SILVERTHORNE, Colo. — I was between the Arapaho and Roosevelt national forests, hooking around Grays Peak, hitting the brakes to slow the decline and wondering what on earth I was diving into.
To the front and rear of my rental car were semis, vans and mobile homes far more equipped for this Labor Day weekend retreat than I was as we whipped through dark tunnels and around winding rivers. In the slivers of time between riding those brakes, navigating curves and holding back my Australian shepherd, Grady, it hit me how exhilarating this adventure was going to be.
I’m The Athletic’s new Los Angeles Rams reporter, and what better way do I have to introduce myself than through the physical journey to get here? Four days of driving through Tornado Alley, mountain ranges, canyons and Las Vegas took me from my old home in Indianapolis to my new one in L.A.
This is my first time living outside the Midwest. This is my westward expansion, nine years after the Rams did theirs as a franchise from St. Louis.
Thirty hours in a car is one cathartic way to find out about yourself and all this country has to offer.
(Courtesy of Nate Atkins)
Columbia, Mo. Population: 126,254
It only makes sense to get this journey started in the place where it really took off.
Columbia is where I made my first real solo trek in a car. I had just turned 19 and was moving from Ashland, Ohio, to attend college at the University of Missouri, where I knew almost nobody, all to chase a career as a sportswriter.
I remember my first night in the town was the day LeBron James, who grew up 50 miles from me, announced he was leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers to join the Miami Heat.
But this trip was 15 years after all of that. I’ve grown in some ways, having moved throughout the Midwest to cover the Chicago Bears, Detroit Lions and Indianapolis Colts. And now, this campus would serve as a pit stop to my most adventurous move yet, to a national outlet to cover the pro football team that used to reside in the state when I was in school.
I didn’t bring up the Rams during my stay in Missouri. Those scars are still real to people. But I stayed in a hotel minutes from Faurot Field, where the Missouri Tigers had just kicked off a season, and where the breakfast room featured traveling fans discussing the merits of name, image and likeness, the transfer portal and the team’s outlook in the SEC.
Imagine explaining that scene to the 19-year-old me who showed up when the Tigers played in the Big 12.
I sat outside at a Starbucks I used to write college articles from and typed my final story for the Indianapolis Star. Then I hopped in the car, set the cruise control and sped away from this chapter of my life.
Colby, Kan. Population: 5,570
This drive would end up being an exciting one, for the shifts it represents in my life and career, and for the landscape and terrain it would throw at me on the way out west.
But it got moving with 500 miles through the cornfields of Kansas. Day crept into night before something happened in the distance to my left. Thunder cracked like a spear from the heavens, and the skies darkened.
I pulled over at the nearest exit and checked Weather.com.
As the rain hit, all that was on the radar was an intense thunderstorm. The people of the town bustled in and out of cars to gas stations and storefronts, as if this were any other day.
The mere idea of a tornado brought me back to my first year in college. In May 2011, an EF5 hit the Southeastern Missouri town of Joplin and killed more than 150 people and created $2.8 million in damage, making it the costliest tornado in U.S. history.
I’ll never forget driving to report a story on the town’s recovery, where I could peer from the street into homes split down the middle and see the plates still on the dinner table, the calendars filled with daily events, the lives ripped apart at the seams.
I also recall what someone spray-painted on a trash can at the local park:
“What you spend a lifetime creating can be destroyed overnight. Create anyway.”
That memory provided just enough fuel to get through the night.
Thompson Springs, Utah. Population: 134
After a night in Denver and that traffic-packed swerve down the mountain, I crossed into Utah for the first time and stopped at one of the viewing outposts on Interstate 70 to peer out to miles and miles of red rocks.
That set the scene for the next drive, flying at 80 mph speed limits and not seeing anything — not a car, house or person outside — for an entire hour, at 6 p.m. on a Saturday.
The road signs foreshadowed the coming isolation: No gas for 100 miles. “No services” at the exits. Warnings of wildlife wandering onto the highway.
As the open road shifted to more winding turns between the Manti-La Sal and Fishlake national forests, what struck me was the beauty of this place and the way it allows your mind to travel.
This was really happening now. Whereas the stretches of cornfields, the hints of Tornado Alley and the skyscrapers of Denver were places I’ve been several times, Utah was new ground. It was the second half of the longest drive I’ll ever make for the biggest move of my life.
I was so far from Ashland, where my family didn’t have a home for a stretch for schools to send the acceptance or rejection letters.
But now I’m entering what feels like the prime of my career, where the creative freedoms and the twists and turns of this field can mirror the shift from 80 mph roads to curves around mountains and rivers.
But now, I felt ready for it, even as the skies darkened as I reached the Zion National Park and the mountains stretched high enough to block out the stars.
I stopped in Las Vegas for the night, had a drink on the Strip and toasted to the bet I just placed on my career.
These days, when something scares me, it often feels like the sign that it’s exactly what I’ve been needing in my life.
Los Angeles. Population: 3.9 million
The sun hung high and palm trees sparkled as skyscrapers rose from the horizon, and the traffic stalled to a halt on the freeway.
Los Angeles is a place where some grow up and never want to leave, but it’s also a city of transplants and dreamers. The latter is where I fall after 34 years in the Midwest, after bouncing from Ohio to Missouri to Illinois to Michigan to Indiana in orbit of a pair of Great Lakes.
Now, I’m living close to an ocean for the first time, in a state I hadn’t set foot in until about five days ago.
But this will become home with each drive on the 405 or the 101, with each hike up a mountain or day at the beach, and with each day covering the Rams.
I’ve now covered two practices in Woodland Hills, where I watched a team gear up for a season filled with expectations. I spotted Matthew Stafford, the quarterback I covered for three seasons during my first full-time NFL beat in Detroit. He had a little gray in his beard, but the same velocity on his passes that ripped through the winds in Michigan and now does so in the backdrop of palm trees.
A 30-hour drive through Tornado Alley, down a mountain and through a canyon taught me that I can’t predict what will happen next, but that’s just the beauty.
I’m white-knuckling this new experience. But believe me, I’m going where I need to go. Thanks for coming along for the ride.
(Top photo: George Frey / Getty Images)