The Kerouac of Los Angeles County

Jack Kerouac was right.

The open road can be as true an experience as any.

On the way to nowhere in particular with a day’s stubble on the chin, the heater turned on high and the radio blasting, the road winds toward an understanding of self and place impossible in the workaday routine. It’s the kind of place where, as Kerouac put it, “you know all and everything is decided forever.”

Road trips are as apt a metaphor as the Empire State Building for the boundlessness of America, a symbol of liberty, prosperity and the restlessness that drove successive generations of dreamers and outlaws over the next ridge and across the next river. From Huck Finn to Steinbeck to Kerouac to Thelma and Louise, the allure of the road runs through popular culture as steadily as the purr of a well-tuned engine.

So I went out in search of the road last week, right here, nosing my truck into the scurrying torrent of the freeway system heading everywhere and nowhere. The goal: to drive at least a mile of every freeway in Los Angeles County. That’s 22 freeways. In one day.

It seemed so pointless--and so perfect.

Americans drive 17.2 million miles every year for no other reason than just to drive, according to Jeffrey Spring of the Auto Club of Southern California. That does not even include the 103 million miles driven for vacations or the 279 million miles driven to visit friends or relatives. It’s just 17.2 million miles driven for the sake of driving.

It’s been that way for a long time. Back in the 19th Century, an observer along the Oregon Trail noted: “Many are going there without any other specific object, than simply to be moving.”

“The road trip implies leaving home and trying to succeed whatever your metier,” said Alan Dundes, professor of anthropology and folklore at UC Berkeley. “It implies adventure, but also maybe difficulty. It’s rough and tumble and you don’t know what you’re in for.”

So would 235 miles around Greater Los Angeles--the distance of my route--capture the lure of the open road?

As I quickly found out, not quite--at least not on the surface. Open roads in Los Angeles are tough to come by, having long ago been broken and tamed by federal dollars and the 500-plus-mile freeway system. Juke joints and roadside stands have given way to warehouse stores and golden arches and suburban tracts that urban critic Jane Jacobs called “monotonous, unnourishing gruel.”

Over the course of a few hours on the freeways, it is apparent that the mythic road “where everything is decided forever” no longer exists in Los Angeles County. The dangerous curves have been straightened into engineered predictability. And the sights, whether in Pomona or Marina del Rey, are vaguely similar when viewed beyond the sound walls at 55 m.p.h.

The adventure of the journey is gone as each new place is more and more like the last. But after five hours of driving, a startling thing happens. The freeways that aided in the homogenization of suburbia become interesting in their own right. Easy to ignore and abuse, the freeways are actually quite amazing, each flowing into the next in graceful, almost frightening, arcs.

In a way, some of the freeways have more personality than many of the communities they connect. Compare driving the gentle rock and roll of the Pasadena with the utilitarian Pomona or the cramp of the San Diego. And all three are worlds away from the wide-open spaces of the Foothill.

The Terminal Island Freeway, gritty and workmanlike, is notable for the lack of passenger cars amid the big rigs and dump trucks. The Simi Valley Freeway rolls through the northern San Fernando Valley in a roadbed that seems almost too big, like a second-grader in baggy hand-me-downs.

My route, for the record, was to follow (by the numbers) the 101 to the 170 to the 5 to the 14, back to the 5 to the 118 to the 210 to the 30--and a quick detour to historic California 66 in La Verne--back to the 57 to the 71, back to the 57 to the 60 to the 605 to the 10 to the 710 to the 91 to the 110 to the 47, back to the 710 to the 105 to the 405 to the 90, back around to the 405 to the 10 to the 110 to the 2 to the 134 and, finally, back to the 101.

In the middle of the day, when the rest of the world fidgets behind a desk or sweats over machinery, the freeways flow as they were designed to. They are almost effortless to navigate and actually quite fun to drive.

Throughout the day, my speed only once fell below 55, just past the four-level interchange near Downtown, where a black sport utility vehicle had flipped over, its passenger cabin flattened against the pavement. The driver stood next to his squashed vehicle in suspenders with his white shirt unbuttoned, talking frantically into a cellular phone as paramedics tried to check him for injuries.

The rest of the day flashed past in a blur, obscured now and then by rain as the windshield wipers kept time with the radio. Past a chicken ranch somewhere around Industry. Past a giant inflatable panda perched atop a Duarte car dealership. Past the giant cranes of the harbor and the ships carrying men for whom the siren song of the open road beckons them seaward.

Lunch fell around Diamond Bar, 96 miles from home in Bob’s Big Boy, playing Crystal Gayle a little too loud. The waitress’s name was Grace and she served up a turkey club sandwich on a plate heaped with crunchy unsalted fries.

She brought the bill and I told her what I was doing, how I was driving at least a mile on every freeway in Los Angeles County. It sounded so ridiculous when I said it. She looked at me for a second or two, saying nothing.

I didn’t expect her to understand.

But then again, maybe she did.

“You want some more Diet Coke?” she asked helpfully.