The summer after my senior year in college, I drove the entire length of I-95, the highway that stretches from Houlton, a small town on the Canadian border in Maine, to the megalopolis of Miami in the south. I did it in the spirit of exploration, like Ponce de León searching for the fountain of youth or Hernando de Soto investigating rumors of a big river to the west. When we stopped at the beach in Daytona, I felt less like a spring breaker than like the conquistador Vasco Núñez de Balboa wading into the surf with a sword to claim the sea for the Spanish Crown.
I had my friend Jon Potter with me, and his dog, Siegfried. We’d pledged to follow every tangent, track down every amusement park, meet every challenge. Like the heroes of a Bo Diddley song, we promised to best every man and love every woman. That trip has supplied me with a storehouse of episodes I still draw on today.
