A beautiful, broken America: what I learned on a 2,800-mile bus ride from Detroit to LA

Gone are the small, clean, cheap motels and public spaces where anyone can find a place to nurse a cup of coffee. Yet the camaraderie of the Greyhound is hanging on

I recently completed the road trip of a lifetime. I struck out from Napanee, Ontario, to Los Angeles, California – a 2,800-mile trip that I had been planning since before Covid times. I wanted to take this time to think deeply about our overreliance on cars and our love affair with the open road.

There was a catch: as a non-driver, I would be crossing the country by Greyhound bus. It would have the advantage of getting me closer to the people I wanted to talk to, and the issues I knew I’d witness.