Dan The Road Trip Guy
Join Dan the Road Trip Guy as he explores the adventures, memories, and life lessons of diverse guests from all walks of life. This podcast goes beyond the road to celebrate the journey of life by uncovering stories of passion, resilience, and the pursuit of happiness. Whether you’re a seasoned traveler or simply love a good story, Dan the Road Trip Guy will leave you inspired and ready to embrace your own adventures. Buckle up and enjoy the ride!
I hope you enjoy the episodes. You can find me at https://www.dannyneal.com.
Dan The Road Trip Guy
Books, Nostalgia, and a Cross-Country Adventure: Will Hillenbrand's Captivating Journey
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What fuels the creative spark of a children's book author who has brought over 80 books to life? Join us as we dive into the enchanting world of Will Hillenbrand, where dreams and childhood memories weave together to inspire beloved stories. From a red pedal-powered fire truck that ignited his imagination to the whims of a recurring dream that shaped his latest project, Will's journey is filled with wonder and nostalgia. Listen as he shares his adventures, including a captivating visit to Singapore to engage young minds in his creative process, and the sentimental tale of his first real car, a Volkswagen Squareback, that played a pivotal role in his courtship with his wife.
But the episode doesn't stop at whimsy and nostalgia. Strap in for a wild cross-country road trip from Cincinnati to California and back, filled with mechanical mishaps, camaraderie, and unexpected encounters. We recount the harrowing yet heartwarming saga of a malfunctioning car, the kindness of strangers, and a motley crew's journey through the heart of America. From the missing second gear to blowing a rod near Las Vegas, and a bizarre late-night cafe stop, you'll be on the edge of your seat. The story culminates in a successful resolution as a new car paves the way for the group's unforgettable adventure to its thrilling end.
You can find Will's books at your favorite book seller. His website is https://www.willhillenbrand.com/
Absolutely nothing beats windshield time, a road trip and good conversation in the car. Welcome to another episode of Dan the Road Trip Guy, where we have entertaining conversations about cars and road trips, life lessons and maybe, every now and then, a little advice. I'm your host, dan Neal, road Trip Extraordinaire, and now buckle. Now and then, a little advice. I'm your host, dan Neal, road Trip Extraordinaire. And now buckle up and enjoy the show. I am on a virtual road trip today.
Speaker 1:My guest is Will Hillenbrand. Will is a children's book author and illustrator. I believe I met Will back in the early 2000s when we were neighbors in the same community. He and his wife and son lived up the street. His son was the same age as our son, henry, and they would spend a lot of time playing together. And what really sticks out in my mind I don't think I ever realized that how creative Will was. When there was a creative project at school and Henry needed some help, will would step right in and help Henry as well as his own son, and for that I am thankful. So welcome to the show. Will Tell my guest just who is Will Hillenbrand.
Speaker 2:I am a children's book author and illustrator. I've done over 80 books for young children and each one of those I've made the pictures. Many, many of those, I have also written the words. I love my job and being able to do this, and I've traveled as far away as Singapore to visit schools and children to talk about the process of making books, creating them and where ideas come from. My first book, awfully Short for the Fourth Grade, was done way back in 1989.
Speaker 2:This spring I'll have a new book out that I've co-authored with my wife, called Turtle. Turtle and the Wide, wide River Story. Ideas come from many different places and this particular story started with a dream, a dream that repeated itself over and over again. So I took that dream experience and folded that into making a children's book. A lot of things happened between the idea of making it and finishing it, but that's a story for another day. But that's a story for another day.
Speaker 2:I'm currently working on a story that is a companion book to the Voice in the Hollow, which came out this last year, in 2023. In 2025, I'll have a companion book, which is called the Lost and Found Tree. For many years I've been doing bear and mole stories, and I'll have a new bear and mole story called Summer Is here and that will be coming out in the spring of 2025. Little Red is a story that also came out in the fall of 2023. I'll have a companion book for that coming out in the fall of 2024, which is called Little Red Autumn on the Farm. The stories so far just keep on coming.
Speaker 1:Well, will? It sounds like you're a very busy guy and no time to slow down. This is Dan, the Road Trip Guy, and I would love to hear about your first car, so tell me about that.
Speaker 2:My first car. The car that I absolutely no question in my mind is my favorite ever car, which was the one I had when I was about two and a half years old. It was a you know. It didn't have a turbocharger, it simply had two pedals that you pushed with your feet, and I loved that car so much I drove it around the driveway every day. It was red, it was a little fire truck. It had a bell that I could ring.
Speaker 2:I thought about it all the time when I was just a little bit older by a friend of ours at the grocery store, a friend of my mother's. The lady talked to my mom for a long time at the grocery store and then she leaned over to me. She said what would you like to be when you grow up? I told her I'd like to grow up to be a fire truck, which was referring to the car I've been talking about, my very first car and she said you mean you want to be a firefighter? And I said no, ma'am, I'd like to grow up to be the truck. That's how much I loved that very first car.
Speaker 2:Okay, dan, you might have been wondering about a car that had an actual motor in it. My second favorite car was driving the cars at the amusement park at Coney Island. Except for so many years, and being the youngest in my family, I wasn't tall enough. I wasn't as big as Barney Rubble the printout poster that allowed you to get behind the wheel. So I had to wait and wait and wait it felt like forever until I could get behind the wheel of one of those cars at Coney Island and that was a favorite experience and for many years. Being able to do that would be the very first choice I would have when I'd go to the amusement park when I was taller than Barney Rubble. Of course, fast forward and you may want to really know about the very first car that I was registered and had a driver's license to drive, and that was a Volkswagen Squareback. And I also really loved that car because it had a funny-sounding motor, had plenty of storage in the back and that was a car that I drove to when I was dating my wife, who was living in Columbus, ohio, and I dated her for almost five years. That car wore out on that trip. It broke down many times. I replaced it but I still loved it that total mileage I put on vehicles. Going back and forth from Cincinnati to Columbus was nearly 50,000 miles, a lot of going back and forth during every weekend and sometimes in between the week to Columbus. But I'll just back up just a little bit here.
Speaker 2:For me and for members of my family, we were able drive if we could have a job and pay for our own car insurance, and so I did so by working for a TV station here in Cincinnati called WKRC-TV. I was hired by the TV station to drive a mobile billboard. We may see mobile billboards around now around town where they're driving a billboard so you can advertise one thing or another. Trucks kind of do that today. But then it was an actual billboard. But what happened was there was no such thing back at that time, and so the engineers and the people that worked for the TV station rehabbed a U-Haul trailer and put a mobile billboard on top of it.
Speaker 2:I had to learn how to drive a stick shift Jeep to be able to pull the thing, but it was so awkward and of course I had no driving experience.
Speaker 2:But my job was to drive it to right after a baseball game had ended and get into traffic so people could see it and the crazy thing was so awkward that it would tip over in a 25 mile an hour wind. And not only that, but if you cut a corner a little too short it would tip over on cars and create a huge traffic jam. That didn't happen to me, but there were other mobile board drivers that that did happen to. I did drive it to the malls when I wasn't going to the ball games. Going down the highway you couldn't go very fast and it would often tip one way or the other as you're driving. It was a disaster. I did get to learn how to drive a stick shift during that time. Eventually I would just hang out in the creative department when I wasn't driving and the creative department thankfully hired me to be able to help them out with the TV graphics.
Speaker 1:Well, Will, thanks for those great stories Taking us even back to your childhood in that kind of toy car and then up through that Volkswagen that you used to commute back and forth to Columbus. Those are great, fun stories and love the mobile billboard. Learning to drive a manual transmission and pull some crazy billboard around with a Jeep that's just a great story. Take us on one of your favorite road trips that you've had in your life.
Speaker 2:Epic road trip that I made was a disaster, and that was right. After graduating from high school, my best friend worked on cars and loved cars and that was fabulous. He had his dad had purchased many years ago a 1965 Mustang. He it was not in use. Tom brought it back to life After graduation. His mission was to drive it out to California where he had relatives, and he would sell the car out there and we'd buy something else and drive it back. I thought why not do this? And so I said I'd travel with him.
Speaker 2:Tom, who was the owner of the car. He is six foot four and he also invited another friend who was the offensive tackle for our football team, which was at least that tall or maybe bigger, and so the three of us got into the 65 Mustang, decided right after graduation that we would head out there. This trip was going to be about two weeks and we were going to pretty much just drive straight out and then straight back. Tom prepped the car in the spring. I actually painted a Mustang on the hood, did some airbrush work with. That made it look just terrific when we were the day that we were leaving. I mean, I should probably tell you I had budgeted for this. I think I had saved up a lot of money. So I had $70, $75, I think from the total length of the trip and Bart car was really going back and forth, shaking violently. Tom pulled over to the side of the road he was the first driver and we noticed there was one and a half lug nuts left on the front tire. He had replaced the tires and had the tire shop put the new tires on, but apparently they hadn't locked down the bolts well enough. Fortunately, of course, what we did was we just picked some lug nuts off some of the other wheels and tightened them down and had enough to be able to continue the journey. It was shortly after that that we also discovered that the automatic 65 Mustang came, or what we were driving. It had two gears. The second gear wasn't working, so we had first gear and third gear. Off we went.
Speaker 2:Our plan was to drive straight through and Rob, who was the other companion his sister was going to school in Boulder, colorado. We thought we'd camp in Rocky Mountains National Park. Both these guys were campers and we had the equipment to do that. We drove nonstop from Cincinnati to Colorado. Rob was an expert camper and Eagle Scout and all the rest of it. So we got to the Rocky Mountain National Park to put up our tent. He got that thing up in no time, but we I don't know how this happened but we neglected to pay the camping fee and we thought maybe we could do that later. But we were hungry, went down to a convenience store to get some food and when we returned the tent was. The stakes were taken down and a park ranger said you need to pay. Rob was so upset that someone had tampered with his perfectly put up tent that he said he will never stay in a national park. And now we thought you know, after this long drive to get to Colorado, where are we'll stay with my sister, and so she's at the university, he goes. No, she doesn't live at the university, she lives in a commune. Yeah, that's where we went for that night, which is a long story in and of itself, so I'll just bypass that.
Speaker 2:After camping at the commune, the next day we decided to go up into the mountains and cross over, going west to California. That's when we discovered, or found out, that not having second gear was a really big problem, but not so much a big problem for us, but it was a big, big problem for the engine of the car because it had the strain so hard and didn't know which gear to go into and we couldn't help it along the way. But off we went Eventually one way or another. We got over some of the mountains, stopped in Vail and then continued on, and it was kind of a nice thing to be going down the other side of the Rocky Mountains and the cars seemed to do quite well going downhill, not so good going up. But because we battered the car so badly, by the time we were in the desert and getting close to Las Vegas we blew a rod. So the three of us put our heads together and decided that maybe, you know, since it's a lot cooler at night in the desert than it is during the day, we would rest until the evening and then try to continue our journey. And that's what we did. But it didn't work. By the time we got to Las Vegas the engine was pretty well shot, but we kept pushing it nonetheless, then finally made it through Vegas, and then that was that. We couldn't go any further and we pulled over to the side of the road.
Speaker 2:Remarkably, there was a helper that pulled in right ahead of us. It was a person with a very large pickup truck and he wanted to know if we needed any help. We had the hood up and the rest of it and we were trying to work on it and he said, well, turn the car on. And he heard he says you're not going to make it with that. He said I can give you a tow. And we said, well, you can. And he said, of course, what we didn't know was he had gambled all of his money away in Vegas, had no money for gas, so we could. He said, if we pay for his gas, he would give us a tow. So we thought, well, you know, okay, that's great, let's get a tow bar. He said we don't need a tow bar, I have a belt. And he had a belt, he had a large strap and he said what'll happen is that I'll strap this to my bumper and the other part will be strapped to your bumper.
Speaker 2:Now the thing of it is is that you need to have a driver in the second car, which is illegal, but if nobody sees us, it'll be okay, but we need to have a driver back there, because when I stop, there will be nothing that will stop the car behind me, it will just ram into us. So I volunteered to be the passenger in the towed car with Tom who was the driver. It was, let me tell you and he said, of course. He said when I go downhill you'll have to be my brakes. When we go downhill, I'll give you a signal and you be the brakes to slow me down. I can't tell you that. You know, the stopping distance between that belt and what we were doing was absolutely crazy. But what I found out at that point too is that Tom did not have the alignment done on the car and if you didn't hold the steering wheel it would turn completely to the right, no matter off.
Speaker 2:We went down the road and we made it through Vegas and when we came close to the check stand, coming into California, I thought that our driver would disengage the illegal tow because we had enough power. It would sound horrible but we could make it across. But he didn't, he just drove us right through and well, we didn't go through. We stopped and then the person who was checking to see if we had any fruit we were bringing in or whatever that would be the checking at the California line said you know that's an illegal tow. And the driver said you know, yes, it is. And off we went. We thought, well, they're not going to stop us. So off we went, but not too far down the road there was a police officer that pulled us over.
Speaker 2:We had to abandon the 65 Mustang and push it well off the road into the desert. Tom said well, we'll never see this car again. This car is so valuable that it won't last. By the time we come back to get it, it won't be here. Nonetheless, it was middle of the night. The driver of the pickup truck said well, it's okay, you can just hop into the back of the bed of the truck and we'll make it the rest of the way. Two of us did, and Rob sat in the front and had a conversation with this gentleman and we ended up getting to an area called Riverside, california. The driver. That was where his home was. He said you're done, you know we'd fill up his gas once or twice.
Speaker 2:And now we were dropped off at the Greyhound station. But the Greyhound station wasn't open yet, so it was a cafe across the road. So we're being so tired One of us had to stay awake while the other two slept and had coffee at the cafe until we get the Greyhound bus to take us into Los Angeles the next morning. That cafe that we were in was like taking a walk into the Twilight Zone or into Star Wars, into the bar. Nearly every manner of person that you could possibly imagine entered that place. Some seemed to be quite well unusual, unsavory, you name it, and it was either the Twilight Zone or a nightmare, or both you pick.
Speaker 2:Nonetheless, the following day we got the bus and traveled to meet Tom's relatives that gave us a car with a tow bar for the next evening's journey. To pick up the car. It was still there, even though it had a blown engine. Tom was able to sell it, ended up getting a good price for it and we made another road trip with a car that he purchased, which was a Cougar. On that particular trip, with having all the gears necessary, we made it back without well, we stopped for two hours on the way back to rest at a rest stop, sleeping on the grass with the prairie dogs in Colorado, but we drove straight back nonstop, except for those two hours.
Speaker 1:Well, that was a great road trip story. I just love cross-country trips and that sounds like that would have been a real exciting one right after high school. I really look back on my life and wish I had taken one of those trips right after high school. I really look back on my life and wish I had taken one of those trips right after high school, so thank you for sharing that. Well, I'd love to ask my guest if you could take a road trip today with anyone, living or deceased, who would it be? Where would you go? What would you drive, maybe? What would you talk about? Share that with us.
Speaker 2:If I could take a road trip with someone, I would have to go back in time and travel with my dad but also my family, relive the trips that we made nearly every weekend. My parents had their families lived in Indiana. We would get into the white Bel Air station wagon and if I had to relive something, I would be taking a road trip in that station wagon. Of course we would have the radio on, which was not in the car my dad would want to listen to, as everybody did WLW, which had the Cincinnati Reds baseball game on. If no seatbelts in that car and the dashboard was red, the car was white. But if you sat between and when I would sit between my parents, I was given the privilege of holding the transistor radio. As we made it from College Hill and traveling out I-74 towards Batesville, the person holding the treasured radio with the antenna up would have to hold that, and then if we started getting too much static or the volume was changing because of the reception, I'd have to rotate that in my hand to the right or to the left to be able to maintain the signal. That was an important job, but once we ended up, of course, I think so many times about road trips. It's about the trip, but it's also about the destination. Destination may be the place, but most often it is the people at that place and being able to be with my cousins.
Speaker 2:My aunt had 13 children, so going out to the farm and playing with them, that would be so much fun because it was like city mouse, country mouse.
Speaker 2:But beyond that, my cousins, which were all older and big farm boys, loved baseball and my dad, he would bring his baseball bat and gloves and extra gloves for them and he would fungo balls up into the air and they ran.
Speaker 2:Like you know. It was like watching a circus, being able to see how they played to catch the ball, and my dad had an ability to be able to hit a pop-up or a long drive without anybody knowing and they would be chasing it and going after it. The dogs would be running after the ballplayers and they wanted to catch the ball too. But my cousins would get it and at the end of the day, when we would be coming back home, we'd be pretty worn out and it was really terrific because that white Bel Air station wagon had that bed in the back of it and my mom always had blankets back there, and so she'd make our bed on the back of the station wagon so we could lie down and look out the back window and see the stars and the lightning bugs, fall asleep and wake up back in the city.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you, Will, for sharing that. Yeah, I can resonate with that. I'd love to take a road trip with my dad today and actually a lot of family members that are no longer with us. I'd love to just travel back with them because I missed out on some stories and I'd love to pick those stories up. And, yeah, there's nothing better than escaping out to the country, I think and just having fun. Anything on your bucket list Will that you want to get done in your lifetime? Want to get done in your lifetime?
Speaker 2:My bucket list road trip really is an ongoing kind of idea, which is traveling to all of the national parks, or as many as I can get to, and the reason to go is, again, the destination. But these days I really enjoy painting the scenes that I see. So being able to go to a park, be at that spot, so that I can spend some time not only being in that environment but trying to be able to imbibe that environment, because I want to be able to process that by making pictures of what I see and the beauty that I see and the feeling I have in being in those spots. You know, whether it's going to be Acadia National Park or Yosemite or all the places in between, including Alaska, all of those would be on my list.
Speaker 2:I don't tend to think about having a bucket list because I think about that's something in the future. I just try to do things as I can do them and there's an idea out there that I hope to be able to fold in to what I can do over time. Now, part of that means I'd also like to be able to travel with family members. To be able to do that epic road trip on your own isn't as epic for me, unless you have someone that you're actually sharing that with.
Speaker 1:I think that's a great bucket list item, will I know, in 2019,. Linda and I traveled out west and actually got to see Arches National Park, glacier, yellowstone and the Tetons, and that was just a great trip for us. And yeah, traveling alone that can get kind of boring if you're out there by yourself on a road trip. So I'm like you I like to have some company along for the ride. Well, will, this has been a fun time for me to catch up with you. I haven't seen you in years. Always look forward to getting your Christmas card and original illustration by yourself. So again, thank you for coming along.
Speaker 2:Happy motoring and thank you for inviting me to this podcast. I hope there may be a moment our paths will cross and if not, they've crossed right now. Thank you so much. This is Will Hillenbrand saying thank you for your time and have a great trip.
Speaker 1:I hope you'll check out Will's books at your favorite bookseller, and you can learn more about Will at his website willhillenbrandcom. Be sure to check that out.
