What I Miss the Most

Everyday since my trip something seems to come up where I think, “Man, I just really miss going that on my trip.” It could be just about anything. There are lots of things I miss about the trip and I often let my mind wander off thinking, “What if I could do it all over again?” Here are a few things I miss the most from The Hometown Invasion Tour

Driving the Compass
My favorite driving is city driving after dark with all the lights, and open road driving on a two-lane highway with not much traffic on a beautiful sunny day. Roll down the windows, turn up the music, open the sunroof, drive, and seeing the United States by road. It was always incredible.

First Nights at a Host
I didn’t necessarily always look forward to knocking on a stranger’s door. Sometimes it just felt weird and having now idea who was going to answer. Though it was quite interesting and worked out just about every time. My favorite part of the first day at a new host was the first evening. It almost always worked out where we would have dinner and then get to know each other. They would always ask interesting questions about my trip, and it became great conversation night after night.

New Restaurants
I’ll be the first person to admit that I was spoiled this year, very spoiled. I’m not sure how many people took me to breakfast, lunch, or dinner and would refuse to let me pay. Food is an enormous daily topic in this country. It was so cool to be able to try new restaurants in probably every state. I wish I had a better restaurant log of my trip, but I’m guessing I probably tried at least 100 new restaurants in a year.

Change of the Land
One of the best parts for anyone traveling this country is seeing how the lands changes from region to region and state to state, and often city to city. There is an incredible amount of variety of scenery in this country, incredible amount! From glaciers, deserts, rain forests, tundra, tropical, coastal, plains, lakes, mountains, the list goes on. And you can divide each of those into sub categories as well. It’s also cool to see the changes of people from region to region in terms of traditions, beliefs, daily life and more.

Spontaneous Adventure
There is no question that this is probably what I miss the most. I had no idea I was going to go spelunking or ice blocking, I didn’t even know what those were. I would have not been able to predict that I’d shake hands with Shaun White and Jake Burton, or even John Carmack, the creator of Doom. Each day was a brand new adventure, I never knew what I was going to come across. The list goes on and on. I mean dressing up as gang green and going to the best sweater and turtle neck party in the country, I would have never predicted any of it.

The Spotlight
I think we’re all a little vain at times. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss the spotlight everywhere I went in the car and being introduced to people as the 50-state traveler. Being featured in over 30 newspapers, a couple handfuls of radio stations, a couple handfuls of TV stations, even a couple magazines and one national TV spot. It was an amazing feeling of success. It was a lot of fun to talk to reporters and share my experiences and stories. What came of being in all this press was the best part, responses from across the country! Which leads me to my next point….

Inspiring People
Every time meeting someone was an experience. They inspired me a lot in return. I had no idea how people were going to respond when I answered about my trip. But there was nothing more rewarding than seeing somebody’s face light up with inspiration and thinking it was an incredible idea. I hope I inspired a lot of people, taught they about our country, and was able to simply share this incredible experience with them. I’ll never forget the first time someone came up to me and said, “I would just like to shake your hand, I think what you’re doing is amazing.”

Story Telling
I still get to do a lot of this, but never will I tell as many stories of the trip as I did during the trip. People wanted to know everything! And I was meeting on average a few new people every day. Of course I had to answer a lot of the same questions daily. But I enjoy the challenging questions and questions I had never heard before.

And finally… meeting people, meeting hundreds of Americans. It was incredible.

Of course there are many other things I miss, but I had to at least get these things out.