came with a fist-size, open-mouth plastic orange whale with holes in the bottom, the better to rinse you with, my dear, and a blue rubber floating hippopotamus . The hippo has a summer sky blue body and a winter pale blue face. Beady little black eyes and nostrils. Small hippo ears and feet and a curly bas-relief tail. A wide smile. A Made in China tattoo under its chin.

And that night, Amelia changed the hippo’s name forever. 

            Patrick Swayze will never be accused of being one of his generation's great actors. But in 1987, Swayze delivered his generation’s “Grease” by playing Johnny Castle to Jennifer Grey’s Frances “Baby” Houseman in “Dirty Dancing,” a movie that generations of girls, as with “Grease” before it, can watch countless times, swept away by the story of love that can’t be denied.

            Nineteen years later, facilitated by SportsJournalists.com, that movie helped bring Doc and spup together.

            Las Vegas glitters and glows in the American Southwest, as conspicuous in the parched desert landscape as a diamond in a goat’s ass, the perfect perversion and logical end game on the road to the American Dream, the ultimate come-on whose payoff never matches its implied promise, where Orwell’s minions have excised “excess” from the dictionaries and too much is never too much. Las Vegas, a city whose myth is matched only by its reality, run by steel-hearted whores whose payday comes not in your hotel room (although you can get that, too; just ask your friendly cab driver) but on their smoke-choked gaming floors. Las Vegas, where you have a better chance of getting comped a penthouse suite at Bellagio than you do of getting a stand-by seat on a plane out of town. Las Vegas, so crass that its official marketing slogan seems to encourage and celebrate infidelity – Sin City, indeed. Las Vegas, where the Ten Commandments long ago ran for cover, hoisted a white flag and called it a day.

            Las Vegas, everything you want and nothing you need.

            Las Vegas. Fuck, dude, perfect.

            I packed my iridescent green shirt and my leather pants and caught a plane, more than ready to loose myself in the bacchanalia.

            The Missouri River begins life high in the Rocky Mountains, on the eastern side of the North American continental divide in Montana, a rocky gully indistinguishable from thousands that carve their way through the crags and corners of America’s western backbone, no hint of the mighty, muddy force it becomes when, thousands of miles later, it joins with the Mississippi River, southward bound to the Gulf of Mexico. The Missouri River, 2,341 miles, rolling through Montana, North and South Dakota, marking the border between Nebraska and Iowa before separating Missouri and Kansas until, in Kansas City, it turns east, splitting its namesake state in half, the northern plains and small hills from the ancient Ozark Mountains and hollers to the south, the lifeblood of towns along its banks before railroads relegated the giant paddlewheelers to the dusty bin of history labeled nostalgia. The Missouri River, where Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s journey to the Pacific Ocean began in earnest more than 200 years ago.

            Our plan was six months in the making. Float the Missouri River, getting in touch with nature on its terms, just two guys, a canoe and whatever awaited us around the next bend, Lewis and Clark writ small – like, really small. Willy and I looked forward to it all summer, waiting for a three-day weekend that would work for us both. Finally we settled on the first weekend in August.

            Our plan was six months in the making. Six months or six years, it wouldn’t have mattered. We were woefully unprepared for the hell that awaited us.

            I have most weekends off now, the first time since working construction in the Pacific Northwest that I am so blessed. Saturday, Sunday, just like a real person. On the odd occasion that I have to work Friday and Saturday night, I get the Monday beforehand off, giving me a three-day weekend. Saturday, Sunday, Monday, just perfect for a three-day bender. And on June 28 while perusing sportsjournalists.com, I suddenly had plans for July 8, 9 and 10. “WANTED: drinking partners” read the thread title. Aw, who could resist a come-on like that? I clicked on the thread and opened it up.

            And down the rabbit hole I went.