Roads From the Ashes

by Megan Edwards

  Consider these messages, a few of thousands we’ve received from the ether. I believe that not a one of them would have reached us by any other medium.

  “I think what you are doing is wonderful. I am 68 and this was always my dream and now I can communicate with someone who is living it.”

  “I’m sitting in a 15 x 7 office with no windows. I’m supposed to be analyzing our computer system, but for the entire day I’ve been reading your journals. I wish I could do the same as you, and I think I’m going to figure out how. Thanks for the inspiration.”

  “You are living my dream! I’m a supervisor at the Houston Intercontinental Airport. I’m an Air Traffic Controller. If you swing by here, come up for the royal tour!”

  “Yo, Marvin! Greetings to the Cyberdog!” (From the start, Marvin received more e-mail than Mark or me.)

  “I’m from Long Island, New York, and I’m 15 years old. I have a couple of questions. How do you receive mail? (Not e-mail, but like bills and stuff) When you rent a movie, do you mail it back? Where do you park at night?”

  “THANKS FOR SENDING ME THE WORLD TO TALK TO. IT WAS QUITE A NICE THOUGHT TO DO THAT.”

  This last message came from a man named Fred Worster, who signed his letters “The MAINEiac Chef.” He was bedridden and dependent on oxygen and told us he had “3 TO 8 MONTHS TO LIVE,” but “DON’T FEEL BAD FOR ME AS I HAVE HAD A GOOD LIFE.”

  We struck up an e-mail friendship with Fred. He kept us posted on the view from his window in northern Maine and sent us a recipe for authentic Indian pudding, all in screaming capital letters. In Fred’s case, virtual shouting seemed to underscore his desire to make the most of every second of his life, even when a failing heart kept him confined to a hospital bed. Why whisper when you can yell? Why merely exist when you can live?

  The inevitable day arrived when an e-mail message appeared in our mailbox from Fred’s son Dale.

  “I am sorry to say that my Dad has passed away. He talked about you and your travels. Thanks for being someone in his life.”

  How do you put a price on the meeting of minds, on friendship and community that transcends physical location, that rises above debilitating illness? As much as I wanted RoadTrip America’s ad space to sell, it was almost irrelevant to measure its success in commercial terms.

  Almost, but not quite. We had bills to pay, gas tanks to fill. You can’t draw checks off your memory bank. We plotted and schemed about ways to build our audience, and one day, I had the bright idea of attending the Calgary Stampede. One of my sisters lives in Calgary, and she’d been telling us for years that Stampede was the rodeo equivalent of the Rose Parade.

  Stampede

  “It will help build our presence in Canada,” I said, “And maybe we can get press credentials.” I said “maybe” because we had no way of knowing whether an Internet magazine would be taken seriously. Back then, when Web reporters were unusual, we never knew whether we’d be welcomed as exotic celebrities or scorned as pathetic pretenders.

  As it turned out, we were neither pampered nor scorned, but rather welcomed exactly as we’d hoped, on a par with all the other journalists. Most of them had been covering Stampede for years, and all of them wore cowboy hats.

  In fact, everyone in Calgary was wearing a cowboy hat, and most were wearing jeans and boots, too. The whole city goes wildly Western for two weeks every July, and if you don’t follow the custom, you feel like a Coke at a Pepsi convention.

  Before the week was out, we’d made our second television appearance. Mark and I, dutifully wearing newly purchased white straw cowboy hats, were interviewed by a local news crew at the Phoenix One, which was parked near the main Stampede gate. Once again, RoadTrip America recorded a surge in visitors, and once again, our e-mailbox was full of complimentary messages and suggestions about places to go and things to see in Alberta.

  After Stampede ended, we spent a few days in the hill country north of Calgary, visiting a high-tech dinosaur museum in Drumheller, and interviewing a bull rider and a rodeo clown in Three Hills. As we climbed west over the Canadian Rockies into British Columbia, I watched the staggering scenery roll by and set my mind to work once again on the conundrum of RoadTrip America. Were we crazy? Were we brilliant? Were we headed in a direction that made any sense at all, or were we throwing money into the wind?

  Sitting in a natural hot pool under the stars at Fairmont, I turned to Mark and said, “If we can create a Web site, so can a hundred thousand other people. Right now, we’re unusual, and right now RoadTrip America is a story. In six months, we may still be unusual, but I’d be willing to bet that RoadTrip America will be yesterday’s news. It’s too easy to create a Web site, and too many people are doing it.”

  “Yeah, so what’s your point?” asked Mark.

  “Well, I’ve been thinking, and I have an idea,” I said, and Mark groaned. My brain never seems to turn on little light bulbs. They’re always large and blinding, like “Why don’t we just hit the road?”

  “Are we in this for real?” I asked. “Really and truly? Until we’ve given it all we’ve got and we grind to a total halt?”

  “I thought we’d already agreed on that,” said Mark. “So what’s your idea?”

  “Well,” I said, sliding down into the water until only my face broke the surface, “If we really and truly want to find out if we can build an audience and sell advertising, we have to do some serious, big gun publicity. The evening news in Port Angeles and Calgary were lovely, but we can’t rely on hit-or-miss tactics. I think we should hire a public relations firm.”

  Mark sat up, and so did I. I could see his brain turning over logistics behind his eyes. I’m always seized by grand visions. He’s always struck with details, the Rube Goldberg machinery it takes to actually make things happen.

  “I know someone who does that sort of thing,” I said. “I met him at a convention where he was handling the press. I can send him e-mail and ask him some questions.”

  The moon set, and we climbed out of the bedrock pool. Still steaming, we walked back down the hill to the Phoenix in the darkness. The next morning, I sent an e-mail message to Gerry, who worked for a large, prestigious public relations firm in New York. We hit the road south, and even though we didn’t know it, the Idaho border was our Rubicon. Now that we’d set our sights on a blitz of high-powered publicity, there was no going back.

  Gerry, who was understandably concerned about the sort of budget we were likely to represent, had diplomatically offered to give us the names of less expensive free-lancers, and he even suggested ways we might handle publicity ourselves. His firm, whose clients included the Duchess of York, Kathie Lee Gifford, and any number of other celebrities and large corporations, was hardly the low-cost choice. I knew that, I replied, and that’s why I’d written. We wanted to do everything in our power to propel RoadTrip America to marketability, I explained, and we had a window of opportunity that wouldn’t stay open forever. We didn’t want second best, and we’d already tried do-it-yourself. We could understand if we were too small a potato to be of interest to a firm like his, but a firm like his was what we wanted. Finally I asked simply, “Do you want the job?” The question hung in the air as we pulled into Wallace, Idaho.

  “I Saw You On TV!”

  Wallace was covered in volcanic ash when we arrived, an unnatural disaster caused by the filming of Dante’s Peak, a high- budget movie about a volcano that blows its stack and obliterates a small town. Wallace didn’t have a mountain, which in the era of digital effects is easy to fix, but it did have an adorable mining town main street and residents eager to cooperate, partly “For the Glory” and mostly “For the Money.”

  By the time we arrived, the glory had worn off, and business owners who hadn’t been able to open their front doors for three weeks were beginning to grumble that the money wasn’t worth it, either. Even so, it was clear that Wallace was having a memorable summer
, and we settled into a campground next to the old railroad depot where we could hobnob with the locals, enjoy the excitement, and even borrow a telephone to download the e-mail message that sealed our fate for the next four months.

  In August, we would commence a national publicity tour orchestrated by Gerry’s firm. We’d start in the west and cover “major media markets” across the country. We’d wind up before Thanksgiving in New York City, the press and publishing capital of the Western world. By then, we reasoned, we’d be seasoned spokespersons for our cause, and our track record of coverage in other markets would help crack through the jaded, we’ve-seen- it-all veneer of Big Apple news moguls.

  Our plan was going to take all we had, not just financially, but in every other respect, too. Not only would we continue to publish daily features on RoadTrip America, we’d be arriving in a new city each week. We’d been arriving in strange places on a near-daily basis for two years, of course, but now we’d be trolling for “hits,” interviews with newspaper reporters, radio talk show hosts, and television personalities. It was a whole new, eye-opening enterprise, the unlikely coalition of two nomads in a motorhome and a team of Manhattan fame brokers.

  Our first “media market” was Las Vegas, and when we arrived it would have been 110° in the shade, but there was no shade. Our thermometer read 116°, fairly normal for August. Nadine, who worked with Gerry and had been assigned to our account, had landed a “remote shoot” with the “CBS Evening News.” That meant that we had to wear little speakers in our ears, look into a camera, and pretend that we could see the news anchor sitting at his cool desk in the studio. I’d seen a thousand such interviews, but let me assure you, it’s different when you’re the one wearing the bug. We squinted into the sun and tried to ignore the sweat pouring down our foreheads and backs. We smiled and talked, and I can’t remember a word I said. It was baptism by fire.

  And it worked. The casino at which we were staying was pleased to receive positive if indirect publicity, and the general manager bought us dinner. Several people recognized us as we left the dining room, and RoadTrip America registered an increase in traffic. By the next morning, our e-mail box was full of messages from Las Vegans who’d watched the news. Before we departed for Utah, we had also been interviewed for the Las Vegas Sun. Two hits. Not bad.

  And so it went. We connected dots across the continent: Salt Lake City, Denver, St. Louis, Chicago, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. By the time we arrived in New York City, we had honed not only our public personas but an entirely new set of skills virtually unheard of in the Winnebago crowd. The majority of RV owners stay away from big cities for obvious reasons. For starters, most of them acquired motorhomes to escape urban landscapes. Places to stay are harder to find in metropolitan areas, and parking is a guaranteed nightmare. And of course, most RV owners are not on publicity tours. They’re on vacation. The last thing they want to think about is washing their vehicle or parking in Times Square, but in our quest for publicity, we embraced such challenges. They were a far cry from grizzly habitats and icy mountain roads, but big cities tested our mettle just as thoroughly.

  Washing the Phoenix was a weekly challenge. It needed to shine in photographs, and it was too tall for ordinary car washes. We often spent the better part of a day searching for a truck wash and waiting in line with dozens of eighteen-wheelers. If we were lucky, we’d find a do-it-yourself establishment with a tall bay, but sometimes we had to rely on the kindness of campground owners who’d loan us a hose and a bucket.

  And we had to look as slick as we could, too, which meant braving the scariest thing of all about life on the road. If I asked you what’s most frightening about traveling in a motorhome, you might guess guys with guns or traffic accidents, but those are way down the list. The most terrifying thing is haircuts. There was a time in my purse-and-pantyhose past that I took for granted the regular attentions of Dana Marie, a hair artiste of the first order. I trusted her completely, and even let her dye my hair if she thought it was a good idea. My head was in her hands every six weeks.

  Unfortunately, there’s no such thing as a virtual haircut, and for the first few months on the road, I kept putting off the inevitable day when I’d have to darken the door of an alien beauty salon. I stayed shaggy most of the time, but when we launched our publicity tour, I knew I’d have to muster my courage and start trusting my pate to strangers on a regular basis.

  Celebrities always take their hairdressers on tour, and I no longer think they’re spoiled. The day I looked into a mirror in Denver and stifled a scream was the day I understood Madonna. I would have gladly paid Dana Marie’s expenses to meet us in St. Louis. Lacking a movie star budget, I fell back on my Stampede cowboy hat. Suddenly it became my favorite accessory.

  And I wasn’t the only one facing a grooming challenge. Marvin had to look good, too, now that he was a media darling. I’d long since perfected the art of bathing him in the Phoenix One’s shower, but, being a fluffy sort of dog, he needed to be shorn once in a while. While I was shaking at the thought of trusting my head to an unknown clipper, Marvin had to turn his whole body over to strangers. We never knew whether he’d turn out looking like a poodle or an Airedale, but Marvin never complained.

  “He’s a sweetheart,” the groomers always said. He was a trouper, too. He even learned to smile for cameras, except once when an overzealous interviewer thrust a microphone into his muzzle. Marvin growled on the six o’clock news, and we got e-mail asking why we traveled with “such a mean dog.”

  Many large cities are devoid of RV parks. This fact, while not surprising, made studio appearances on early morning television shows an interesting challenge. In Chicago, the closest place we could find to stay overnight was near Joliet, almost fifty miles from downtown. In order to shower, walk Marvin, put the truck in order, and still be on time for a five a.m. shoot, we had to get up at 2:30. “At least we aren’t stuck in rush hour traffic,” said Mark as we sailed into Chicago in the dark. And who would have guessed that dawn in Chicago is a wondrous thing. The sun rose over Lake Michigan, setting fire to every window, turning every surface gold. Parked on a bridge with a magnificent view, the Phoenix joined many a Chicago household for breakfast that morning on the early news. Afterwards, as we made our way slowly through the newly awakened metropolis, a man ran along the sidewalk, his face bright with a broad grin. “I saw you!” he shouted. “I saw you on TV!”

  By the time we got to the east coast, our horns were no longer green. We’d faced scores of cameras and microphones, and we’d shaped and reshaped our message. RoadTrip America was an appealing human interest story, and if we couldn’t make the grade on our own, Marvin was a proven crowd pleaser. “Sex, kids and animals,” Gerry had said. “They always sell.”

  On October 10, 1997, we crossed New Jersey and drove over the George Washington Bridge into the Big Apple. The Phoenix was ready to take Manhattan.

  Chapter 17

  Quantum Leap to New Horizons

  The Phoenix Takes Manhattan

  If Chicago had seemed like a daunting metropolis, Manhattan eclipsed it easily. I’d been here before and found it intimidating on foot. Now I was encased in thirty-two feet of steel, which I was sure was at least twenty-two feet too many.

  But wait. Big trucks drive through New York all the time. So do buses. So what’s the big deal? Mark pointed out all these truths to me, and I decided I might as well relax. At least there were no cliffs, and my job was one I was good at. I was the navigator. I’d figure out which routes the eighteen-wheelers used, and steer our course accordingly.

  The trouble is, the Phoenix isn’t a big rig. It’s a motorhome, which means it carries propane. Propane qualifies as “hazardous material,” and in New York, that puts serious limitations on where you can drive. I couldn’t guide Mark along truck routes without first making sure they didn’t end up at the Holland Tunnel or on the bottom level of the Geor
ge Washington Bridge. To put it simply, I screamed a lot, especially when an irritatingly unavoidable Moebius strip of expressway kept dumping us onto Jerome Avenue in the South Bronx.

  With all its hubbub and legendary intensity, Manhattan was unbeatably exhilarating. Mark soon found that the Phoenix One’s size was an asset. We were just large and unusual enough to make taxi drivers flinch, and in the time it took for them to recover, Mark could change lanes or turn corners. We drove to the high rise home of our publicists on Avenue of the Americas. Gerry and Nadine met us on the sidewalk in front, and we took them for a spin in the truck they’d been promoting for three months sight unseen.

  “We’ve got MSNBC lined up,” said Nadine. “They want to spend a day in the city with you, shooting a piece for a show called “The Site.” We’ve also got reporters from The Wall Street journal Newsday, and the Staten Island Advance who want to interview you, a crew from First TV that wants to shoot you in Times Square, and a couple of radio interviews. Oh, and People magazine wants to talk to you.”

  People was heady news. Anything nationally distributed was good, and a magazine that has a long shelf life in doctors’ offices and nail salons was even better. Of course, it wasn’t a sure thing yet. We had to go to People headquarters first, and let them make sure we were of genuine interest to other humans.