Now that we’re back in the world of satellite television and digital video recorders I’m a little behind on the shows that I like to watch. One of the best, IMHO (hee hee, look at me! I’m doing the intertubes lingo thingy. Whatever that means.), is Alton Brown’s Feasting on Asphalt.
It’s got all the things that I’m a sucker for: road trips and food. I’m a huge sucker for beer but it’s not a show on road food and good beer. Beer and driving do not mix.
This show is like Blue Highways with food and a motorcycle. I just love travel/road trip/hiking books/movies/television shows. Maybe I enjoy reading/watching it because it’s just something that I can’t do anymore. Even though I’ve had some great road trips in the past (shout out to Mountain Kilter who, by the way, needs to write more!) I’ve even spent 21 days backpacking, canoeing, mountain biking on an Outward Bound-type of program called Discovery. Plus, some smaller, shorter backpacking trips. This whole road trip/travel thing I’ve done a little bit of but don’t anymore. And I never wrote about the trips. I guess I just like to read and watch them.
Among the things that I love about the show is the transition to commercials. The camera pans up a collage of photos of the past events and then ends on a quote. I guess I’m a sucker for a good quote too. I’ve got collections of quotes stashed in random places that I can’t even remember.
Great. Now I have wanderlust, I’m hungry and thirsty for a frosty beverage and it’s only 8:40AM.
Feasting on Asphalt, part 2. I was wondering how he got this by his wife after the horrific crash with his bike in Part 1. Did you notice drama in the last sentence; I believe I have been watching much too much FOX News.
Wandering is a dream I must say is always in the back of my mind as well. The trips to the Canadian wildness by canoe in my youth, where the only part of the World I saw daily was a Forest Ranger Airplane flying over on its daily route. That was in ’62 and 63, please not, 1862 but 1962 and 1963. The Map of those trips which you most thoughtfully frame for display. In that time, no one needed a passport, and most incredible of all, we could drink the water directly from the lakes. No need for purifiers or filters or boiling. Adventures hiking in the Kettle Moraine in Wisconsin, with my two sons, and getting lost but providence and Daniel Boone type wilderness skill did we find our way out. Maybe, I did stretch the story a little about the wilderness skills. Yet, I must leave out other trips with the Military, which I found not so enjoyable.
There was one program that debut in 1960 which has always drove that dream of road trips and exploring around America in my mind, and that was “Route 66”. Two guys travel the country in their Corvette. The show was built on drama and action not a mission as Feasting-on Asphalt. Today the great Route 66 is almost all gone.
But alas I must say eating like that and traveling with out a care, are far-gone today. I will continue to enjoy those adventures of American Eating Culture as Feasting on Asphalt and Drive-ins, Dinners, and Dives. But I must continue to take a more cautious approach to my wanderlust.