Road Trip (2000) May 2026

Somewhere outside of Roswell, the alternator died. A guy named "Cooter" (real name, probably) fixed it for forty bucks and a six-pack of Zima. We sat on the hood for four hours waiting, listening to Moby’s Play on a Sony Discman passed through the aux cord of a tape adapter. It was the best afternoon of the summer.

Looking back, 2000 was the last year you could truly disappear. No social media to check in. No tracking dots. Just a paper map, a full tank, and the static hiss of the radio as you searched for a signal between towns. road trip (2000)

We left at 6:00 AM. Not because we were organized, but because nobody slept. The thrill of Y2K having been a dud made the summer feel reckless. The map—a physical, foldable Rand McNally —was already torn along the seam of Colorado. We had no GPS. We had no cell service once we passed the city limits (my Nokia 3310 was for emergency snakebites only). We navigated by the sun, gas station attendants, and sheer optimism. Somewhere outside of Roswell, the alternator died

The heat was biblical. The Jeep’s AC worked only on setting "4," which sounded like a jet engine taking off. We stopped at a diner where the waitress called us "hon" and the coffee was thick enough to stand a spoon in. On the radio: NSYNC’s "It’s Gonna Be Me" battling Creed’s "Higher." We threw a penny into the Grand Canyon and took photos on a disposable Kodak. We won't see those photos for three weeks. It was the best afternoon of the summer

This was the golden hour. Windows down. The smell of pine and gas station hot dogs. We found a bootleg Eminem tape in the glove compartment. The stars out here look fake—like a screensaver on an iMac G3. We talked about the future. About college. About whether The Matrix really made sense. We didn't check a single email the entire trip. The internet lived in a dusty computer at the public library, and for two weeks, it didn't exist.