It has been suggested that the core of most successful prose is the road trip. Someone gets up, goes somewhere new, has adventures, sometimes returns home. And we find ourselves entertained by the process.

Or so I believed when I pitched to editors the idea of a Super Bowl road trip, back in 2005. It was the New England Patriots versus the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl XXXIX, in Jacksonville, Fla.

I was intrigued by the notion of getting to the game from Southern California to the other side of the United States. By car.

Explaining the “hook” of the series took about 60 seconds. Actually driving it took six days.

However, my six-day Super Bowl series appears to have disappeared from online sources easily accessible to me. So, for this blog (which also may disappear over the course of 12 years) I will re-type the stories from the hard copies, which I picked up while staying in California.

Here is Part 1, which appeared in the San Bernardino Sun on January 30, 2005. (That’s supposed to me, the guy with the big forehead in the little car, in the photo, above. Click on the image to get a better look at some of the statistics.)

Six more parts will appear over the next six days.

I recall the trip as great fun, and a fine way to have some long conversations with my daughter, watching the country roll by.

Seems long ago … and just the other day.

The story begins below.

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Serena Williams won the Australian Open today, defeating her sister, Venus, 6-4, 6-4.

Serena has won more women’s grand slam singles titles in the open era (23) than anyone. And her victory, at age 35, makes her the oldest woman to win a major championship.

A strong case can be made that she is the greatest women’s player in the history of the game.

And it makes me wonder if her successes have led us to disregard what sort of player Venus Williams might have been had her sister taken up another sport.

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Within days of the San Diego Chargers announcing they will move to Los Angeles and play their games there next fall … someone has put forward the sort of free-thinking, out-of-the-box idea that might have saved the club for San Diego.

Granted, this $1 billion plan is built around a hypothetical Major League Soccer team, rather than an NFL franchise, but it shows the sort of multi-prong approach that might have led to the Chargers remaining in what had been their home city for 55 years.

It certainly brings to mind the old saying about closing the barn door … after the horse has already vacated the premises.

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We are spending some time in Southern California, slipping in and out of the Inland Empire — that oft-maligned territory between the mountains and the sea.

Often hot and smoggy, is the IE. Crisscrossed by clotted freeways burdened by folks who insist on owning a home where they can afford it and commuting to work. (The gall!)

It is a place often criticized by those who know least about it and rarely given credit for its positives — housing, growth and, at times, incredible beauty.

All it takes?

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When we last lived full-time in the U.S., the Lakers were good and the Clippers were awful. Same-ol’ same-ol’, that is.

Now, the Lakers are awful and the Clippers are … pretty good. Not as good as some thought they would be, certainly not champion contenders, but the best team in Los Angeles and a club that could last a couple of rounds in the playoffs.

Though one would not have been impressed with the Clippers who lost 121-110 in Philadelphia tonight, a game that represents the first Clippers game I have watched from start to finish in years.

The Clippers led by 19 early in the third quarter, then collapsed. They were outscored 62-32 over the final 21 minutes by the Sixers, a team recently committed to tanking who finally seem headed north.

The Clippers are, of course, flawed.

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The NBA’s election for All-Star Game starters is silly. Any system that can overlook Russell Westbrook, he of “averaging a triple-double” fame, clearly is screwed up.

That’s what happens when the league allows fans to account for 50 percent of the vote, players 25 percent and media “only” 25 percent.

Let the media pick the starting team, and it will get it right. I promise.

Or a lot “righter” than the fans and players got it.

Let’s look at what those three constituencies did with their vote.

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Today, for the first time in at least a decade, I watched the whole of both NFL conference-championship games.

If you follow this blog you will know we were out of the country for about eight years in succession when the National and American conferences got around to deciding their Super Bowl representative.

I have made a point of seeing all (or nearly all) of every Super Bowl, going back to Super 1, in 1967 (when my father went up on the roof and pointed an antennae toward San Diego; the game was blacked out in L.A.). But the two games that set up the final matchup … I typically missed them over the past decade.

This year, however, we were staying at my brother’s home in Southern California, and he is a serious NFL fan — who also had preseason-wagered money on two of the four teams.

So, we settled in for seven hours of Super Bowl Semifinals, with crab dip and chips and cheeses and all that sort of stuff …

And we were rewarded with two awful football games.

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There were times, more than a few, when I wished Roger Federer would go home to Switzerland and take up yodeling.

This would have been during the zenith of his career, which went on for most of a decade, when he hardly gave anyone else in the game room to breathe. It got to be a little bit tedious.

The man has won 17 grand slam events, and 16 of them came in the eight years from 2003 to 2010. Sure, we knew he was playing great tennis, but seeing him with the trophy became a ho-hum thing.

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This must be a time of some anxiety for Landon Donovan.

The top scorer in the history of the U.S. national team, as well as Major League Soccer, is thought to be on the verge of extending his playing career with MLS side Real Salt Lake.

But it has been nearly a month since it was reported that RLS had offered him a contract, and that a decision was “imminent”.

That was on December 29.

And still he waits.

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A key part of French culture, certainly in small towns, is to greet everyone you encounter while walking or jogging with a hearty bonjour!

That is, “Good day!”

At first, it struck me as a sort of empty gesture, a cultural tic, probably conveying “we both know we don’t really mean it but it’s the social standard here.”

After a year in France, I have come around on “bonjour”!

It is a fine way to acknowledge the existence of someone passing by, and a smile and a “howdy do!” pretty much never leaves anyone annoyed or bothered.

In small-town France, to not reply to a “bonjour” is considered rude. To not reply repeatedly is to invite exclusion from civil society. Even surly teens in French small towns respond to “bonjour” with a “good day” of their own.

So, during a visit to southern California, I decided to do a bit of “bonjouring” with the locals, while out on a morning walk. Using a peppy “good morning!” instead.

And how did it go?

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