We both wanted to stay longer, but it was time for us to go back to engaging with the real world again. Peter had mandatory training for his job as an RA at Easter Connecticut State, and I needed to go apartment hunting and find a job of my own before the school year began.

Unfortunately, Ali and John’s journey on the bus ended shortly after Peter and I left. Just a week after our departure, the bus broke down again in Elko, Nevada. A tow truck took her to the town of Wells, where John and Ali learned that the repairs would cost nearly as much as the bus itself. The flew back to Connecticut. Anne Marie stayed behind–at least for now.

But just because the trip came to an early end doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth it. Any single moment of the trip was better than anything else I could have been doing with my summer. As trite as it is to say that I “discovered myself,” there’s no questioning that I’m more comfortable with who I am now. I’ve seen a lot of America, and I’ve figured out where I belong in it, at least for now. I’ve learned how I deal with stresses I would never have been subjected to otherwise, and I’ve experienced types of joy that I’ve never felt before. I know the euphoria of coming out of a sweat lodge, the rush of seeing the entire Grand Canyon laid out beneath you, and the relief of a shower after a week straight of marinating in blinding heat. I don’t know if it’s made me a better person, but I think so. At the very least, it’s made me better at being okay with myself.

Young people of America: travel. Do it before you have kids and a mortgage, or a career that you absolutely can’t take two months off from. You don’t need a school bus to do it. Just one or two very close friends and something with wheels. You can even convert it to run on vegetable oil, like ours; I’m told it’s not hard, and a friend of the bus from back in our hometown just did that with his own VW bus.

Don’t just go to one place and stay in a hotel. Couchsurf. Get a rail pass. Talk to strangers. Sleep in bus stations. Just get out there, and stay out there for as long as you can.

It may be uncomfortable, at times. You might not get much sleep, and you’ll probably smell bad. But the things you’ll see and feel, the people you’ll talk to, and the camaraderie you’ll experience with other travelers will more than make up for it.

One more thing: Thanks to the Center for American Progress and the wonderful Kay Steiger for giving me the opportunity to write about this trip, and supporting me. I was extraordinarily lucky to have their confidence, and I wouldn’t have had the resources to spend those nine weeks on the trip without them.

Don’t forget to pack light, guys.

This bastion of gay pride, sequestered within a state where marijuana is decriminalized, is obviously nowhere near the hotbed of iniquity that Newt Gingrich would have you believe. The appearance of a few gay erotica stores on Castro Street hasn’t caused a devolution into anarchy. And more to the point, it’s part of the open, accepting vibe of the city; from the dude in line to the bathroom to the guy at the train station who gave us a free pass because he liked the idea of our road trip, everyone we spoke to was friendly, helpful, and comfortable around people from different backgrounds.

The city also has an admirable dedication to promoting education and the arts. Its extensive public library system includes 27 branches and 4 roving bookmobiles. The downtown area, particularly around Yerba Buena Gardens, is packed with museums and art galleries. When we visited, the gardens were also the site of a Latin Music Festival.

Obviously, the city is not without its problems. The whole state of California is in very hot water right now; plus, San Francisco has a fairly large homeless population. Stratospheric housing prices and an absurdly high sales tax (8.25 percent) probably aren’t helping too much with that, either. But I don’t think that has anything to do with this supposed moral deficiency amongst the city’s residents. In fact, our stop there on the tour only convinced me that the other 49 states could only benefit from importing some more San Francisco values.

Most of our exchanges were like that. But we also had some profoundly odd ones that we haven’t had anywhere else. We had parked the bus in the parking lot near some dorms for Harvey Mudd College, and our friend, Charlotte, had gone to the administration and received assurances that we didn’t need a parking pass to be there. But within an hour of us arriving a security guard had arrived on a golf cart and sheepishly said he had to ask us to identify ourselves because someone had reported suspicious activity in the parking lot. Then, the next day, a man who identified himself as one of the associate deans of Harvey Mudd stopped by to remind us in a mock-friendly, vaguely threatening tone that we were guests there. He suggested that he had seen a bong through the window of the bus, to our amusement; it goes without saying that we don’t actually have one.

Shortly after he left, we noticed that we were missing some of the trinkets we had collected over the course of the trip, such as a vanity license plate and a painting we had found in a dumpster behind Wesleyan University. Later we found out that some drunk students had heard about a hippie bus parked outside their school, and decided to investigate. One of them must have gotten a boost and been able to reach through one of the cracked windows to grab at some of that stuff. Fortunately, one of the people who was on the campus who knew us found out about it, and got the stuff returned.

No harm done, but it was still a strange experience; even in the reddest of the hippie-bashing red states, we had never once been threatened or stolen from. Perhaps it’s the weird environment of small colleges, especially during the summer when there’s practically no one around. In a strange way, a sparsely populated college campus is a distant cousin of the frontier town, with its own culture, laws and tribal politics.

Alas, transit in LA County is notoriously difficult even with a normal-sized automotive vehicle. There was no way we were driving the bus into the city to deal with what we’d heard was a nightmarish parking situation, and there was no good public transportation system to get us where we wanted to go. Gradually, we relinquished the idea of ever going to LA; we felt bad about not seeing our friends there (and about not ever trying to meet Gary Oldman, which was sort of a half-joking mission of ours), but from what we’d been told by locals, we weren’t missing a great deal from the city itself. We were all sort of stunned by how hard pressed everyone we talked to was to come up with anything to actually do in Los Angeles.

So we ended up staying in Claremont for three days, and it served as a pretty good substitute. The campuses (including Claremont McKenna, Scripps, and Pomona) were absolutely gorgeous, and the downtown area was nice as well. It might not have been the Walk of Fame, but none of us were particularly interested in the obligatory sight-seeing stuff anyway.

It still feels kind of odd to have missed out on what is the major city of the West Coast, but perhaps it’s not a bad thing. We were eager to check out LA more out of a sense of obligation than anything else, and my curiosity still isn’t sated; but for this particular road trip, I’m going to trust the judgment of Claremont residents that it wouldn’t have been worth the effort.

By the time we got inside the restaurant, I was more than ambivalent—I was creeped out. The restaurant’s owner, “Dr. Jon” (Dr. Jon, on the restaurant’s media page, calls himself a “non [American Medical Association] recognized physician.” I guess that by those standards I could probably call myself a physician too.) stretched the whole hospital theme about as far as it could go. Not only is the inside of the place sterile white and the waitresses in skimpy nurse outfits (see photo), but they make you wear wristbands and hospital gowns while you eat. The mannequins, posed in their own skimpy nurse outfits in the corners, were an especially unsettling touch. The skeeviest detail of all: strategically placed mirrors behind and underneath the countertops, so you could check out your waitress’s ass without her noticing.

The burgers were pretty good, but the overall experience was just morbid. But Dr. Jon isn’t entirely to blame; as we could see from watching the aggressively self-promoting video montages broadcasted into all four corners of the restaurant, the network news had a peculiar fascination with this establishment. And why not? It’s a particularly extreme distortion of exactly what FOX News (which seems to have a particular adoration for the Grill) traffics in on a daily basis: the church of mindless consumption and the preemptive mockery of things like prudence and long-term planning.

When we got the check, our server (right) asked us if we wanted a sexy nurse photo op, one of the big selling points for the grill. We demurred, but she insisted, again, as we were on our way out. I’m not exactly sure why. This time we went for it, me reasoning that at the very least I’d have a visual aid to accompany this post. But although it’s one of the major draws for the grill, I don’t think the nurse thing was really doing it for any of us on the trip. Our server was clearly a pro when it came to flirtatious banter, but never once was I not acutely aware of what was being sold to me. We were taking communion in a temple to the almighty heart attack.

In round three, listening to the people around me pray in Navajo and English, I decided that I would need a mantra of my own to keep my mind focused. And so, for the first time since my bar mitzvah, I prayed with real focus and concentration. In fact, I did the only prayer I remembered:

Shema Yisrael Adonai eloheinu Adonai echad.

It probably sounded absurd. I didn’t care. I just kept repeating it over and over to myself, and focusing on it helped me breathe. By the time round four finally rolled around, I wasn’t worried anymore.

And then five more people packed into the tent. By the time we were halfway through the prayers, the prayer leader had splashed some more water on the seemingly endless supply of hot stones. It was hotter in there than anything I had experienced. I could no longer pray; I was focused entirely on the effort of just breathing steadily. It took everything I had, and so I forgot myself in it. That’s when I finally understood why Native Americans have prayed in sweat lodges for eons. Once your breathing and the prayers are all that is, you feel like you’ve given yourself up the universe for a short time.

When the prayers had ended, we staggered out into cool night air and shook each other’s hands. The sky was overcast, but when I looked over the edge of the plateau on which the festival took place, the desert floor seemed to be dotted with stars. They were the street lights and house lights of a town so minute and scattered we hadn’t even noticed it during the day.

It wasn’t long before the prayer leader had an announcement: there were still stones left on the fire, and the two young boys who we had sweated with wanted to lead two more rounds of prayer.

I was exhausted, my limbs were rubbery, and I was soaked with so much sweat it was as if I had just showered in it. I took a few more swallows of water and went in for round five because why the hell not? I guess I failed to recall that total forgetting of self that had characterized round four. And so, like most of the other sweaters, I opted out of round six.

The chanting and drumming started inside the tent also didn’t do much for my aversion to loud noises. All of my thoughts were focused on just waiting the experience out. Then the prayer leader used his sagebrush to splash some water on the stones, and the tent got unbearably hot and humid. All of a sudden, I was grateful for the dark—it meant that the others in the tent couldn’t see me crouching with my face in the dirt and a towel over my head, gasping for breath.

As if out of spite, the prayer leader splashed with his sagebrush again. And again. The temperature must have been pushing 150, and I felt like I was drowning in bubbling hot molasses.

When it was over and the tent flap opened, I slumped against the opening and gasped fresh, open air. Pretty much everyone else looked better off, and I couldn’t decide whether it was my poor lung capacity or my various other anxieties. The prayer leader asked how all of us newbies were doing and all I could manage was a giggle and the thumbs up.

One round down. There were three more to go, and I was seriously doubting my stamina.

Fortunately, there was a break between each round. For this break, the prayer leader asked us to go around and say our reasons for entering the sweat lodge. I said it was partly out of curiosity and partly because I wanted to see if I could find a moment’s peace. Most of the experienced sweaters said that they wanted to pray in support of those who were dancing and fasting. As we worked our way around the circle, I was already trying to calculate when I could bail out of the lodge with minimal loss of dignity. And then everyone turned to the two youngest people in the sweat lodge; two boys, one of whom was fourteen or so, and the other of whom couldn’t have been older than ten.

The older one explained that his father and his uncle both had serious drinking problems, and had been away from Piñon on a several-day bender. His uncle had just returned, 15 minutes before the boy entered the sweat lodge. As he began to cry, he said he was praying that his father would return safely as well.

It took this kid crying for me to stop thinking of the sweat lodge as just a new experience, an experiment for me to play on myself. It meant something to him that people were there to support him. And as the older men in the sweat lodge consoled him and said they would pray for his father, something in me broke. I couldn’t walk out on this kid, even with my weak lungs and phobias.

It became clear that I was going to be in that sweat lodge for four whole rounds, or until I blacked out.

A sweat lodge is a Native American version of a sauna that has a ceremony built around it that can last several hours. The tradition dates back centuries and is common among many Native American tribes.

“Tuck your head between your legs,” Brent said.

“Breathe slow and shallow,” Jeff said. “Bring in a towel and pack some dirt on your arms, legs, and chest. It’s good to have that extra layer between you and the heat. And if you need to, keep your face low to the ground where the air is cooler and easier to breathe.”

That advice didn’t exactly put me at ease. Nor did their casual mention of an incident the night before, in which another first-timer had blacked out and had to be pulled out.

Nonetheless, everyone on the bus agreed to take the plunge and give it a shot. We stripped down to only our shorts, grabbed some washcloths and towels, and headed into the diminutive canvas tent alongside our own.

About nine people were crammed in there, around a pit in the center. A bonfire burned outside, upon which rocks were mixed in with the lumber. A man with a pitchfork moved twelve of the hot stones from the fire to the pit in the sweat lodge, while one of the men in the lodge tossed cedar onto it. We motioned with our hands to bring the cedar towards us, blessing ourselves. It was already starting to get pretty sultry in there.

The elderly Navajo man who was leading the sweat asked if this was anyone’s first time. Only those of us from the bus raised our hands. He told us the Navajo word for if we wanted to leave, and reminded us that there was no shame in doing so if we felt we were going to pass out.

After the last of the hot stones had been placed in the pit, the man with the pitchfork brought in a bucket of water with sagebrush in it. The tent flap closed, plunging us all into total darkness.

Things started to get sweaty.

The security guy who directed us on where to park the bus was a one-armed Navajo man, a little younger than Paul. He came onto the bus to shake all of our hands, and gently reminded us of some of the rules, clearly wanting to be a good guy.

He said: “If you have any medicine—and you know what I mean by medicine—then just keep it on the down-low. Smoke it away from where anyone else can see you in the camp.”

We assured him that we had absolutely no intention of crashing the ceremony chemically altered.

Most of the other folks we talked to, we met at the kitchen. It was a big, outdoor dining area, where they served watermelon, lemonade, coffee, fried bread and meat and beans. The food was delicious, and obviously freshly prepared—when we walked up the hill overlooking the kitchen, we could see the sheep they had skinned and butchered that day still dangling behind it.

Everyone in the camp was eager to shake hands and say hello to anyone who was nearby, but the kitchen was where a lot of the real community bonding got done. The other place where that happened was at the sweat lodge.

The ceremony itself took place within the circle formed by the ring-shaped arbor. A series of stakes driven into the ground and a gate with white flags tied to it delineated the space that non-dancers could not cross. In the center of the circle was a large effigy of a tree constructed of logs, with flags of white, red, and green tied all over. Five men sat around the tree. Wooden shoots had been forcefully driven through the flesh of their chests, and those shoots were tied to ropes which bound them to the tree. Those men were to remain there all day, each and every day, without food and water, for four days.

Several times a day, the dancing would begin. The men in the circle would stand, as would the audience members. Other dancers, both male and female, would file out of a walled off area of the arbor and begin a shuffling dancing, waving fans made out of what appeared to be eagle feathers at the men in the center. Some of them would blow on reed whistles as well. The men bound to the tree would dance, as would many of the audience members. Singers and drummers off to one side in the arbor would provide the beat. Every once in a while, everyone, bystanders in the arbor included, would raise their hands to the sky in praise of the tree, the symbolic giver of life.

The leader of the dancers from the arbor was a middle-aged man whose chest bore the scars of being one of the previous fasters. He would lead the others through a shuffling dance past and around the tree, each of them brushing it with their fan. Meanwhile, children would run around the perimeter of the inner circle, offering a bucket of burning cedar to each audience member so that they could bless themselves with it.

After the round of dancing had concluded, everyone would return to their previous positions and sit down again. Then Paul, the leader of the ceremony, would rise from his position in the arbor to speak. His microphone, and the sound system it was connected to, which ringed the arbor, was one of the few concessions to modernity I saw during the ceremony. The fasting men in the center wore white gym socks beneath their moccasins.