Part One 16 miles down the road, 15 minutes down the drain. John's life is now filled with faded songs of whatever newest pop decays the youth. It harmonized with the growl of his stomach as he pulled into the next truck stop he could find. Never before in his life had he dreamed the simplest things in life to be the most strenuous. All of his high-school years he had dreamed of the easy-goings of the road. By junior year he'd been hit hard with the mountains of pressure riding his back. Senior year contained parties and slacking for most but not for him. He was stuck in front of his parents sled, pulling their dreams along in a hazy inferno. Ivy leagues, scholarships, sponsors all crowding his front door with any number of passports to the country of their expectations, their rules. This was just the same drab existence he had stomached for the past 4 years. So he decided to cash in on his dreams and his paycheck, both of them pivotal in his journey west. Convincing his parents to be all right with his trip was never a possibility, but his courage had played a role in convincing them to at least keep an eye out for him. This last act of mercy on their part had cemented the cell phone in the cab of his truck like a leash, a small ancestor of the stuffy life he had once suffered. His father was disappointed to say the least, but John hoped that in time both of his parents would realize that this journey was not of defiance, but of gratification. With promises of the life his parents had dreamt for him and a last name being all that linked him to that house he had grown up in, his wheels finally got to run free.