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.