✈️ Planes, Trains And Automobiles (Even Motorcycles): The Road To Religion News 🔌
Weekend Plug-in 🔌
Editor’s note: Every Friday, “Weekend Plug-in” meets readers at the intersection of faith and news. Click to join more than 10,000 subscribers who get this column delivered straight to their inbox. Got feedback or ideas? Email Bobby Ross Jr.
OKLAHOMA CITY — I’ve helicoptered across Israel and cruised past “Moose Crossing” signs on an Alaskan highway.
Jetlagged, I’ve dozed on a passenger train from the Netherlands to Belgium. Wide awake, I’ve tightened my seat beat in a rental van maneuvering a winding, bumpy road on a Mexican mountainside.
I’ve experienced bumper-to-bumper traffic from Los Angeles to San Diego, cleared customs in Brazil, Cuba and South Africa and ventured north of the U.S. border to cover news from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Montreal, Quebec.
READ: How Covering Pope John Paul II’s 1999 Visit To St. Louis Changed My Journalism Career
In many ways, I’ve lived my dream as a roving religion journalist. Based in Oklahoma City, I've reported from all 50 states and 18 countries.
But the travel experience itself often reminds me of my all-time favorite movie, “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” the 1987 road trip comedy starring Steve Martin and the late John Candy.
Bobby Ross Jr., second from right in back row, joins a group of U.S. religion reporters on a 2019 trip to Israel. They are pictured at a Benedictine monastery where a Catholic monk and his dog served a Muslim village in the Jewish state.
In 2016, I flew to Rapid City, South Dakota, and then drove 300 miles to the state capital in North Dakota. I reported on a church in Bismarck that weekend and then hit the road again.
My destination: Black Hills Bible Camp, south of Deadwood, South Dakota, another 300-mile drive.
I was excited about visiting the youth and family camp, a longtime gathering point for Christians in the Dakotas and surrounding states.
But somehow I missed the memo that the Black Hills camp session coincides with the world-famous Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, which each August draws hundreds of thousands of bikers to the southwestern region of South Dakota.
READ: Politics, Sex, War: Old Religion Headlines Are New Again
“My sincere thank you goes out to Google Maps for taking me through downtown Sturgis with the sun shining in my eyes and a million motorcycles on the road,” I posted on Facebook. “No picture available since I was concentrating on not killing anybody.”
I was exaggerating. But only slightly.
At least I survived with a fun story to tell.
Bikers visit Mount Rushmore, the iconic national memorial where the faces of four U.S. presidents are carved into granite, during the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in 2016. (Photo by Bobby Ross Jr.)
A few years later — in 2018 — I got permission to ride shotgun in an 18-wheeler taking food and emergency supplies from Tennessee to Florida after Hurricane Michael.
But to catch up with the disaster relief driver in Nashville, I had to take a 7:15 a.m. flight from Oklahoma City, connecting in Houston. Yes, for those familiar with U.S. geography, that’s the wrong direction. Strangely, though, air travel frequently works that way (or in this case, didn’t work).
When my original flight got delayed, United Airlines moved me to a different flight via Chicago. That hiccup put my arrival in Nashville behind schedule — and required a run across the massive O’Hare International Airport that forced me to miss lunch.
To accommodate me, the driver, John Kincaid, was already leaving later than he planned. He waited an extra two hours as a result of my flight woes. I thanked him profusely when I got there about 4 p.m.
The good news: The story turned out well.
Kincaid steered the big rig through the night — 466 miles in all — arriving at the destination in Panama City, Florida, about 2:45 a.m.
We caught a few hours of sleep in the cab before sunrise and the arrival of church volunteers to unload the 53-foot-long trailer.
More than a decade earlier — in 2006 — a reporting adventure landed me in the back of a police car. But it sounds worse than it was.
I began that day on assignment in Stamford, Connecticut, followed by a lunch meeting with domestic missionaries in New York City.
After my interviews, I hopped on a subway to Penn Station in Manhattan, where I boarded an hour-long train to Riverhead, New York — the Long Island home of a Christian children’s ranch.
But when I arrived in Riverhead after dark, my ride was nowhere to be found, thanks to a communications problem on my end.
Moreover, I found myself in a gritty part of town without a cell phone (those were the pre-smartphone days). And when I used a pay phone (remember those?) to call my contact at Timothy Hill, I got a voicemail.
I was stranded and not sure what to do.
Thankfully, an angel — in the form of a police officer — came to my rescue.
The kind officer advised that I could pick a better place to hang out at night. After hearing my sob story, he offered me a place in his patrol car and delivered me safely to the children’s ranch.
Just last year, I scheduled an early-morning flight from Oklahoma City to report on the 20th anniversary of an orphanage in Cozumel, Mexico. My itinerary came with a four-hour layover in Houston (this time, that was the right direction).
But shortly before noon, a small jet landed at Hobby Airport and slid off the runway into a grassy area between two main runways. Suddenly, all commercial flights were grounded at Hobby and would be for hours.
I settled in for a long day.
My two-hour Southwest Airlines flight to Cozumel finally took off at 5:15 p.m.
Bobby Ross Jr. on a 2023 reporting trip to Cozumel, Mexico. (Photo by Patrick Doherty)
It was close to 10 p.m. local time (9 p.m. Houston time) when an orphanage supporter dropped me off at the corner by my hotel.
In the darkness, I missed the entrance to my hotel — Casa Mexicana — and walked a few blocks past it. I was getting a little concerned, but a stranger who spoke English pointed me in the right direction.
I slept hard that night and — as I enjoyed the breakfast buffet the next morning — caught a glimpse outside the hotel’s front windows: a postcard-perfect view of the bright blue sea.
Suddenly, the travel disruption of the day before didn’t seem like a big deal. Not at all.
Later in 2023, I felt the same way the morning after a chaotic 30-hour journey from Dallas to Sydney, Australia, to Port Vila, Vanuatu — a South Pacific island nation. And I was satisfied, too, with my stories from Vanuatu and Australia.
Bobby Ross Jr., right, on a 2023 reporting trip to Australia. Also pictured are Christian educator Mike Shepherd and photojournalist Audrey Jackson. (Photo by Wendy Rehrl)
Too often, I grumble and complain about the travel experience.
But even though I hate flying, I love on-the-ground reporting — and I recognize how extremely blessed I am by the opportunity to do it.
Inside The Godbeat
Ready or not, Election Day is two weeks from Tuesday.
Religion Unplugged’s own Clemente Lisi reports on what former President Donald Trump said in person — and what Vice President Kamala Harris said via video — at the New York Archdiocese’s annual Al Smith charity dinner Thursday night.
Which religious community is most likely to sway the voting? The latest in-depth ReligionLInk source guide by Ken Chitwood delves into that question.
And via The Conversation, Richard Flory outlines “5 kinds of evangelicals and their voting patterns.”
The Final Plug
Back in 2021, I reported on a Michigan church’s sidewalk protests and use of bullhorns to urge women entering abortion clinics not to end their pregnancies.
In a follow-up from the Detroit area, I detail the same congregation’s tweaked approach — an effort to be pro-life and pro-love.
Happy Friday, everyone! Enjoy the weekend.
Bobby Ross Jr. writes the Weekend Plug-in column for Religion Unplugged and serves as editor-in-chief of The Christian Chronicle. A former religion writer for The Associated Press and The Oklahoman, Ross has reported from all 50 states and 18 nations. He has covered religion since 1999.