The Worst Roadside Meal I Ever Chose (And What I Clearly Haven’t Learned)

I was on my way to hang out with a buddy in Vermont. He was running late. I was hungry and hoping something better than hot brown was available. Never a good combination.

So I stopped for gas and made the mistake of grabbing a slice of gas station pizza.
You’d think someone who’s driven across the country more times than he can count would know better. Apparently not.

I rolled into my friend’s place, cracked a Guinness, and within an hour the pizza filed a formal complaint with my entire digestive system.

I spent the rest of the night acquainting myself with the cold tile of his bathroom floor, reflecting on the poor choices that led me there. He was incredibly supportive. Mostly by laughing at me.

The next morning I emerged humbled… but not changed.

Because here’s the truth:

I still trust roadside fried chicken. I still roll the dice on gas station burritos. And if you think I’m walking past a place less than Buc-ee’s, 7-11 or Wawa without getting something I’ll possibly later regret? Absolutely not.

Some lessons stick. Some don’t. And some are just part of the road.

The Song That Finally Made Sense

When I started Cannonballing, my parents didn’t understand. Not the culture, not the planning, not the obsession and definitely not the mindset.

I wasn’t in a good place, and like a lot of Cannonballers when they start out, I wanted to do something outrageous. Something that ripped open the monotony. Something that thumbed its nose at the rules of a world that wasn’t working for me.

They tolerated it. Barely.

But when I told them I was doing the dual transcontinental (the NY–LA–and-back run) everything detonated.

My dad especially.

Your wife is pregnant.
What if something happens?
What are you thinking?
What is wrong with you?
You can’t do something this stupid.

Every phone call. Every conversation. Every day closer to departure.

It was like being scolded by a man who was scared and angry at the same time, and didn’t know how to separate the two.

And then… we did it. We ran. We finished. We survived. Not because of luck, but because we planned like our lives depended on it. Like history depended on it. Because it did.

My codriver Mark named the event after my uncle during our first interview ,The Bob Burns C2C2C Memorial Trophy Dash and suddenly my dad wasn’t furious anymore. Suddenly it wasn’t reckless. Suddenly it wasn’t irresponsible.

Suddenly, it was legacy.

It was honoring the family name. Honoring a man he loved. Honoring something bigger than the drive itself. And just like that, it was okay.

A few months later, I was driving home from a studio interview talking openly about the run, the planning, the grit, the experience and “Take a Picture” by Filter came on the radio.

I’d heard that song a thousand times. Never listened to it. Not really. But that night, it hit like a freight train.

“Hey Dad… what do you think of your son now?”

I lost it. Not quietly. Not politely. I screamed the chorus in the car. I still do to this day. Full, chest-cracking, cathartic release the kind you don’t feel until you’ve been carrying something heavy for a long, long time.

He’d raged at me during the planning. He’d feared for me. He’d questioned me. He’d fought me the whole way. But after the run? After the story was told? After the event was named after our family starting in the car my Uncle owned?

He was proud. He was so proud. And for the first time in my life, I fully understood that song every aching, defiant, hopeful part of it.

Sometimes the most dangerous roads you take aren’t the ones on the map. They’re the ones between who you were raised to be…and who you’re becoming anyway.

Trust at 100 Miles an Hour

I once rescued a dog on the East Coast and drove her all the way to California. We met for the first time the minute she climbed into my car ribs showing, tail tucked, afraid to even look at me. She had the kind of silence you only see in an animal who hasn’t been treated like she mattered at all.

At first, she sat as far from me as she could. Wouldn’t sit still.  Wouldn’t drink. Wouldn’t sleep. Just watched the world go by, head darting around, unsure what came next.

But something about the road made sense to her. Mile after mile, she relaxed. By St louis, she’d glance over. By Oklahoma, her head was on the center console. By New Mexico, she was asleep with her nose next to the shifter.

And then the sky changed.

Crossing into the West, the air went still in that way that tells you the weather is about to get violent. Within minutes we were driving straight through the path of a tornado winds hitting the car in sideways punches, debris whipping across the road like ghosts.

The car handled it. The truck in front of me didn’t.

It started dropping cinder blocks from the bed whole chunks of concrete bouncing down the highway like they were weightless. I dodged one, two, three… then hit the fourth square on.

A sickening thud. The wheel jerked. My heart dropped.

But the car held together. Somehow.

I looked over expecting panic but the dog was steady, eyes on me, breathing slow. She didn’t flinch. Didn’t tremble. She just… trusted. As if somewhere between Ohio and the desert she’d decided I wasn’t going to let anything happen to her.

We made it through the storm. Made it through the miles. Made it all the way to her forever home.

She walked through that front door with her tail up, not down. A different dog than the one I picked up.

Some rescues happen in a quiet shelter. Ours happened at 100 miles an hour across the country, through tornado winds, over cinder blocks, and into a new life she wasn’t sure she deserved.

But she got there. And somewhere along the way, she learned to trust again.

The Night We Turned Lime Rocks Go-Kart Track into a racetrack

There was an evening at Lime Rock Park long after the official sessions had ended, just as the sun dipped behind the trees where a few of us decided the evening wasn’t over until we made it… memorable.

I had my E21. A friend had a 2002. Another had an E30. Three small BMWs. Small enough to fit where we definitely weren’t supposed to.

Someone pointed at the little go-kart circuit near the infield and said, “Hey… technically we could fit.”

That’s how all the best bad ideas start.

And sure enough, we could. Surprisingly well….The cars looked a little oversized and under-supervised like someone scaled the world wrong but the smiles were instant. Tight corners, short straights, ridiculous lines… all of it felt like being a kid again, only louder and with better steering feel.

Security and a few corner workers noticed us first. Of course they did. They rolled up slow, watching us run these tiny laps like confused parents discovering their kids riding bicycles inside the house. And they Laughed. Loud enough we could hear them. Taking pictures. I still have the one of us 3 wide on the strait.

Then they noticed the drunk spectators.

Turns out a small crowd had gathered — tipsy track-day warriors who thought what we were doing looked like the greatest idea ever conceived. Which, naturally, is exactly when things become dangerous for everyone who isn’t us.

One of the security guys finally waved us down, walked up laughing, and said: “Look… you’re clearly fine. But if any of them try this after a beer or 10, we’re gonna have a real problem. So do me a favor quit while you’re ahead.”

Fair enough.

We parked the cars, hearts still pounding, engines ticking, all of us grinning like we’d gotten away with something big. The crowd wandered off to find new questionable decisions, and the track settled back into its normal quiet.

It wasn’t fast. It wasn’t planned. It wasn’t even OK, technically. My favorite kind of OK

But it was one of those stupid, perfect moments you only get once a little pocket of joy wedged into the corner of a race track where no one expects it.

Sometimes the best laps aren’t the official ones. Sometimes they’re the ones you take just because you can.

The Road I Never Found Again

There’s a road I drove once, just once and I’ve never been able to find it again. I’m not even convinced it was a real road. It might’ve been fire access. It might’ve been someone’s private drive. But that night, it was open, inviting, and impossible to ignore.

I was in a Triumph TR6, top down, engine singing that loud, unapologetic straight-six note that makes you forget the car is basically held together by optimism and British spite. It was one of those drives where you’re not in a rush, but you don’t want to go home yet either. The kind of night where you follow your curiosity instead of your map.

I took a turn I don’t remember choosing, and suddenly I was on this freshly paved strip of pavement that didn’t match anything around it. No road signs. No lighting. No center line. Just a ribbon of twisty, narrow asphalt carved into the dark.

The TR6 felt almost too big for it and that car isn’t exactly known for its generous proportions. Every bend came quicker than the last, the lane tightening, the trees leaning in like they were trying to watch me thread the needle. The headlights caught glimpses of guardrails, then none at all. Sharp climbs, blind crests, fast drops like a tamed-down mountain pass someone forgot to tell the county about.

And the engine… God, the engine. Wide open, echoing off trees, bouncing off rock, howling into the night like it had been waiting for this exact stretch its whole life.

It was an eternity of pure joy. Pure focus. Pure freedom.

And then the road spat me out onto a familiar route as if nothing had happened. No sign. No marker. No clue how I got there.

I’ve tried to find it since a few times, actually. Checked maps. Drove the same area. Looked for any hint of that turn. Nothing. It’s like the road folded back into the world the second I left it.

But I think that’s the point.

Some roads aren’t meant to be mapped. They’re meant to be moments the kind you get once, the kind you can’t force, the kind that remind you why driving ever felt like freedom in the first place.

And every now and then, when I’m on some boring straightaway, I still wonder where that road went… or if it was ever really there at all.

The Stranger with the Amazongrun BMW

Somewhere on a long stretch of highway, I passed a guy pulled over on the shoulder with an Amazon Green BMW 2002 .

I was driving my E21 at the time.
Old BMWs recognize each other the way dogs do.

Sort of like Subaru’s do now
So I slowed, and stopped to see if I could help.

It wasn’t a simple fix like burned points

His motor had popped. He was stranded in the middle of nowhere with a classic car and the kind of expression that says, well… that’s today, I guess.

I drove him to a tow yard. Then to a hotel. It wasn’t a big thing, just one enthusiast helping another. Somewhere along the way, the conversation shifted into that strange, effortless honesty that only happens between strangers on the road.

He told me about his life.About mistakes. About how his brother was about to marry someone everyone knew he shouldn’t and that was why he was here. He was on his way to the wedding. About business decisions he regretted. About dreams he shelved because they required a version of himself he wasn’t sure he could become.

I listened. Mostly because there was nothing else to do but drive and sometimes that’s all it takes for someone to finally say what’s been sitting heavy on them.

I’m not sure he ever told me his name. I definitely lost his number. We never crossed paths again.

But that’s what the road does. It gives you these small, fleeting intersections with people you’ll never see twice. Moments that don’t fit neatly into your life but somehow stay there anyway.

Every now and then, when I see a 2002 go by, I wonder how his story turned out. I hope the tow yard treated him fair. I hope his brother figured things out. And I hope, wherever he ended up, he found a version of himself he could live with.

The road is full of strangers.
A few of them stay with you.

The night air in winslow

Somewhere on my first Cannonball run, deep into the night, we were cutting across Arizona if you can call it “cutting” when the pavement feels like it was laid down during the Eisenhower administration and never revisited. The moon was smoother than that.

I remember thinking, Are these roads actually paved, or did we just hallucinate asphalt?
Every mile felt like the suspension was auditioning for early retirement.

Fatigue was creeping in, the quiet kind that doesn’t announce itself until it’s already wrapped around your brain. So I pulled off on a side road outside Winslow, hoping the cold desert air would do what caffeine couldn’t.

The night air hit like a reset button crisp, clean, almost electric.

I got back in the car and said,“You realize I was literally standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, right?”

My co-driver who is Welsh, in America just for this run blinked at me with absolute confusion.

He had never heard the song.Not a note. Not a reference. Nothing.

For a moment I wondered if this was some elaborate bit. Nope. Just a Welshman in the middle of the desert wondering why I was suddenly proud of a geography joke.

I started driving again me laughing and awake again, him trying to figure out what on earth I was talking about both of us breathing in the kind of cold air that wakes you up from the inside out.

There was no drama.
No great revelation.
Just two tired guys on a rough stretch of highway, sharing a strange, perfect pause in the middle of nowhere.

Sometimes the road teaches hard lessons. Sometimes it demands grit, patience, or nerve.

But every now and then, it gives you a quiet moment that reminds you to stop, breathe, laugh, and keep going especially when the pavement is trying its best to shake your fillings loose and you are exhausted enough to later swear you saw a black panther run across the highway.

The Motel I Absolutely Should’ve Skipped

There’s a special kind of exhaustion that makes no sense on paper.

Like being twelve hours into what should’ve been a four-hour drive to Atlantic City for a car show. You tell yourself you’ll push through one more exit, one more playlist, one more hour.

But eventually reality taps you on the shoulder.

That’s how I ended up pulling off at a motel so questionable it looked like it was grandfathered in before building codes were a thing. The nightly rate was low enough that I didn’t ask follow-up questions.

The carpet looked original to the late 70s and had seen… life.
The air carried that unmistakable blend of old cigarettes, stale booze, and decisions made by people running on even less sleep than me.

The clerk didn’t say a word. Just handed me an actual metal key  which somehow felt less secure than the door it unlocked.

The room itself?
Imagine a crime scene before the crime. Hopefully.
Wallpaper doing its best.
A heater that sounded like it was filing a complaint.
A bedspread that had stories but wasn’t sharing, thankfully.

I didn’t unpack.
Didn’t shower.
Didn’t pretend I was staying longer than six hours.

I lay there, half-shoed, staring at the ceiling like it might drip.

When morning came, the world looked normal again.
Cars were already rushing past the highway.
People were awake, alert, moving forward.

And I rolled out of that parking lot with a reminder:

Sometimes you don’t stop because you’re smart.
You stop because you’re human.
And tired humans make strange decisions like inadvertently turning a four-hour trip into a twelve-hour odyssey capped off by a motel that smelled like decades of stories you don’t want to know.

But the road forgives you.
Eventually, you forgive yourself too.

Off to WaWa for breakfast!

The man at pump 6

Somewhere just past the Big Texan outside Amarillo a few miles after I hit something in the road that I hoped wasn’t super solid (it was) I pulled into a gas station that looked like it hadn’t been renovated since the first Bush administration.

The car was fine, somehow.
Just a little ding in the subframe, no bumper damage, no drama.
One of those moments where you exhale and go, “Alright… we’re still rolling.”

The hum of the lights was louder than the traffic on the highway.

At Pump 6, an older guy in a worn denim jacket was struggling with the card reader. You could see the frustration in his shoulders the kind that comes from a long day, not a broken machine.

I walked over since the attendant inside didn’t

I showed him the trick:
Tilt the card slightly forward.
Pull it out slow. “Click”
Old readers like a little patience.

It worked on the first try.

He looked at me and said,
“Thank you Son. I guess it just liked you more.”

We didn’t say much else.
Didn’t need to.

I thought about it for a little while when I got back on the road.

Out on the road, it’s never the dramatic things that get you, it’s the tiny annoyances. A stubborn pump. A missed exit. A rattle you can’t trace. A stray cinder block in the dark that leaves your heart pounding for one whole mile before you dare to check the car. It still feels ok, right?

The quiet inconveniences can stack up until you’re carrying more weight than you realize.

That night reminded me:

Most people aren’t overwhelmed by the big problems in their life although he was pretty worked up.
They’re overwhelmed by the accumulation of small ones they didn’t have the energy to untangle.

Sometimes all someone needs is a moment, a trick, a tilt… just enough to make the machine work again.

I’ve met a lot of people on the road.
Most of them don’t need saving.
Just a little patience and a little kindness.

The Car that waited

After all these years, My El Camino is finally legally back on the road.

And maybe I’m being sentimental.
But sitting in that driver’s seat felt like coming home to a part of myself I didn’t realize had gone missing.

That car holds chapters of my life the way old houses hold echoes.

Late nights wrenching in my parents’ driveway.
The hairpin near friend Bill’s place I always tried to take a little faster than sense advised.
The happy night cruises.The angry ones.
The street races in Boston, Worcester, Providence, Philly, New York, D.C., the places we shouldn’t have been going the speeds we definitely shouldn’t have been doing.

Then the heartbreak.
The day the motor blew. Again
The long stretch of quiet where the car sat patient while life moved on without it.
The rage of being legislated out of ever driving it again in the state I lived in.
The sinking feeling every time I looked at it and knew I couldn’t give it what it needed.

I’d get bursts of motivation, real ones but it’s hard to fight for something you’re not allowed to touch.
So it sat.
And waited.
And somehow never felt like it gave up on me.

We moved

And now…
Now she’s alive.
Whole. Well.. Wholeish
Breathing again.

And so am I.

Some cars aren’t just machines.
Some cars carry the versions of ourselves we thought we’d lost.
They wait for us to catch up.
And when they finally come back to life… we do too.