The back of the driver’s seat dashed up in a fluid motion, continuous with me, opening the driver’s side door, and I launched out of the car in more of a stumble. Squinting my eyes, I braced myself and gazed upward like Natalie Portman in “V For Vendetta.” The skies above Breaux Bridge, La., were unloading buckets of rain on this rest stop on the south side of I-10. My car, the Mallboy, had rolled back off the curb without resistance. The parking break was disengaged. Was that brief episode a dream? The matching tire marks in the mud indicated not. At this moment, I  realized I was completely committed to a 44-day road trip around the United States to visit 17 Major League Baseball parks en route to seeing all 30, lifetime.

Five days earlier, in April 2015, I’d ventured in excess of the recommended speed limit through and out of Virginia, into North Carolina.

I was ankle-deep in a family road trip. It was just me in the car, but the FAMILY SIZE! Mega Stuf Oreo packages I was crushing, daily, lulled me into a confidence that I could coast some key miles in the HOV lane.

Doing the coasting was my main dude (?), whip (?), buggy (?) — the Mallboy — who got his name years ago from an innocent misinterpretation of a Malloy Ford license-plate frame. My friend “forgot his glasses,” as I choose to remember it, and the sleekest 2011 Ford Fiesta you’ve ever seen was monikered.

You — reader of this retelling — are experiencing an exclusive account of my sojourn, only previously heard by every single person with whom I’m had more than a 15-second conversation, in passing.

This trip, albeit lengthier than your average, was simplified by its mission: to watch 17 Major League Baseball games, in-person, at 17 different parks. The means by which I accomplished this, though, were flexible.

• Spend not one moment wearing socks: check.
• Repeat zero miles of any interstate highway: fail.
• See cohorts along the way: yup.
• Solely consume processed foods: almost.

Usually, I can knock off that first bullet point in my sleep. But it was downright approaching somewhat chilly a few nights camping in the northern border states, and my feet had to suck it up.

Other aspects were guidelines, but not explicit goals. Don’t die, try not to get pulled over, etc.

One of the cardinal lessons my dad taught me about driving was to assess your car before road trips. I took that to mean traditional road trips to the beach and other places reachable in a few hours. With this extended action, something was bound to spring up (right?), so, I neglected to check the tires, refresh the fluids or anything other than fill the gas tank. I figured I could make it all the way to the West Coast before I’d even need an oil change.

Fast-forward to Mile 248. Whelp, a light came on on the dashboard. The Mallboy didn’t make it Winston-Salem, N.C., before barking for an oil change. Easy fix. I had some time before dinner, and the problem was solved. But not before the mechanic told me I had fewer than 5,000 miles left on my tires. Unfortunately, for me, we had differing expectations of how much time would pass before that became an issue.

I registered this domain from a parking lot outside Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Fla. It cost me less than the space in which the Mallboy rested for four hours. Expensive lot, reasonable domain? Or average parking, cheap website? The economics were still coming into focus.

Pictured above is a stranger’s depiction of me through the lens of my Canon T3i DSLR. This shot happens to be in Section 349 of the Trop — my first stadium of the trip and 11th overall — and it is just one photo taken by random bystanders of a much larger batch that makes one appreciate the advent of digital.

I started asking fellow fans to take pictures of me at Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati, in 2014. It was necessary, being that I made the day trip solo. And I was due for a new Facebook profile picture. It also gave me an opportunity to check the pulse of Cincinnatians on then-new Redskins head coach Jay Gruden. Ever since, I steadfastly hassle strangers at every stadium in order to place me at the scene in two-dimensional form. I never give directions, other than placing my back against the general panoramic I want to include with me in the picture. Unbeknownst to these generous fans and ushers, they’re participation in my grant-less experiment of what catches the human eye. Every portrait is inevitably characterized by different traits. The photographer fee at Globe Life Park in Arlington, Texas, was one of my Doyon Dozen hot dogs on dollar-dog day. Well worth it for the service and banter from the retired cop from Laredo.

Imagine waking up to this vista each morning. Well, you’re picturing yourself as a vagabond. Because this is the Gulf of Mexico, as seen from a rest stop on the Skyway Fishing Pier State Park in Tampa Bay. The only bed-and-breakfast on this island is a semi-reclined driver’s seat and an oversized — to some — honey bun from a vending machine.

Forty-Eight hours into the trip, I was confronted for the first time by man’s greatest strength/harshest peril: time to kill. I thought about tying up loose ends with the Mallboy. But the oil was fresh, the fluids were topped, and a couple of stray hairs on Abraham Lincoln’s penny visage were still masked by the tire treads.

I’d been waiting for a sign to change my tires. Not the kind of illuminated, literal sign on the dashboard that nudged me into the Carolina service center, however. I needed something more fortuitous. Lo and behold, while leaning against my car, on my phone and waiting for traffic to disperse after going to an Astros game in Houston, a slow-rolling, beater car exited the ramp off I-69 and limped toward Minute Maid Park. Out popped three stressed, but calm, teenagers. One of whom crossed the street and walked into my lot to ask to use my phone. He reached out to his mom, and I had done the bare minimum of a good deed for the day. I hope your car is running like a top now, Christian! There was my sign. The next day, the Mallboy was treated to four fresh tires.

When driving becomes your job, in a way, you’ve got to incentivize yourself to make good time and find joy in the smallest perks. I’d never actually driven across a time zone before, and when you gain an hour going west, that is a luxury that I cannot do justice on the Internet. As a whiney counterbalance: Arizona, you’ve got to start observing daylight-saving time. I spent three days in your state, and I was never really certain what time it was, exactly. Partially, my fault. But mostly, yours.

As of a Walmart in Katy, Texas, my adopted co-pilot was a cooler that harnessed the Mallboy’s 12-volt adapter to produce cold air. There was much more room to dunk my head in there to cool off without ice, and, yo, that thing held so much barbecue!

That was about all I ate in Tornado Alley. I took a break from scarfing Krystal, What-A-Burger, Jack In The Box, In-N-Out and the like to refine my pulled-pork palate. What else was I supposed to save for camping?

Whereas I chose to indulge in regional fast food at mealtime, I opted to homogenize my snack-shopping process. There was simply no time to study the various arrays and differences between Hy-Vee and Meijer, Albertsons and Kroger. I’m sorry to report this, but the only surefire place to guarantee a consistent selection of Pop-Tarts and to acquire drums of cheese puffs on short notice during an extensive road trip is at a Walmart Supercenter.

My body responds to pork rinds like yours responds to kale smoothies. If the “home” button on my iPhone can still recognize my thumbprint through the grease and oil, my meal is not through.

That cooler; it also had a selfish habit of forgetting to tell me to unplug it when the Mallboy’s engine was off. For instance, in Chicago, during a White Sox game. The Mallboy’s battery had plenty of juice before first pitch, but later on, like George Costanza inheriting the Ross’ townhouse: not. Not.

The only wisdom giving me solace in the ensuing moments came from my favorite philosopher, Kanye West.

So I keep in mind, when I’m on my own, somewhere far from home, in the danger zone.

That’s all I could recall, and those bars were kind of a non sequitur in the context of my situation. Nevertheless, this kept me calm until AAA could wake up someone after midnight to jump (and not the usual kind of Chi-Raq jumping) the Mallboy. We talked baseball, he recommended I get a new battery, and I did. It’s still sitting in the trunk. And not one of those trunks that contains the engine in the back of the vehicle, either. A layman’s trunk, with a bunch of junk and an unattached battery. Heckuva recharge, guy!

The trek from Chicago to Seattle took me through some rather barren terrain, let me tell you. By the time I crossed out of Wisconsin into Minnesota, though North Dakota and Montana before arriving at Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, I’d put on about enough miles for the Mallboy to require fresh oil. I promised him that if he could survive the drive into Idaho, across Washington and back into civilization, I’d make that oil a reality.

We took a route that brought us back into Montana in the middle of the night. There were no towns, lights or other cars for miles. Just stars. I’ll never be an astronaut, so, of course, I turned off my headlights for five seconds at a time to simulate the sensation of catapulting through space. Very surreal and highly recommended when not sitting in East-Coast gridlock.

Leonardo da Vinci is my second-favorite philosopher. L-da was a pioneer of polyphasic sleep. If you’re going to be catching any significant portion of your Zs over time at rest stops, accept the absence of REM and sleep in spurts. I’m tasking you with the burden of researching the correlation between successful people and the ability to nap just about anywhere.

I’d planned to take a picture when I reached Pacific Ocean, exactly as the above above this post looks, and check in on Facebook with the caption, “Mattifest Destiny.” Anyone who knows me knows that I cannot pass up a good/bad portmanteau, but the timing coincided with some sensitive appropriation issues, so, I saved it to bury in an end-of-year blog! Clutch!

Las Vegas was a thrill for two reasons. Primarily, because it was the second of two nights on the trip in which I spoiled myself with an actual bed at a Motel 6. Naturally, that necessitated a delivery from Pizza Hut. The app said my pizza feeds three to five people which, in pizzarithmetic, equates to a satisfactory meal, so long as I threw in some bread sticks. The other objective of this travel detour was to be in town during the adulated bout between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao. I kid you not when I say I was at the MGM Grand to watch the fight … from the casino … through clouded window panes of closed bar doors. Only one of these two forays in Vegas lived up to expectations.

Getting out of the desert and heading north, my great fortune of California’s crippling drought/ideal baseball weather had come to an end. Denver underwent a cover of snowfall on the morning of Mother’s Day, and there was no way to make up the Rockies-Dodgers matinee while I would still be in town. Yet, in classic, anticlimactic fashion, the grounds crew cleared the field and the bitter game was played without delay. My goal of 17 for 17 parks survived.

My position remains firmly staunch on this matter: You do not have two feet in the 21st century, if you’ve never ganked Wi-Fi from an overburdened network to download podcasts at a McDonald’s in rural South Dakota. I must assert a degree of stubbornness here, too. Only the Ace Man, Adam Carolla, can generate enough audio content for a guy spending 16 hours a day in his car. “Gimme the news with Grad!” was blurted out a few times in the same desperate tone that you’d expect to hear from a guy robbing a bank. Come to think of it, around hour No. 211 of driving, the ACE Network delivered an episode of “Resume” with Chris Laxamana interviewing a former bank robber. Matt Atchity sold me on “Furious 7” during some down time in Tampa. Is there anything short of a glass of Mangria that I didn’t receive while behind the wheel?

I measure this motor march in memories; shout-out to the randos — the spice of life, madness; isolation and introspection, but, mostly, in math— 14,295 road miles in 44 days. That’s a boatload of miles in a car, man. Never have you been nor will you be 14,295 miles from any person or point on this planet.

Many tickets were issued to me over those six weeks. All were used for sports admission. None ordered me to appear in court. No speeding tickets — despite my best efforts in some of our agrarian states, no parking violations, no lewd conduct citations or otherwise.

By this point, you’re undoubtedly wondering if the hero survived the tale. Yes, the Mallboy, is no worse for wear. Did I survive? For that, you’ll have to wait for the sequel.