Edwards - Roads from the ashes: an odyssey in real life on the virtual frontier

Also by Megan Edwards

Strings: A Love Story

Getting Off on Frank Sinatra

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ROADS FROM THE ASHES: An Odyssey in Real Life on the Virtual Frontier

Copyright 2018 by Megan Edwards. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations used in critical articles and reviews.
For information, write to books@imbrifex.com.

In order to protect privacy, some names of people and places have been changed.
All photos by the author, except as noted in the captions of the photos.

IMBRIFEX and ROADTRIP AMERICA are registered trademarks of Flattop Productions, Inc.

Publishers Cataloging in Publication (First Edition)

Edwards, Megan

Roads from the ashes : an odyssey in real life on the virtual frontier / by Megan Edwards

I st ed. p. cm.

ISBN: 1-891290-01-0

I. Edwards, MeganJourneysUnited States.

2. United StatesDescription and travel.

3. United StatesSocial life and customs-1971

4. Automobile travelUnited States. 5.

JournalistsUnited StatesBiography. I.

Title.

E 1 69.04.E39 1999 973.929

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 98-61898

E-Book and Cover Designer: Sue Campbell

Cover photo: Salvatore Ventura, Unsplash.com

Author photo: Benjamin Hager

Distributed by Publishers Group West

First Edition Paperback: March 1999, ISBN 18912190010 Trilogy Books

E-book: December 2018, ISBN 9781945501333 Imbrifex Books

This book, along with my heart, belongs to Mark
Together we dedicate it to our parents:
Margaret and Charles
Betty Lee and Spencer

Foreword to the 20th Anniversary Edition

What a difference twenty years makes. When an intuitive, resourceful, creative couple lost everything in a fire, they didnt wallow. They hit the road. Along the way, a literal journey became a metaphorical journey. They found freedom devoid of material items. They found themselves. Their motorhome became their chariot and the then-new Internet became their connection to finding their future.

Today, twenty years later, I think Megan Edwards on-the-road memoir resonates just as powerfully, if not more so than it did when first released. The technological world has changed so much that we marvel even more at how she and her husband Mark managed to utilize new technology in the old world. In that respect, its nostalgic to look back at what the world was like that, but it also helps us make sense of how far weve come.

While the world may be different now, some things never change, like the survival trigger when faced with catastrophic loss. These are brave, practical people, and it took more than a devastating fire to stop them. Megans engaging storytelling is powerful not just from the humor and honesty, but from the vivid details that bring this journey to life. The coast-to-coast trek is what many will do for a vacation, but this time its about survival, rebirth, and renewal.

But its also a travelogue and like any good travel tome, this one places you right in the front seat, squeezed between the two of them as you visit majestic places far and wide, ocean to desert to forest to the Big Apple. As the world becomes aware of them and the media start taking notice, we are there as their lives change.

The timelessness of a book like Roads from the Ashes is obvious from page to page, because the challenges and hurdles encountered have a universality to them. Ive no doubt that in the next twenty years, regardless of how technology may morph at some light-speed pace, this book will remain relatable and relevant. In the end, as Edwards clearly understands, its not about technology, its about the characters and conflicts. That said, she gives technology its own personality throughout this adventure, because that is how they experienced it.

Im glad I took the journey with them years ago. Im even happier I took it again, now, twenty years wiser, and more in tune with beauty of her many on-the-road revelations.

Chris Epting

Author of James Dean Died Here , Roadside Baseball , and so many more books that have inspired untold numbers of road trips

Introduction to the 20th Anniversary Edition

As I write this, twenty-five years have passed since an early morning firestorm roared across the hills above Pasadena, California, and left a smoldering swath where hundreds of houses had stood. Its difficult to believe its been a quarter of a century since I stood in the rubble of my former home and gazed out over the valley below from a spot that didnt have a view the day before. Two dozen trees had gone up in smoke, and in their place was an unobstructed vista over Los Angeles and all the way out to Catalina Island. The winds had carried all the smoke east, leaving no evidence in the air of all the fire had destroyed. It was a crystal clear view, a view long enough to reveal the curve of the earth.

I wish I could say that my own vision was as clear and as long as the view that day from our smoldering citadel. I know it felt that way at the time. Perhaps the promise of freedom always feels that way. Its what makes horizons so appealing, and open roads so alluring. They stretch perfectly into the distance, uncluttered by the mundane and unblemished by mishap. On a road untraveled, nothing shows except adventure and independence.

Hitting the road was the only idea that occurred to me that day. I was immediately convinced that there would never be a better time, and that if I didnt seize the moment while it was fresh, my feet would soon sprout new roots, and my stuffless status would rapidly disappear in new accumulations of humdrum possessions. I had nothing left to lose, and it would be a fleeting gift if I didnt accept it on the spot.

That day was October 28, 1993. Bill Clinton was winding up his first year as president, and people were still talking about the amazing effects in the first Jurassic Park movie. I remember those things well. What I did not know was that 1993 was the year that Mosaic, the first real Web browser, was released. For that matter, I didnt know what the Web was, and browser was still just another word for window shopper. Some people were using email, and just as many were hoping theyd never have to. We all knew change was in the air, but few of us realized we were already in a state of revolution. While I had no idea that a virtual firestorm was gaining strength the day a real fire burned my house down, I look back and marvel at the synchronicity. The fire that tore through the hills above Pasadena in October, 1993, just happened to wreak its havoc when the virtual world was igniting, too.

While I was on the road, I enjoyed reading books by and about travelers. Kerouacs On the Road led the list, but also at the top was Mark Twains Roughing It . In his descriptions of traveling in the Wild West in the years after the Gold Rush, Twain captured the energy and entrepreneurialism that defined that other era of discovery and rapid change. I found it to be the perfect analogy for the vortex I found myself in as I traveled in the 1990s. No chapter illustrated this more perfectly than Twains account of riding the Overland Stage. In it, Twain captured the experience of traveling by a means that was created by overwhelming demand and that ended abruptly with the completion of the transcontinental railroad. Twain also described the Pony Express, another short-lived phenomenon rendered obsolete by the transcontinental telegraph.