Welcome to Road Hungry
My as-yet-unnamed new home. Suggestions welcome.
⭑ Listen here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify ⭑
Below is the transcript from my first podcast. It’s part manifesto, part mission statement, part confession. When you listen to it, maybe you can hear the fear in my voice because, y’all, what I’m doing is fucking batshit.
Sterling, TX. Ominous, no?
It didn’t really dawn on me just how crazy this is until I was out on the road two nights ago, 130 miles from my first destination in Brownfield, TX, the last light almost gone from the sky, when my check engine light came on in my car. I had a flash of, not panic, but profound remorse. I’m not someone who puts all his eggs in one basket, but here I was, in a deserted Texas town, two dogs whining for dinner in the backseat, towing my entire life behind me, eggs and all. I wasn’t even a day in to the trip and I already had my first curveball. What had I done?
I’ll tell you more in a future post about what followed — spoiler alert, everything is okay (because everything is always okay, even when it isn’t) — but the sinkhole that formed in my gut at that moment had me wondering if I'd just invested my whole life into something doomed to fail from the word go.
I walked the dogs around Sterling, TX to let the car cool off and to clear my head. I thought about all the things I want to do with this project (see below). I got back in the car and kept going, engine light blaring, faithful that even if I broke down, all I had to do was bed down in the camper and wait til morning.
I didn’t break down — mechanically, emotionally, or otherwise. I made it to New Mexico just fine, and learned a few things along the way that will serve me well as I go. There are going to be challenges, plenty of them. There are also going to be moments of serendipity, connection, joy. I can’t wait to share them all with you.
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What follows is a transcript of the first episode of Road Hungry. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts.
There ought to be a word for that feeling you get when you’re about to leave a place for the last time, to describe that mix of anticipation, fear, sadness, and nostalgia — a word for the anxiety that gnaws at your gut the night before you go when you know this is the last time you’ll sleep in this bed, under this roof; for the melancholy and twinging regret you feel when you recount all the days that got you to this point, remembering all the things left undone or not accomplished, the plans and goals and hopes you’re leaving behind; for the expectancy and faith you feel that this new start in front of you is the one that will take you to where you’re supposed to be, finally, after all these years of landing in places that never quite fit.
I don’t know if a word like that exists. Maybe it does in Japanese or some Nordic language — those folks seem to be pretty good at coming up with words for things like this — but if it does, I don’t know it. I don’t know it because I’m a 41-year-old American white guy who never learned another language, never had to despite growing up in Miami, arguably our country’s most international city. I’ve always meant to learn Spanish, but like so many other things left behind at previous addresses, I haven’t gotten to it yet.
Henry the Dog at Slaughter Creek ⭑ January 11, 2009 - December 3, 2020
I’m recording this on the limestone banks of Slaughter Creek in Southwest Austin, Texas, in among cedar and oak trees, sage bushes, tall grass, and the last, most stalwart wildflowers of the year. It’s early, but not so early that the heat of July hasn’t already begun to soak through my shirt. I’m here with my dogs, Lady and Mabel, as I’ve come here with them almost every day for the last six years, and with Henry, who was a dog, but he was also my brother, and he died back in November. So, I leave him here, too, in these woods, along this creek, exactly where he belonged.
In a little while, the three of us will pile into a souped-up camper rig I’ve outfitted and head west out of Austin for good. Or at least for a good long while. I have no permanent destination in mind, only a vague idea that I want to go see things I haven’t seen before, taste food whose flavors I didn’t know existed, and meet people who are so wildly different from myself that I won’t be able to stay the same person I am now if I tried. But I’m not going to try. I’m inviting whatever comes to arrive on its own terms. After so many years of pretending I have any control over anything, I’m giving the fuck up, embracing all the things I don’t know, becoming teachable — finally.
Like so many of us, like you maybe, the last year-and-a-half changed me. Some of those changes have been profound, others pretty pedestrian. Some are born out of circumstance, some out of my own efforts to face myself with clear eyes for the first time. I’ve found sobriety, been gifted with it, after more than 20 years hiding behind a wall of my own construction, mortared together with fear and ego and booze. My heart has been broken a few times recently, and I’m learning how to grieve without so much anger and resentment and regret. I’m learning to keep things simple, to be forthright, to stay planted exactly where I am, no matter where that is.
To be plain, I’m leaving this part of my life because this part of my life is already over. The pandemic ended my career in and around the hospitality and tourism industries. My relationship of nine years imploded. Henry the Dog died. I’m leaving because there isn’t a lot left for me here, and thanks to the internet, nothing requires my presence in any specific place.
So, instead of moving into some lonely, overpriced, sad-man condo I don’t want to live in, taking a job I don’t want in order to afford it, and wondering every month if this is the month when I get to have my old life back, I’m choosing to leave that life here, recognize that it lives in the past, and I, indelibly, live in the present.
Frankly, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but none of us get to have our old lives back. My personal upheavals aside, we all went through this apocalypse together. No matter what you do, where you live, or what politics you subscribe to, nothing is going to be the same as it was ever again. I keep hearing people talk about, “After COVID.” Y’all, there is no “After COVID.” COVID is here, and it will never go away. The world and our lives in it are forever changed. We don’t get to “go back to normal.” That “normal” is gone.
We do, however, get to invent our new normal. We’re still very much in-process with that invention — in denial, mostly, that sometime down the line, some switch is going to be flipped, and everything will return to the way it was. But make no mistake, we are living through a singular moment in our history where we get to decide collectively how we live with each other going forward. We are crossing this wide river together, and we’re going to have to shed as much dead weight as we can in order to reach the far shore. It will be messy and fraught and sometimes beautiful. But we’re going to do it because we have to, and I’m just really damn curious to see how it all shakes out.
I’m not a radio producer. In fact, I really don’t know what I’m doing with this fancy recorder I bought. If you came here for high production values, or even something resembling competence, this podcast may not be for you. Honestly, I’ll be amazed if I’m able to stitch any of this into something cogent and listenable. I’m not much of a journalist, nor am I any great thinker. I’m just someone with nowhere to be, so I’ve chosen to be everywhere instead. Mostly, I’m making this up as I go along.
Lady
What I am is a food guy. I’m a happy amateur cook who’s burned himself a few times on the hot lines at some really good restaurants. I’m a mercenary waiter and bartender gone to seed who, like now, faked it long enough to make a decent living around some of the most wildly creative and fucked up misfit toys ever to strap on aprons. Over more than two decades in the industry, I’ve encountered a broad cross-section of humanity, enough to know that the thing all of us have in common is the need for a good meal with people who love us.
In a minute, I’m going to stop recording, pile these dogs into my car, hitch up my teardrop camper, and head out into the country. My plan is loose, my expectations low. I just want to find out where we’re headed next, and how food, something we all have in common, but something that is also at the heart of all our divisions, plays a role.
Mabel
Some people might say I’m running away, and to them I say — So what? I’m not running because, after so many years working floor shifts on my feet, my knees suck and won’t allow it. I’m going at my own pace, away certainly, but anytime we set off away from one thing, we’re necessarily always headed toward something else. I’ve done a lot of talking in my life — convincing myself and others of one bullshit idea or another. Now, I think it’s time for me to do some listening.
Hunter Thompson, who I don’t love, did say something that’s been ringing in my ears as I’ve prepared for this journey: “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” So, as long as I can sustain it, this is what I do now. I listen, and I share what I hear. I’ll listen to cooks and farmers and writers, to fellow travelers, politicians, artists, waiters, grandmothers — anyone who has a valuable perspective to offer, really. I’ll learn the skills of living on the road, in the wilderness, cooking off the grid. Maybe I’ll get to feed some people who need to eat. And hopefully, I’ll find some of the answers I’m looking for.
Me, trying to figure out how to do this.
I don’t know if this is going to work. Maybe it won’t. But I’m doing it anyway. This project has been, up until now, entirely self-financed. We don’t really know each other yet, so I don’t expect you to start supporting this effort without anything to go on other than my little manifesto here. What you can do is subscribe to the podcast, and follow the Instagram and blog.
In the meantime, I’m going to go out and do this work regardless if I have the money to pay for it or not because I trust that if I work hard and make something honest, then the money will come. As the weeks go on, if you like what I’m doing, please consider supporting this project by becoming a Patreon member, or donating through Venmo. You can find links to everything at roadhungry.com
Thanks for listening to this, my first podcast. I’m Adam Boles, and this is Road Hungry. Welcome. I’ll see you out there.
