On The Road: The Drive To Chicago

I started rehearsals in Chicago this week for the first national tour of MARY POPPINS. So, last Saturday, I packed up my car and humped it a third of the way across the country.

Growing up in the midwest, I have always loved driving and it's something that I missed during the years when I lived in Manhattan. I thrive on the craziness of public transportation -- but at heart I prefer the size and scope of an automobile over a simple backpack.

A few years ago, I spent a summer at the Old Globe in San Diego playing "Iago". We closed the first week of October and the next morning I piled into the Subaru that my wife and I had just purchased and drove cross country completely alone. Actually, that's not quite true. I had good company in the form of my dog, Po.

There is a slight tinge of sadness that comes with isolation, so you can imagine that the drive was a profound and meditative week. I spent two and a half days driving through the Southwest seeing nothing but desert and the occasional trailer parked off in the distance. I would lose cellphone reception early in the morning and not regain it until late evening when I pulled into a motel for the night. It was very lonely and very raw and very depressing and I could not have been happier.

The highlight of the trip came as we passed through the Rockies. I pulled into Manitou Springs at the foot of Pike's Peak very late one night. Being early October, it was getting cold and I had packed for a summer in San Diego. I found a campground not far from the river that was fairly deserted, built up a big fire and pitched my tent. Then I gathered up every blanket, sweater and jacket I could find and crawled inside with my dog.

In my life, I've kept a running tally of the best naps I've ever taken. And when I'm feeling particularly stressed, I will replay them with an almost pornographic delight. I have dozed off in a Jamaican hammock on the beach at sunset as a storm rolled in off the water. I have hovered between sleeping and waking on a near-perfect Christmas afternoon in a bed and breakfast in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. I've relished weekly between show naps in the dressing room at the Cort Theater on 49th Street, listening to Garrison Keillor as I slipped away. As a child, I even made a habit of curling up in the laundry basket full of warm clean towels. But this beats them all. It is truly satisfying to sleep next to an animal that you love.

Flash forward to the present. I'm in my car on the way to Chicago. Again, the dog is my only company. I drive the first eight hours of the trip in increasingly snowy conditions and decide to call it a night. So I pull over at a Super 8 Motel just past Cleveland (don't judge... it's dog-friendly and affordable) to get a little sleep.

When I was a boy, I would get physically excited at the thought of staying in a hotel. The hum of hotel air conditioning is, to this day, one of the most relaxing sounds of which I can conceive. It puts me to sleep almost instantaneously. However, in ten degree weather this motel room does not need air conditioning. In fact, there is frost on the INside of the window and I can see my breath when I walk into the bathroom. The overhead fluorescent lighting casts a vague Guantanamo pall that makes me want to strip the sheets and put the pillowcase directly over my head. Po is sniffing the carpet, a thick burr canvas that serves as a kind of olfactory history

book. The look on her face tells me that terrible, terrible things have happened within these walls. I crawl under the covers (fully dressed to avoid any possible rash) and try to sleep. More to come, should I survive the night. :-)