TJ Muehleman
I talk about dad life, startups, road trips, eBikes, travel stuff, and maybe some data thingys here and there.
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On the road

21st Century Dad: Stories from 4 months parenting, working, and driving through the American West

I’ve never written a book before. And I’m not entirely sure I’m writing one now. But if I were, I’d call it “21st century dad” mostly as a play on the “80’s dad”. The 80’s dad was usually a single dad. Loving but mostly neglectful. They came up as parents in an era when mom did everything (most moms still do everything but the point of this blog is that it’s changing [in my house anyways]). 80s dads barely knew how to keep the kids alive and functioned mostly as an uncle figure. This describes my dad to perfection; we did mostly dumb irresponsible shit with him.

Fast forward to today and we have what I call the “21st century dad”. We’re more engaged, more active, and working less than the 80s dads did. I look at myself as an example. My wife is the primary breadwinner in our house. She works more hours than I do and has the unfortunate societal burden of having to not only be a great mom but a great employee to her company. Men, on the other hand, got it easy. Society expects very little from us in terms of parenting. When a boomer would see me in public with my young daughters they’d say “good job dad!”. Or if an older member of either of our families saw my changing our daughters’ diapers, they’d say “wow, good work TJ!”. It is a seriously fucked up double standard that drives my wife nuts (as it should). My ultimate point is that men are more and more likely to be caregivers at home, not just fun dads who wrestle with the kids, teach them how to play pool, and let the 13 year old drive the car around on their own.

It’s knowing all this that my wife and I decided to take advantage of a few things to try a monster road trip from March to July of 2021. She works “normal” hours for a big tech company. I own my own company and work very early hours (all of my clients are in Africa / Europe). This, and the fact that our kids were not yet in school gave us the freedom to drive nearly 10,000 miles across 10 states and 8 national parks. Below is a collection of #dadstories about our trip, things to do, how to survive a trip like this with a 2 and 4 year old, and what kinds of off the beaten path sights to take the kids to. I tend to write in asynchronous chunks so if a section doesn’t look complete, it’s b/c my brain works like a squirrel’s and I decided to jump to a new section. I’ll call it “writing in public”.

Read on and enjoy!

Preface

Supplies / Trip Prep

Where we went