"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad wholesome charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."

-Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad: Or the New Pilgrim's Progress

One of the interests that brings my personal and professional life together, to a crossroads perhaps, is travel. 

The excerpt from the conclusion of Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad eloquently sums both my feelings and my beliefs about mobility. For instance, at a recent Creighton Convocation, the Reverend Daniel S. Hendrickson, S.J., reflecting on the first Jesuits who followed St. Ignatius’ impulse to ‘go forth’, challenged the incoming freshman class to: "Travel out. Break the boundaries of what's familiar and friendly. Go beyond your comfort zone. Study and work abroad, Reach out to those other gritty realities of the lives we live and the world we inhabit."

Ironically, up until my junior year of high school I had actually experienced very little travel. Most of my journeys came by way of story through films, songs, and books. Indeed, much of the aura around the road in American culture has been/is orchestrated by images of the road in popular media. 

After traveling the United States by train in high school, however, I became enamored with seeing new places and meeting new people. In essence, I took to the road as frequently (and for almost any reason) as I could. For instance, while in college at Texas Christian University (TCU), some friends and I once drove from Ft. Worth, Texas to Washington, D.C. and back for the weekend (48 hours of driving for 12 hours of D.C. sites). In fact, in addition to planning a summer road trip for our family each summer, I also help organize one in the autumn and another in the spring for friends and I to go on adventures. 

These travels go well beyond planes, trains, and automobiles. Over the course of my graduate tenure at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, for instance, I pedaled nearly two million revolutions and commuted almost five thousand miles. This would be equal to cycling from Anchorage, Alaska to Mexico City, Mexico. Along the way, I have tested the limits of my mental, emotional, and physical abilities through every season and almost every imaginable climate: in the light of day and dark of night; in mist, fog, hail, torrential rain, and the loom of thunderous lightning; in sleet, ice, snow, and drift; into gale force headwinds; in sub-zero and triple-digit temperatures; amidst thunderstorm and tornado warnings; in pedestrian and motorized traffic; on roads paved and unpaved; enduring a bee swarm, crashes, and close encounters of the automotive kind; all while wearing a pack ranging from ten to thirty pounds.

Beyond the seat and pedal, I have traveled more than twenty-three thousand air miles and thirty-seven thousand domestic road miles—totaling almost sixty seven thousand miles during my graduate studies—more than two-and-a-half times around the circumference of the earth. Over the course of these studies, in both my actual and discursive travels, I have come to realize how versatile the idea of the road is in helping us attain latitudinal and longitudinal perspective about the adversities of life. For instance, if I were to analogically compare the arduousness of my graduate studies to the conditions of moving west across the frontier with the nineteenth-century pioneers, that would be reasonable.

However, having actually mounted my bicycle and endured these conditions, the road becomes more than a metaphor. Experiencing these elements firsthand has given me a much greater appreciation for, and kindred connection with, the people who have overcome crueler roads—the Native Americans on the Trail of Tears or the African American slaves on the Underground Railroad, for instance. In other words, the significance of the road extends beyond its analogical utility. Our actual experiences on the road give perspective to our analogical uses and representations. Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, for example, was not merely a fictional imagining of the road in American culture, but rather, a reimagining of his actual travels. 

In all, being on the road is the crossroads where my personal and professional life emerge. It is a sacred place of reflection and invention that informs, personally, my life as a son, husband, father, and friend, and professionally, my teaching, research, and service. In essence, I am always On the Road.