Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
How right I was, because two weeks before I was supposed to leave for the new TV
show I was producing, I got the call—the green light had turned red. The show was being
canceled.
All the hours, all the hard work, all the angry voicemails from my girlfriend went down
the drain, and my ego went down right there with it. I shut down entirely. I wouldn't talk
to Lina about it. I wouldn't get out of bed. Lina would go to work, and I would draw the
shades and hide.
Until one day, she came home and opened them for me, saying without words,
“Enough.” That was the day I went to Hollywood Boulevard, the day I saw the homeless
man. And I knew, just as I knew on that rainy Monday in London, that change doesn't come
to us. We must go seek it.
After three days of driving through the golden haze of America's heartland—through
sun-drenched wheat fields and mind-blowing sunsets, I finally arrived at the outskirts of
the sleepy city of Lexington, Nebraska. One aspect of Nebraska I wasn't prepared for were
all the bloody cornfields. Lots and lots of cornfields. So many that I lost count after the first
116.
I pulled off the highway and found myself on an old farm road. This was the America
I had often imagined, without even realizing that it actually existed: endless farmland
with big red barns, tall water towers, and grain silos dotting an otherwise flat landscape. I
stopped to look around. In so many ways, this was exactly what I had left London for: the
fresh air of an open land, the beauty of an unknown destination; and in many ways, it was
also why I left LA. Because as much as I loved Lina and our life, I also loved this. I loved
being free.
I got back on my bike, a lone wolf driving through the prairie, a stranger in a strange
town, and a desperate chap who was about to run out of gas. But then again, I always ran
out of gas. That's part of the deal when you're driving across the world with no money.
But it was also the driving force of this adventure. Not knowing where this road might take
me was taking me down wonderful, twisting, and unexpected roads. I pulled into the small
town of Lexington, ready for whatever might happen next.
I saw the men almost immediately—they were in an obscenely large pickup truck, wore
dusty hats, and one of them even had some tobacco in his mouth. That's right, cowboys.
“Excuse me,” I asked the older one after he closed his truck door. “Very random ques-
tion, but are you a cowboy?”
Without even blinking, he answered me matter-of-factly, “Yes.”
