Road Trip on Route 66

"We're going to see the whole country," said Luis, spreading a paper map across the hood of the car. "Chicago to Santa Monica. Two thousand four hundred miles." His friends Andrea and Pablo looked at the map, then at the old blue car they had bought the day before for nine hundred dollars.

"And this is going to get us there?" Andrea asked. "Of course it is," Luis said. "It's got a new battery."

The three of them had grown up together in Guadalajara and had been planning this trip since university. Now they were finally doing it: Route 66, the famous old road across the United States, in two weeks, with a tent and a very small budget.

The arguments started before they left Illinois. Pablo wanted to use the GPS on his phone; Luis insisted on the paper map, "because that's the whole point." Andrea wanted to listen to podcasts; the boys wanted rock music. They agreed on one thing only: they would stop in every small town with a strange name.

In Missouri they slept in a motel shaped like a tent. In Oklahoma they visited a round barn and ate the biggest steak of their lives. "Tomorrow we'll be in Texas by lunchtime," Luis announced on the fourth night. "We're leaving at seven. The museum in Amarillo closes at five."

They didn't get to Texas by lunchtime. At nine in the morning, in the middle of nowhere, the blue car made a terrible noise and stopped. Steam rose from the engine. There was no phone signal, no town and no other cars.

"I'm never going to listen to you again," Andrea told Luis calmly. "I'll push," said Pablo, who was always practical. So they pushed the car for a mile along the empty road, until they saw a sign: "Rosie's Diner. Open. Mechanic next door."

The diner was small, silver and shining in the sun. Rosie herself was about seventy, and she served them pancakes, coffee and the best apple pie Andrea had ever tasted while her nephew looked at the car. "Your radiator's broken," he said. "I'll fix it, but the part won't arrive until tomorrow morning."

So they stayed. That afternoon they helped Rosie paint her fence. That evening, a group of bikers came in, and Pablo played the guitar until midnight. Rosie let them sleep in the rooms behind the diner and didn't charge them a cent.

"We're not going to make it to Santa Monica in two weeks now," Luis said the next morning, looking at his map. "No," said Andrea. "But we've found Rosie's. That wasn't on the map."

The car got them to California nine days later. It broke down twice more. They still talk about the apple pie.