At some point, most of us desire to hop in our cars with a purpose. We step on the gas, on a mission, visualizing destinations in the forms of places and good friends. Brian Alexander, a friend to University of Alabama students, made Tuscaloosa his first stop in a two-month, cross-country road trip last Friday.
“We’re flying through the country in a whirlwind,” said Alexander, who took off for Charleston, S.C. on Saturday morning.
A whirlwind may fall short in quantifying his speed. The trek tentatively includes stops in nearly twenty states and two countries. Sharing driving duties with Stephanie “Stevie” Long, a good friend of four years, Alexander said he believes they’ll have to maintain a swift pace to complete the round-trip and return to Bay-St. Louis, Miss. by their target-deadline of Aug. 20.
“It’s going to be a lot of stop, gas, eat and go.” Alexander said.
But Alexander and Long are used to the tempo. Their last road trip included a twenty-one-hour, Los Angeles-to-Boulder car ride, during which they shared a small sedan with three friends, luggage, a cat, litter box and no air-conditioning.
“I don’t regret it,” Long said. “But I would never recreate it.”
A recent graduate of The University of Southern Mississippi, Alexander formed friendships with Alabama students while interning at the American Pavilion’s Cannes Film Program in Cannes, France in May.
“There were a lot of UA students there,” Alexander said. “And alcohol makes for fast friends.”
Over the past few years, Alexander has grown accustomed to meeting and connecting with people on a large scale. He says it’s mostly due to his volunteer experiences as an AmeriCorps member. In fact, he met Stevie Long in New Orleans while doing recovery work with AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps.
“In such an emotionally compressed space, you get to know people super quickly,” Alexander said. “In AmeriCorps, I was participating in a traveling volunteer program with a team that became a family.”
That same family will shelter Alexander and his passengers as they weave around the country. His brothers and sisters in service responded to Alexander via Facebook, suggesting their homes as stops along his initial rough route. The volume of responses illustrated the profound depth of his relationships.
“I got a dumb amount of responses,” Alexander said. “I even had to ignore a few.”
He did not ignore Colby Leopard and Sarah Massey, Alabama students who worked with him at Cannes and beckoned him toward Tuscaloosa.
But Alexander, who developed a taste for disaster recovery in New Orleans, admits that the recent tornado-related devastation also drew him to T-town.
For Long, this stop was actually a return trip. Helping to heal April 27’s wounds, she contributed three days of recovery work and noted the town’s resemblance to that of post-Katrina New Orleans.
“The eerie FEMA ‘X’s’ are what really struck me,” Long said.
While he constantly feels a calling to service, Alexander contends that the main fuel for this trip – other than $50 tanks of unleaded – is a desire to strengthen relationships.
“Those relationships make life worth living,” Alexander said. “Even in AmeriCorps, when you’re bombarded with so many faces and names, you’re always glad to meet them. Something about it feels natural.”
That natural feeling was apparent to Corey Fox, an Alabama student who shares mutual friends with Alexander. Fox provided the road-trippers with their firsts of many comforting couches.
“I love hosting people like that,” Fox said. “It puts me at ease knowing somebody can trust others to provide happy company, even as only casual acquaintances.”
If all goes according to plans, Alexander and Long should find more happy company in Boston tonight. Their weekend included over 1,000 miles of interstate and stops in Washington D.C. and New York City. Long probably described the journey best: “Non-stop, get it, get it.”
We will continue to follow Brian and Stevie as their trip progresses. Please look for updates in next week’s paper.
