Why 66@66?

I have visited the States many times since our first trip to New York in 1975, facilitated by working for British Airways for twenty-six years, which made travelling relatively cheap.  On that first visit, we expected nightly shoot-outs in the streets between the cops and robbers, our vision of America formed entirely through film and tv.  Instead, we found a city not unlike our own London – frenetic, commercial, noisy and architecturally stunning – inhabited by people linguistically and culturally familiar. However, there were apparently four murders within a few blocks of our upscale hotel, in a neighbourhood through which we had happily wandered late the night before. How a society could tolerate that level of gun violence was as utterly incomprehensible back then as it is to me now. And that was years before Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook and Parkland added a mental health crisis to poverty as a catalyst for extreme violence facilitated by readily available weapons of mass destruction. I am writing this at a time of an upsurge in knife crime in London, which is widely attributed to a lack of educational, cultural, social and welfare facilities available to the most vulnerable members of our society, caused in part by the austerity measures imposed by our current Government. There were 285 knife-related deaths over the past year. Imagine if those wielding knives had had access to guns. It is perhaps the terrible, defining difference between our two nations.

Anyway, gun crime was not uppermost in our minds on our subsequent visits. In the late 1980s, a chance meeting at San Francisco airport led to a lasting friendship with the Matthews family in Seattle and many vacations spent exploring the beauty of Washington State. In the late 90s, we met The Bradleys from north of Milwaukee and added Wisconsin and Chicago to our list of places visited.  We took the children to countless holidays in Florida and experienced Hurricane Charlie. In the early 2000s, my eldest son went to Harvard to study for a Masters and has never come back. He went on to gain a Doctorate and now lives in St Louis.  My daughter spent a year at Georgetown whilst studying for a degree in American Studies at Kings College, London. To date there are only six states in the US which I have not visited - Hawaii (my daughter has been there), Alaska, North Dakota, Nebraska, Vermont and Minnesota.

For a child of the sixties, Route 66 is iconic, familiar through music and film.  I had driven parts of it between Chicago and St Louis on visits to James, and other stretches in Arizona during a family trip around the South-West. The idea of driving the whole 2400 miles in one go began to take shape and I bought the EZ Guide book a couple of years ago. In June this year I will be 67. Driving Route 66 at 66 has a nice ring to it.  So, time was running out. The death of my husband Fred in August 2018 also brought home that putting things off until tomorrow is not a good idea.

It was my daughter that suggested I stay on after spending a week together on the East Shores of Virginia on Chincoteague Island, the subject of my first blog entry.  I then flew from Washington to Dulles, collected my hire-car and headed for the start point in downtown Chicago. Join me on the Ride along the Mother Road.