MEMORY ROAD TRIP is a collection of travel stories ranging from the sublime to the surreal as told by a travel agent who saw the world on the cheap.
Prologue: The story begins with a brief introduction and an explanation of what prompted the author to write her travel stories down.
The first chapter, titled "California, Diverted," opens with the death of a teenage friend. The theme of this chapter is that life is short and needs to be lived while one has a chance to live it.
The second chapter, titled "Lost Vegas," sees the author get hopelessly lost overnight in a Nevada desert. She seriously begins to think that she's going to die out there.
The third chapter, titled "Finding Where," sees the author wandering aimlessly in her Suzuki Samurai looking for someplace, anyplace, in America to live.
The fourth chapter, titled "Day Trips," is a collection of quick jaunts that she does when she works for America West Airlines.
The fifth chapter, titled "England," is a trip to bad relationship dystopia that occurs in relative silence when the two travelers stop talking to each other.
The sixth chapter, titled "Spain/France," sees the author falling asleep on the beach in Barcelona and waking up to her bag being stolen. She takes a bus to France. The driver is drunk the whole way and weaves precariously through the Pyrenees Mountains.
The seventh chapter, titled "Native America," is where the author synthesizes all her thoughts about early America while she explores a plethora of Native American ruins.
The eighth chapter, titled "Mexico," finds the author climbing pyramids and falling into actual potholes. Also, she gets a little too familiar with what the end of a machete looks like.
The ninth chapter, titled "Alaska and the Pacific Northwest," sees the author explore what it means to be an American as she walks the Oregon Trail in the wrong direction.
The tenth chapter, titled "Germany," sees the author and her friend get lost while looking for the Dachau Concentration camp. They ultimately resort to letting a pair of German cops drive them there.
The eleventh chapter, titled "The End of an Era," explores the events of Sep 11 and how it affected the world. This final chapter sees her wandering around France and musing about the meaning of war. By the end of this chapter, she ties past and future together and concludes her story inside the Notre Dame Cathedral. She casts her gaze upwards and sees that the roof has disappeared, having just recently burned. Thoughts segue towards COVID-19 and the story ends with her wondering about the future.