Today, we reach out and touch the Holy Grail, the ever-elusive dream of perfect happiness. We are the fountain of youth. We are the dream-makers. We are the dream, the realization of many dreams and the seed of a thousand thousand more.

Today, we make history.

Today we live, taking art on the road and sharing it unselfishly. And in-so-doing, we become immortal. We sign postcards yet we are not rock stars. We garner donations of $20 bills from rogue and hoary bikers, yet we are not bikers. We drive cars that get unimaginably bad gas mileage and we are always low on cash, yet we keep rolling, magically, incredibly.

Today, we see America, and America sees us.

I made the mistake some weeks ago, while talking on the phone with an editor from Rolling Stone, of saying that there were a couple of hundred people involved in this venture. She had asked me how many people were involved, a perfectly understandable question from a magazine that makes it profits in newsstand sales and advertiser patronage. And I blew it. I thought only of the car artists, adding up the attendees at the three or four big events we were going to hit along the way. But now I know better. Now I know the real answer, or can at least approximate it.

To figure how many people our journey involves, let's do a little math.

First, let's take a look at me and my car Duke, on the road alone for five days from Portland to Minneapolis. Now, according to what I told Danielle Mattoone at Rolling Stone, the number of people involved in that leg of the journey would total one: me. This, I now see, is absurd and wrong.

On that short leg of the trip alone, I touched the lives of thousands of people. No joke. To borrow an old cliche, "if I had a dime for every time" someone took my picture during that rather rushed 1800 miles, I would be a millionaire. Well, maybe not quite. But imagine yourself driving down a busy summer highway in the slowest car on the road. Now, imagine all the people that would pass you. Can you even count that high? I can't. Thousands and thousands. Bikers, truckers, old couples in RVs, families, commuters, college students on vacation, and the list goes on. Now give every third person that passes you a disposable camera. Now are you getting the picture?

Every time I stopped for gas or a pee at a rest stop, I was swamped by travelers wanting to know all about my car, to touch it, to photograph it, to take it in with eager TV-wearied eyes. And in Fargo, ND where I stopped for dinner at an Applebee's on the cue of some local rock station doing a live broadcast there, the local NBC affiliate sent out a cameraman and put me on the ten o'clock news. Do the math, baby.

I was photographed more in those five days than some people are photographed in their entire lives. And that was just the beginning.

Now, I arrive in Minneapolis, my destination. I meet up with dozens of other car artists and we do a parade. We do a parade, a symposium at which I speak to some 200 people about car art, a spontaneous cruise around the city and more.

Unless otherwise noted, all images are copyrighted by the artists and/or
by Pineapple Publishing and Consulting
Art Cars in Cyberspace ©2004 Pineapple Publishing and Consulting
Contact us at artcars@artcars.com

Last update April 1, 2004