Some people plan. I even had a job that required it, and I enjoyed it. And then there are those events that spring up on a mix of whim and opportunity. I live northwest of Seattle. There was a family celebration happening on an island in North Carolina. I decided to drive there and back again. It wasn’t the most efficient way to make the trip, but it turned into about two weeks of insights and stories. A book, perhaps?
Only one series of my books was the result of quiet contemplation. Sometimes, friends convinced me I should write about a specific event. Sometimes the universe whacks me in the head with a Hint, which I’ve learned to listen to. By now, this one has to get in line.
The long version of the notes is on my personal finance blog, TrimbathCreative.net (Road Trip – August 2025). This post is less about them and more about what I do with the story.
It is simple to say that every day is filled with story. If I get the time, I may write a book about what goes through a mind between someone asking me out to lunch and my response. Total time is only a few seconds, but chapters play through my mind in that time.
It would be simple to fly if my house and their house were near airports. They both are, but mine is a strip for private pilots and theirs is associated with a national monument. To use a big city airport would take about two hours of driving, plus the two hours of getting there early. Repeat to return. Tedious.
The drive took about six days each way. Not much of a time saving.
But.
Driving meant no reservations, greater control of my travel, and getting to see the country during a time of turmoil. I wanted to see the country instead of relying on media reports, pundits, and politicians. What’s really happening out there? Besides, I didn’t have to worry as much about what to take and how to pack it.
Read through those notes for more of that story. As I said there;
“I’m busy finishing one book about personal finance, and have started the third book in my sci-fi trilogy. I’m busy. This trip across the US could be a book, but I’m busy. I’m also forgetful, a human trait, so here are some of my notes from the trip for my own sake. IF, however, there’s enough interest in a book about what I saw in a coast-to-coast slice or two of the United States in August 2025, well, contact me. It was good to see the simplicities and complexities of reality instead of the snippets and sound bites that populate media, conventional and social. It is a big country, or is it big countries?“
I didn’t and don’t intend to write that book, but such a trip is obviously a story. I traveled east on the old US highway system, mostly. I traveled west on the Interstate system, mostly. At its simplest, the story is about our old system and Eisenhower’s systemic update. Add some complexity by comparing the various cultures encountered. Go further and draw out the emotional journey about family, solitude, and reflection. There’s more than one story, and each can support the others. Readers can be carried along through various gaps in one story by the others.
Travel stories sell. They’re less likely to require thought. Episodes can glance off emotion as the view or a meal is described.
Really, folks. Anyone can do this. (Well, not just anyone. Some folks have to stay home.) Drive coast to coast or border to border, take notes, take photos, listen to people, and think and feel, and stories will present themselves.
No one can cover the entire country, so don’t worry about trying. In a dream world, imagine a series of teams covering the country in the same month, then writing and publishing a series of books. Blogs, vlogs, shorts, and maybe a movie can present themselves.
Time matters.
The country’s problems changed even within the two weeks that I drove. Fast authors can turn that into a production within a few months, especially if they’re chronicling to a growing audience along the way. I’m busy. My personal finance book is about 2-3 months from publication – I hope. Fans of my sci-fi series are asking for the third book in the trilogy. I shouldn’t make them wait because patience is not eternal. With some good luck, that book will be done in a year, but more likely in two. Three years from now, the US will be in the next presidential election, but that projection contains a long list of assumptions about the country’s stability.
I saw evidence of how the country could fracture. One hint is that various bubbles can’t imagine it because they assume everyone thinks their way. I’ve seen various scenarios for how the US could untie itself into a Europe-ification of North America. Texas and California might cheer each other on to not being in the same country. Canada and Mexico could shake up, too.
The politics are shifting so quickly that my notes will be obsolete by the time I get to write up this story as a book.
And yet, I took notes.
The human mind is imperfect. That imperfection may be the thing that distinguishes human writers from AIs. That doesn’t mean skip the typos. It does mean capturing the experiences, memories, insights, and thoughts before they fade and shift. I’ve chronicled enough of my life to prove to myself that a year’s memory should be fact-checked. Photos and notes are necessary, unless the trip gets fictionalized.
Without my other projects, this trip would be a book. Maybe I’ll treat it as a resource for posts. I’ll definitely treat it as personal evidence for personal actions.
This blog is about being a writer. This post is about how one book can happen. I guess the trip cost thousands.
(I’m writing this from a mechanic’s lounge as they check tires and brakes. Next week is drivertrain. Maybe it won’t cost much, but a 6,600 mile trip with stretches at 80 mph, lots of mountain ups and downs, braking into turns and avoiding other vehicles, … It was worked hard, and did well. I’ll see how well.) (Ah, tire imbalance ~$150, not bad considering.)
If I did this again, I’d prefer to Not do it alone. Some photos happened in places where there was no place to park. Some notes went by so quickly that I’ve already forgotten pertinent phrases. If the person not driving is armed with a camera, pen, and paper the story becomes richer. Besides, more than one perspective is valuable. Shared driving also means safer driving.
Travel is an infinity of possibilities, which I’ll leave to dedicated travel writers.
I will, however, encourage any writer who is hunting for ideas or at least a mechanism to drive a story to take a drive. Mind, open. Take notes. Take photos. Listen. Pack well enough, but don’t obsess because there are stores within a few hours (and yes, some places are hours from a Walmart). Drive, safe. Tell us what you saw, felt, and thought.
tomthewriter.com 
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