Get in a lime green RV and go!

Roadtrip Nation rolls into town

By: Courtney Gross
   PLAINSBORO — Their destination: everywhere.
   Their mission: to encourage recent college graduates and high school students to explore different avenues of life through avenues on the road.
   And they were doing just that in the Princeton area this week.
   Roadtrip Nation — a national Public Broadcasting Service television series and a growing post-college movement — came to a temporary stop in Plainsboro on Monday, bracing for the trip ahead. Two teams added an additional coat of paint to their lime green RVs in preparation for a journey that would take them first to Montgomery High School, then to upper-level institutions and college campuses throughout the country.
   What was initially a post-college excursion by three Pepperdine University graduates has morphed into a national television series, documentaries, merchandise and books, one of Roadtrip Nation’s founders, Mike Marriner, explained Tuesday.
   Mr. Marriner and co-founders Brian McAllister and Nathan Gebhard interviewed scores of individuals on their initial road trip in 2001, from business executives to mechanics. And several years later, they are encouraging hundreds of students across the nation to follow their map by "shedding the noise" of teachers, parents and society one rest stop at a time, one founder said.
   "I don’t think it’s personally about a road trip, but to encourage exploration," Mr. Marriner said. "The end goal is to have people follow their passions."
   Their organization, now funded by sponsors including State Farm Insurance and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, sends teams across the nation in the bright green vehicles to interview individuals about their journeys and daily destinations off the road.
   Headliners from talk-show host Larry King to Sam Adams Brewery founder Jim Koch to former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor have been the subject of Roadtrip Nation interviews and each has left his or her signature behind. Not just on the interviewers, but also as a constant reminder along the interior of the organization’s RVs where a plethora of catchphrases and quotes have been stamped along the walls.
   Some of these teams have become part of their national television series, while those that aren’t selected to partake in organized trips can also receive grants from the organization to start their own excursions, founders said. Some footage from individual trips is also put on a Roadtrip Nation Web site, sponsored by MSN.com, one founder said.
   "It’s taking the time to define your own version of success," Mr. McAllister said of the organization.
   On Tuesday morning on Prospect Avenue in Plainsboro, several employees of Roadtrip Nation and postgraduates about to travel in an RV the color of a granny smith apple said their work at the organization and the tours they have taken have changed their lives.
   Simon Maude, who appears in this season’s Roadtrip Nation on PBS as a member of a road trip team from the United Kingdom, said during his time with Roadtrip Nation he was not just seeing the United States, but he was getting something valuable.
   As Mr. Maude took a break from scrubbing the grime off of the RV, he said the experience gave him the motivation he had long been missing. By speaking to a nationally known figure, he said, one realizes that originally that person was a "normal" individual that found "something that pushed his (or her) buttons."
   Mr. Maude’s fellow road tripper Cassie Darling of California agreed. She said the experience made her realize doors of opportunity can open much easier as long as you want them to.
   "It pushes people outside their comfort zone," Ms. Darling said. "You realize you can push comfort zones in all parts of life."
   As for why Roadtrip Nation chose lime green as its signature shade, Mr. McAllister said, "If you go yellow, you’re a school bus, and if you’re red you’re a fire engine. And green was on sale."
   The current Roadtrip Nation PBS series is on Sundays at 10:30 p.m.