About the Book – Travels With Paco

What happens when a man who helped break America tries to find it again?

Travels With Paco: In Search of American Redemption is a memoir by Arthur Morgan — a former Silicon Valley technology executive who spent three decades building AI products, speech recognition systems, and the digital infrastructure that quietly reshaped how Americans live, work, and raise their children. In 2024, after being fired from his AI startup job on a five-minute Zoom call, Morgan loaded his Rivian R1T pickup truck and set out with Paco — his Spanish Water Dog — on an 8,000-mile road trip from Hillsborough, California, across the Golden Gate Bridge, through the heartland, to the Statue of Liberty and back.

What This Book Is About

On the surface, this is a road trip memoir with a dog — a twenty-first century echo of John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley: In Search of America (1962). Morgan drives a truck he named Rocinante (after Steinbeck’s camper), carries a shotgun he bought from Orvis (refusing to support the NRA), and hunts wild turkeys near the hills where Jack London once dreamed of building a utopian ranch. But underneath the travelogue is something more urgent: a field report by a man who helped build the technology, trying to see, up close, what happens when a nation forgets how to grow boys into men of character, and lets screens do most of the teaching.

Themes

Technology and its consequences — A Silicon Valley insider’s reckoning with the products he built, from General Magic’s early AI to modern speech recognition and engagement algorithms
Masculinity and mentorship — What it means to raise boys in an age of screen addiction, missing fathers, and the collapse of traditional rites of passage
Income inequality and the New Gilded Age — From Hillsborough’s hidden mansions to billionaire-funded cities, Morgan traces how extreme wealth corrodes community, drawing parallels to the first Gilded Age depicted in Red Dead Redemption 2
Social capital and community — Building on Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone research, Morgan documents Americans who are quietly rebuilding what hyper-individualism tore down
Redemption — Both personal (a man who lost his career and nearly lost himself) and national (a country searching for its way back to “self-interest, rightly understood,” as Tocqueville described it)
The human-animal bond — Paco, a Spanish Water Dog, serves as companion, therapist, and moral compass throughout the journey

For Readers Who Enjoy

John Steinbeck — Travels with Charley, The Grapes of Wrath, Cannery Row
William Least Heat-Moon — Blue Highways
Jack Kerouac — On the Road
Robert Putnam — Bowling Alone, Our Kids, The Upswing
Cory Doctorow — Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse, and What to Do About it
Matthew Crawford — Shop Class as Soulcraft
Chris Arnade — Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America
Red Dead Redemption 2 — the moral journey of a fictional Arthur Morgan, debt collection, and redemption in the Gilded Age
Anyone who has felt that something fundamental has broken in American community life

Miles travelled in Roci the Rivian with Paco

States visited with Paco and Roci

Years traveling with Paco

Countries seen with Paco (*see FAQ)

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Paco, and why the title "Travels With Paco?"

Paco is my beloved six-year-old Spanish Water Dog. The name “Travels With Paco” is inspired by one of my favorite books, Travels With Charley in Search of America, by John Steinbeck. Steinbeck describes travels he took across America in his pickup truck, accompanied by his French Poodle named Charley. While I can’t match the literary genius of John Steinbeck, I do my best to honor his spirit of adventure by traveling with Paco in my electric pickup truck, a Rivian R1T, which I nicknamed “Rocinante 2.0” after Steinbeck’s truck. Steinbeck called his truck “Rocinante,” in a playful homage to Don Quixote’s trusty steed. If you like to explore new places and you haven’t yet read Travels With Charley, we highly recommend it!

* Why do you put "real-life version" and "IRL" after your name?

Starting in late 2018, whenever I would hand my driver’s license to a hotel clerk I would invariably get the same reaction. “Arthur Morgan? Wow! Did you know your name is the same as the main character in Red Dead Redemption 2?”

At that point I was in my 50s and had not played video games for many years. The first time this happened I had to admit that I had no knowledge of the game or the character. I made a mental note to research the game later and was pleased to discover that Red Dead Redemption was a western-themed role playing game, and Arthur Morgan was the rugged Clint Eastwood-style protagonist of the second release in the game series. I was flattered to be associated with such a character, even in such a superficial way.

Players of RDR2, as it is known to its fans, assume the identity of Arthur Morgan, exploring an 1899 version of America. The fictional Arthur Morgan faces numerous choices as he makes his way around the country. Sometimes the choices seem trivial. When a dog comes running up to you, barking and growling, do you scold the dog, or do you pet it? No matter how inconsequential the choice may seem at the time, each choice has the potential to affect your “honor score.” This is a cumulative number that is tracked throughout the game — essentially a karma index of sorts. Arthur Morgan is an outlaw, but one of his goals — implied by the word “redemption” in the title of the game — is to redeem himself for his past transgressions.

What do you mean by "3.1 countries" seen with Paco?

Paco was born in Spain, and came to the US when he was four months old. He’s also spent some time in Baja California. When he was one and a half we tried to visit Canada, getting all the way to border station between Montana and Alberta on I-15. We couldn’t enter because of strict Covid rules 🙁 However, we were able to pick up a Canadian cousin for Paco named Zorro, “Checkpoint Charlie-style.” So Paco has seen the land of our friendly neighbors to the north, but he hasn’t actually been there. Yet.

What is "Roci the Rivian," and why do you call her that?

“Roci the Rivian,” AKA “Rocinante 2.0,” is my Launch Edition Green Rivian R1T. She has beefy all-terrain tires, Schwarzenegger-esque 835 horsepower, and a monstrous 908 pound feet of torque. She goes from zero to sixty in three seconds, has a 315 mile range, and can tow 11,000 pounds without breaking a sweat.

Roci the Rivian uses the pronouns “she/her,” but she is confident enough in her identity that she doesn’t need to spell this out on her LinkedIn profile (if she had one). There are multiple layers of meaning to this name and gender choice. At the core, innermost layer, Roci is short for “Rocinante.” Rocinante was the name John Steinbeck gave to the truck that he drove across the country as he collected material for his 1962 travelogue, Travels With Charley.

Steinbeck had in turn named his truck Rocinante after Don Quixote’s trusty steed in Miguel de Cervantes’ early 17th century novel, The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha. Steinbeck reportedly chose this name because his friends had teased him for being overly idealistic and impractical in planning a cross-country trip in a truck with his dog. Next, by shortening Rocinante to Roci and making the truck female, rather than male like Don Quixote’s horse, I am giving an implicit nod to modern feminism. The final layer of meaning is that I intentionally use the alliterative “Roci the Rivian” format of the name to evoke memories of the classic World War II motivational poster featuring “Rosie the Riveter.” Rosie the Riveter was a denim-clad woman with a bandana on her head who declared “We can do it!” as she rolled up her sleeve and flexed her right bicep.

This was exactly the attitude that I needed from my own yearling filly to accomplish my ambitious mission. And that’s why I needed a Rivian R1T.

Where can I get the book?

The book will be released to beta readers later this year. If you’re interested in being one of the first to read it, you can subscribe to get updates here.