Off The Road

Were we the last generation of young folk who could afford to just hop in the car in Richmond at 2:30am and not stop driving until 5:30 the next morning in western South Dakota (total fuel costs one way: 75 bucks)? Or are we as a nation in a temprorary lull of roadtripping adventure until the technology emerges to make it feasible again? I wonder if the increasingly prohibitive travel costs will help regional cultures to be spared extinction. It seems like this country is too big to prosper without affordable movement, or at least the promise of it. For four hundred years we've been pushing on, killing Indians, and climbing peaks. Is it really all over except for the rich? This is what I was built on, from the time I was 15 and realized what was out beyond the hundredth meridian. I think of some sad eyed teenager now discovering Kerouac. Will they be able to gas up and go?