Hitting the open road . . .

Friends embark on a journey across the country and learn some life lessons along the way.

It was 2 a.m. one starry August morning when they piled into the Dodge and left.

Busovsky (senior-English) and friends set out on the ultimate road trip. Ahead of them lay more than 2,000 miles of mountains, farmlands, flatlands and desert. Their cross-country blitz would retrace the paths of the wranglers, the writers and the destitute who found solace in a life of perpetual motion. The romance of the road trip was apparent. And while cowboys had their horses, and hobos had the rails, the modern nomad has the car.

"The road trip is all about the car," Busovsky said. "When you take a plane or you take a bus, you get on and someone else is in control. But when you get in the car, you have total control. You can get lost all on your own, sometimes on purpose."

There are no engine numbers here, no cubic centimeters or pounds per square inch. Instead, the road trip automobile is about economics, dependability and safety.

For instance, Dick Sauers thinks bigger may mean better. Long known for their gas guzzling, larger cars are being manufactured with improved fuel efficiency, said Sauers, owner of Dick's Auto Repair, 1680 W. College Ave. Furthermore, bigger cars tend to be safer and have a smoother ride for those long hauls, Sauers said.

"I would say take something reliable, and I'd say take something mid-sized or larger, so when you're done driving you don't feel so stiff and sore," said Sauers, adding that it's a good idea to have the car checked out by a mechanic before making an extended trip.

If the car is safe, then the rest is really about style. Some prefer the convertible sportster. Others like the commanding view of the sport utility. Meanwhile, a significant contingency favors the classic land yacht variety for smooth highway sailing.

Josh Auden (sophomore-mechanical engineering) preferred the latter for his road trip to Indianapolis.

"I actually took my parents' older Cadillac because it's nice and big and you can go like hell forever," Auden said. "That's a road trip car. Last time I was home, it had like 150,000 miles on it and it keeps on going."

Busovsky and crew had a friend waiting in San Francisco. However, that didn't stop the trio from taking the scenic route to the West Coast. After their early-morning departure, the three took shifts at the wheel in a bee-line drive to St. Louis, where they picked up another friend. The car was doing fine.

From St. Louis, they decided to pay a visit to a friend working at Yellowstone National Park. So they headed north, but got sidetracked for a day while exploring Cheyenne, Wyoming.

"It was kind of an impromptu stop," Busovsky recalled. "When we parked in Cheyenne, that was the first time we felt we were really out West. There was a real feeling of 'yeah, we're out here now,' and a feeling of how far away we were from where we'd come."

Eventually, they made it to Old Faithful. All the while, they had the stereo going while one after another napped in the back. The car was doing fine. From Yellowstone, the group set its sights on the Golden State. The Dodge roared westward for the final leg of the journey.

It was somewhere outside Sacramento that the aging domestic hit it. But once the car stopped, there was no starting it up again -- at least not without some serious professional repair work.

The car came to a halt in an empty parking lot late at night. By sheer luck, Busovsky had an uncle who lived in Sacramento. By sheer bad luck, the uncle was not in town that night. They spent the evening in the parking lot.

The next morning, they had the car towed to a garage. They hung out at the repair shop for the day. Finally, they reached the uncle, who gave them a lift to San Francisco while the car was in the shop. A week later and more than a $1,000 poorer, they got the car back. Busovsky recalled that it suffered from some kind of crack in the engine.

While the automobile has been around for a century, the road trip itself is a much more recent phenomena.

Amy Greenberg, assistant professor of American history, noted that the 1950's were the pivotal years in the development of the road trip. Greenberg said the federal government poured millions of dollars into highway construction during the decade. Meanwhile, motels and eateries popped up along the roads while new cars brought prestige to their owners, she said.

"Cars became the No. 1 status symbol in America in the 1950s," Greenberg said. "So you've got your car, so what do you do? You load up your car and your three kids and go on the road."

Yet, traveling with a packed car and three kids sounds more like a family vacation than a road trip. So Greenberg explained the difference. The vacation is more regimented, she said.

"Road trips are just cool," she said. "I was just talking to my husband the other day and I said we should just get in the car and drive. When you're driving, you can listen to your own music, be in your own car and have real conversation with your traveling companions."

Greenberg's husband is assistant professor of rhetoric Richard Doyle. Doyle, who taught a course this semester on vagabond author William S. Burroughs, explained it this way: "The road trip is an openness to experience and chance," he said. "It's a nomadic habit. The point is not the destination."

Well, after some meandering, Andy Busovsky and company reached their destination. Though their wheels were in the shop, they eventually saw the City by the Bay. Afterward, they successfully drove the Dodge back across America. The car runs to this day. After some reflection on the storied history of the road trip, Busovsky came to this conclusion:

"There's certainly a romanticism to it," he said. "There's a certain sense of detachment from the place you left behind. When we did take off, we really left State College behind for a few weeks."

And that, if anything, is reason for a road trip.