The soul of America lies in her criss-crossing highways and interstates.  

 

The bulldozers of Kinsella have remade the American countryside into a flowing frame of connecting roads, carrying cargo, vacationers, bikers and Men through the world at dizzying pace.  What was once a nearly impossibly long trip for my grandfather is a three day journey.

 

In the 1940s, my grandfather set out from Northern Minnesota along the nascent highway system bound for Seattle, Washington at the national speed limit of 35 miles per hour.  Today, that same traffic is hustling at twice that rate.  Semis with multiple trailers, cargo vans, Harleys and Fords make the trip.  

 

Contained within this journey is the heart of America, an ever-moving adventure across the country, slowing only to take on more fuel and readjust to the local contours.  We rest when it’s required, but only grudgingly, hoping to make up the stop on a stretch of empty road when the patrolman’s not looking.

 

Tiff understands, exasperated as the stop on the Indiana Toll Road cost us the five minutes she’d spent the whole state making up after our long lunch off the Ohio Turnpike.  We race west with the sun, bound for the Second City and our rest for the evening.  This is her big road trip, but she suddenly understands what I’ve known since I was much younger: Race the daylight and win.

 

That is the road’s empowerment.  It gives us not just a goal but a method, challenging us and giving us the route to the finish.  The Power of America comes with her vast roads, their siren call beckons us to cross them, and in the doing, see the heart and soul of America.

 

So we go.