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To Know the Place Again, for the First Time: Two Months on the Road in the US
This summer I embarked on the most ambitious road trip of my life. I had a car the entire time and I interspersed places I had long wanted to see among business and personal appointments. Despite having traveled a fair bit in my life and giving myself (what I thought were) appropriate rest days, the journey ended up being one of the most challenging travel itineraries I’ve ever pulled off.
I say “challenging” with a fair amount of joy, for we should take pleasure in our exertions, especially if they bring us lasting satisfaction, which this trip did in so many ways.
The trip began, fittingly enough, in Dallas, Texas. My family first moved to Dallas from Singapore in 1988. We had relatives living there at the time (who live there still) and it was here that my first impressions of America formed. This long layover allowed me to visit with some of my relatives, catch up with friends who live in the area, and even see one of my Writerly clients that happens to headquarter out of Dallas.
While there is much in my life to make Dallas dear to me, in regards to urban planning it represents some of the worst of the dehumanizing automobile-driven sprawl development perfected by post-war American “urban planners” (mostly comprised of car dealers, brutal architects, and…
