In the summer of 2006 some close friends and I took a road trip. It was, in theory, a quintessential road trip. The plan was to head west to the coast of California and back again to the comfort of our homes where we’d revel to our friends about the adventures we’d encountered. We would hit what we decided were necessary destinations—the Rockies, the salt flats of Utah, San Francisco, Los Angeles and the Grand Canyon—with little itinerary outside of that. It was a good trip, complete with the clichéd ups and downs, twists and turns and all the melodrama one would and could expect.