Illustration by Susan Sanford

So go the Grateful Dead lyrics that seem to conjure everything from LSD to road trips to ruminations on the journey of life. Join The Monthly’s essayists on their own trips, through pain and pleasure to some startling destinations. Eight first-person stories by East Bay writers on journeys near and far, from an Icelandic penis museum to a BART train under the Bay, from Africa to the operating room. Take a literary trip with us.

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by Mike Rosen-Molina
A young man visits the Icelandic Penis Museum with his mom and younger sister and they all learn a little something about the male species.

Bird Every Bird
by Toni Martin
With her father on the verge of death in the hospital, she takes a trip to Africa and revels in the sights and smells of life.

Going Under
by Lisa Sadikman
The shot of anesthesia meant a loss of control that she welcomed as a break from the grind of being in charge.

The Last Car
by Megan Davis
The siblings always rode the last BART train from the East Bay to San Francisco, awaiting their father at the Powell station. On one trip, they lost something they could never get back.

Machines of Summer
by Richard Schwarzenberger
As a boy, he drove the Minneapolis Moline, a tractor that cut a crooked swath in his fields. He hated the heat, prayed for rain (except for at the baseball field where his beloved A’s played) and kept contemplating mortality.

A World Away
by Nan Johnsen Horton
Alameda might as well have been a planet away from San Francisco during the ‘70’s. But fortunately, her family befriended the off-beat art teacher and she got schooled in the ways of the counterculture.

Coming Home
by Ransom Stephens
Sick of the high cost of life in the Bay Area, he and his teenaged daughter picked up and moved to suburban Texas. They found space and a slower pace, but lost something they couldn’t live without.

Mona Lisa Does Africa
by Anna Edmondson
When Ugandan soldiers ordered all the men off the bus, she was left in terror to contemplate the tiny stash of marijuana hidden in her hiking boot.