Road Tripping 2010

I am in the middle of a cross country road trip, my first in over a decade. While the scenery changes are interesting, the experience as a whole seems much less so than before. The U.S. has become very much homogenized into a series of fast food chain restaurants offering their fare of sodium and weight gain. In the same way, our regional differences and personalities seem to be smoothed over by a wash of commercialization. There is less in the way of idiosyncrasies and regional characters. I guess they are all dying off. True, one does not want any Easy Rider moments, but the country is developing a certain blandness to it.