New York to Los Angeles Roadtrip

By Oliver Markus Malloy

A cautionary tale of all the things you shouldn't do on a road trip across America.

Join Oliver on his epic road trip from New York to California, as he almost gets blown up in the Sears Tower in Chicago, almost gets bitten by a rattlesnake in Colorado, almost gets eaten by a mountain lion in the Rocky Mountains, almost dies in a sand storm in Death Valley, almost gets killed by a sea elephant in California, almost gets arrested by a Park Ranger on Route 1, almost gets abducted by aliens in Yosemite National Park, almost gets disappeared by the US military, almost has sex with a hooker in Reno, and almost crashes in a helicopter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bookmaester
• Release date: Aug 2, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370024896

Oliver Markus Malloy

Oliver Markus Malloy is a German-American novelist and comic artist. Born and raised in Aachen, Germany, he currently lives in Los Angeles, CA.Malloy began his writing career in the early 1990s, as editor-in-chief of a computer magazine with a monthly circulation of over 500,000, which was distributed by Germany's largest publishing house.After moving to New York, he was the art director for a newspaper in Manhattan, and later the production manager for a newspaper in Brooklyn, before he began self-publishing his cartoons online in May 2000. He has never had another 9-5 job since.His bestselling trilogy, Bad Choices Make Good Stories, has been downloaded over 100,000 times.

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Copyright © 2018 by Oliver Markus Malloy

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Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

SEPTEMBER 9th

SEPTEMBER 10th

SEPTEMBER 11th

SEPTEMBER 12th

SEPTEMBER 13th

SEPTEMBER 14th

SEPTEMBER 15th

SEPTEMBER 16th

SEPTEMBER 17th

SEPTEMBER 18th

SEPTEMBER 19th

SEPTEMBER 20th

SEPTEMBER 21st

SEPTEMBER 22nd

SEPTEMBER 23rd

SEPTEMBER 24th

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dear Reader,

If you read the previous book, Scotland Roadtrip, you already know that I grew up in Germany.

After that trip through Scotland in 1991, I had to join the German army for a year, or perform alternative civilian service for a year and a half.

Back then, the German army still had a draft, but as a conscientious objector you could choose civilian service instead.

Since I'm a pacifist, I chose to work as a teacher's aide in a school for mentally handicapped children. I was gonna go to college afterwards and become a special ed teacher, but in 1992 I moved to New York instead. (You can read all about that in my other book, Bad Choices Make Good Stories.)

Germans love to travel, so after I moved to the US, I started to explore the states along the East Coast. I quit my newspaper job as production manager in 2000, and I was making great money publishing my cartoons on the web, so I had lots of free time.

I went on dozens of smaller road trips, and after a few years I had pretty much seen all there is to see in the North East. I knew the I-95 corridor between Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C. like the back of my hand.

Two major highways intersect in the New York area. The I-95 goes from Canada to Florida. And the I-80 goes from New York to San Francisco. I had not been to the West Coast yet, and every time I was on the I-80, I had this strong urge to just keep on driving straight, to drive and drive and drive, across the whole country, and see the very end of the I-80, in San Francisco.

In 2002 I finally made that dream come true. I had just bought a new SUV, a 2002 Dodge Durango, and the first thing I did with it was to go on an epic road trip from New York to Los Angeles and back again.

I kept a diary of that journey. I recently found it in an old drawer. And here it is...

Oliver

SEPTEMBER 9th, 2002

I woke up extra early and left Brooklyn at 6:30 am. My wife Donna didn't want to come with me. Because of her anxiety, she never wants to leave the house, never mind traveling. So I'll be going on this road trip alone, as usual.

I got on the Belt Parkway, and crossed the Verrazano Bridge to Staten Island.

It's weird, everybody always mentions the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, but nobody outside of New York has ever even heard of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, even though it's every bit as impressive. In fact the Verrazano Bridge is 60 feet longer than the Golden Gate. So there! Take that, San Francisco!

I got on the I-80 and drove through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana.

On my previous, shorter road trips along the East Coast, I never had to sleep along the way. Either I left early in the morning and made sure to be home again by night, or I stayed overnight in the city I was visiting. But I didn't need to sleep in a motel along the way. So I wasn't really sure how that works. Did I have to make a reservation in advance?

I figured it's better to be safe than sorry, so a day or two before I left I tried to figure out how far I would drive on the first day of my road trip, and where I would need to reserve a room for that night. Not easy when you really don't know how far you are going to drive that day.

I studied a map, and saw that Chicago didn't look all that far. On the map it was just a few inches