I’ve driven across the United States six times, thrice between Denver and Boston, twice from Denver to Tampa Bay and once from Boston to San Francisco. I’ve also driven Boston to Tampa Bay a few times and once returned from Tampa and headed all the way north to Prince Edward Island. The last long road trip was the Boston to San Francisco route in 2001. All the previous ones were in the ‘90s. I drove most of them in a 1992 Saturn, the most basic model available when I bought it new from the dealership. Standard shift. AM/FM cassette. No CD player.

The no CD player was an issue to take into account when it came to a 3,000 mile road trip. Most of my music was on CDs. I wanted to take my music with me and this required some preparation in the form of the “mix tape”. I made several of these mix tapes in preparation for one of these trips, six cassettes as I now recall, but I had nearly forgotten about them until today when I made a deep dive into my closet today to clear it out.

Today's delving was a major purge of items which we sorted into “Keep”, “Toss” and “Goodwill”. Clearing out the closets was on our to-do list in connection with some remodeling we’re doing in our home. Remodeling part of one's home, I've discovered, is a singular project that somehow leads to lots of little ones. Now I’m pretty good and clearing stuff out of my life as I go along. I’m the anti-hoarder. There’s not much in my life sitting around collecting dust.

That said, I was shocked at exactly how much has made its way to the dark recesses of the closets in the six years we’ve lived here. I was doubly shocked to move aside a stack of CDs (empty, bought in bulk to burn files on but the flash drive came along before the CDs were used up) and find a long plastic container filled with cassettes (including one unopened blank cassette). Nestled between Smashing Pumpkins and Sonic Youth were two of my Road Tripping mix tapes. Numbers 2 and 4 had survived. 1, 3, 5 and 6 are either in a landfill somewhere or hibernating in some unexplored corner of my world to be discovered at a later time.

I honestly couldn’t remember what I had saved onto these cassettes so this was something of an exciting discovery. I checked out Road Tripping 2 and saw that I evidently wanted to recreate a dance club atmosphere as I headed west. Memories flooded through me as I read the titles. That’s an overused phrase, “memories flooded”, but that’s exactly what happened and in the future when I hear that phrase, this is the moment I’ll think of.

I remembered all the planning I had put into creating these tapes. They were more or less split per genre so I had rock/pop, indie artists, country, classical, club. The time per tape was carefully measured out so that I wasn’t left with a lot of dead space at the ends of the spools. Hence, the last songs on the tape often didn’t fit in with the rest. This is where I crammed in pieces that I didn’t want an entire cassette of but I didn’t want to leave out altogether. For example, classic rock from the 60s and 70s ended up here.

My hand writing is illegible, even to my own eyes. In the past I had made plenty of tapes and then not been able to decipher the writing on the cover as I drove down the road. Had I put Nine Inch Nails on the BASF or TDK cassette? This time around I had a computer which could make the labels for me. Artist and Title all neatly typed on the cover. I remembered hours spent making all these, going through my collection of CDs and borrowing some from friends. I remember working late at the office so that I could use the laser printer there to make the labels. Then, of course, there were the road trips themselves, which would be too long a digression for this post.

I don’t have a cassette player anymore. This is a problem for the other tape I found - Road Tripping 4. It wasn’t in its cassette box. It was in a Shonen Knife cassette box. I don’t know what’s on Road Tripping 4. I could have thrown it out today, but I’m curious. I want to know what made the cut some 15 odd years ago. I’m sure I can find someone, somewhere who still has a cassette player. One of my parents perhaps.

I’ve collected Road Tripping 2 into its own playlist on Spotify. There were only a couple songs I couldn’t locate. Here’s what I’ve been listening to today, and what carried me across the country sometime before the turn of the century.

Side A

808 State – Contrique

Shamen – Move Any Mountain

Alpha Team – Speed

Scarface – Don’t Fuck with Chuck

Messiah – Thunder Dome

Sunscreem – Pressure

Theme from Mission Impossible (Dance Mix)

Peter Schilling - Major Tom

Low Pop Suicide – Life & Death

(The London) Suede – The Drowners

Moby – Heaven

Side B

Lords of Acid - The Most Wonderful Girl

Messiah – Temple of Dreams

BiGod 20 – The Bog

White Zombie – Thunder Kiss

Chapterhouse – There’s Still Life

Machines of Loving Grace – Butterfly Wings

Bettie Serveert – What Friends

Rolling Stones – It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll

Aerosmith – Walk the Way

Twice Wilted – Brighter

Takako Minekawa – T.T.T.