Quote: Ian Frazier ...

"For the traveler in the interior of North America the car is a companion with its own definite itinerary. If you're timid about your car you will drive sensibly on paved roads and stay every night in a motel. We all know that it's possible to drive from here to California and stay at more or less the same motel the entire way, in a landscape where certain elements never change. This might have been an interesting experience thirty years ago when it was still new. It might be an interesting experience if you were V. S. Naipaul just arrived here from England. But basically it's a challenge to one's powers of describing the humdrum. On the Great Plains -- and I'm sure in the rest of America as well -- you have to get off the paved road if you want to see where you are. I often found that the experiences I had were interesting in direct proportion to the risks I had taken with my car. If you're not getting stuck occasionally, sliding off the road, knocking your outside mirrors off, bumping your oil pan, you're not doing the job."

-- from "Carving Your Name on the Rock," in They Went: The Art and Craft of Travel Writing, 1991