On the Road

On July 17, 1947, 25 year-old Jack Kerouac set off on the road from New York to Los Angeles. He'd planned to hitchhike, but it was raining and nobody stopped to give him a ride, so he spent most of his money on a bus ticket as far as Chicago. From Chicago he hitched the rest of the way, surviving on a diet of apple pie and ice cream. He saw his first cowboy in Omaha. Jack Kerouac appears six times in A Book of Ages.