Midgard Corp of Discovery

[gfish]

I just finished reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World. Pure, wonderful, vintage pulp. Pith helmets and dinosaurs! Awesome. And it started me thinking, as I am want to do, about the nature of adventure in the modern world. A line early on in the book particularly resonated with me: There are heroisms all around us, waiting to be done. I'm still unsure what adventure really means these days, but I'm continually amazed at how much of it there is for the taking. Linguists talk about 'speech acts': marriages, divorces, taking of oaths, etc. Words that change our reality in an intangible, yet deeply important way. I think choosing to look for adventure is like that. A speech act between you and the universe.

Along those lines...

A few months ago I was reading a list of travel tips, from a ridiculously seasoned roadtripper, and it included the line 'sometimes it's fun to drive from Chicago to LA using only a compass.' Ever since I've been thinking how amazingly cool that would be. Today that thought started to synthesize with the above, and I'm really starting to like the result. The concept: LA to Chicago. No maps, no GPS, no freeways. We have a compass, a chronometer and a sextant. Done right, I bet it could make a really interesting documentary. (Would have to actually talk to and interview random people along the way, though, which I'm rather poor at.) So I've ended up with another epic roadtrip idea. I'm booked for several years at this point. :)

Comments

[shadowblue.livejournal.com]

Excellent! I am in. This is my oath.

(I like speech acts.) :)

I guess the angle of the documentary would have to be old-style navigation and where it can take you. It seems like it could work out pretty well.

I've always wondered where people pick up interviewing skills. I suppose you'd figure it out after shadowing someone who knows how to do it...

[gfish.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of the documentary as a fairly standard travelogue with an odd framing device. I'd like to play with the concept of rediscovering areas already well explored, inventing modern adventures, etc, but I'm not sure how much of that it could handle before becoming silly and pretentious.

[sar-anon.livejournal.com]

Sounds like great fun to me.
I'm good with people and I've even used a sextant... though its been better than 14 years.

And why LA to Chicago? Why not Seattle to NewYork? Or even Seattle to NewYork by way of Kansas City or something like that. Pick landmarks that you want to get to and document the attempt to hone in on a specific place.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

One of the reasons I like the idea is that it would be an excellent reason to learn to use a sextant and get some real practice at it.

I was thinking we would want to avoid the mountains, which pretty severely limit travel options, and LA/Chicago is just a classic roadtrip. I'm not particularly set on it. If/when the time comes, I'll be open to other suggestions. We could try to follow Lewis and Clark, backwards. Or head for Maine or Florida or some other obvious extremity. We could try to hit every state capitol along the way. I can think of lots of fun permutations.