Brooks Wheelan Is Going On The Road…To The Arctic Circle

brooks wheelan

Brooks Wheelan is hitting the highway for a trip that has nothing to do with comedy. Unlike most comedians who can’t wait to get off the road, he’s got a trip planned this summer to head to the top of the continent, above the Arctic Circle. He’s a different kind of guy.

Brooks appeared on SiriusXM’s “Ron and Fez Show” to talk to host Ron Bennington about his new comedy album, “This Is Cool, Right?”. Brooks who spent one year as a featured player on Saturday Night Live, told Bennington he’s moving back to Los Angeles from NYC, now that his SNL time in New York City is done.

Once he gets back to Los Angeles, he can start planning his summer trip.  It’s just going to Brooks, his girlfriend, and 30 days on a long unpaved road.  Brooks said, “I just planned a trip up to Deadhorse which is up in Prudhoe Bay above the Arctic Circle. I’m just going to camp all the way from L.A. up to the top of North America. It’s going to be awesome.” A trip driving from Los Angeles, California to Deadhorse, Alaska is about 70 hours if you don’t stop, but Brooks and his girlfriend will spend 30 days enjoying the journey.

Once they get to Alaska, they’re heading to Deadhorse via the Dalton Highway, which is 426 miles of mostly gravel. It’s a place that Brooks says you can only drive to in the summer but once you get there you can see the “Midnight Sun” where the sun is still visible in the sky during the night in the Summer months because of its location above the Arctic Circle.

Dalton HighwayAfter being cooped up in New York, Brooks said this is exactly the kind of trip he needs, so he and his girlfriend are headed north in his new Subaru which will also be the place they sleep in case they run into any hungry or angry carnivores in the Northern wilderness. He talked about the possibility of running into bears, “Look, Grizzly bears are more chill. They’re less predatory. Unless you kind of fuck with them. But also if I’m scared, I’ll sleep in my car. I’ll get in my car if I’m like genuinely scared of Grizzly bears. He’s traveling light- some spare tires, some extra gasoline. But no luxuries. “I’ll take food, yeah. I’ll just take food. I’ve got a little grill that’s super easy to set up. And then, I’ll just heat up…I like hot dogs a lot which is kind of great for camping.”  And he’ll fish.

The idea came from a hazy place, “I don’t know dude,” he told a caller, “this is all me stoned. Just like, ‘I want to go to Nome. Oops, I can’t?'”  Apparently you can’t drive to Nome, he explained.

Someday he hopes to drive across another continent- Africa- so maybe this is just a warm up trip.  He said, “I’m really interested in driving from Capetown to Cairo in Africa. It’s 120 hours, one way. To like truly see how big Africa is because it’s so fucking big, but we get a warped view that like, I want to drive it just to see ‘oh fuck, Africa’s so big'”. He’s done a solo trip from Yellowstone to the Grand Canyon, and in 2013 documented a second of every day of his life (see the video below).

Workwise, Brooks has been working hard touring stand up, and he has the romantic comedy “Stereotypically You” coming out this year, starring Aaron Tveit (Gossip Girl, Graceland) and co-starring Kal Penn, Lauren Miller, Abby Elliot, Chris Elliot and Lewis Black. Then Brooks is going to work on the comedy film, “The Out of Town Wedding” with Kurt Braunohler and Michael Cassidy.

Brooks Wheelan’s new album “This Is Cool, Right?” is available now on Amazon.com and iTunes and at BrooksWheelan.com

Brooks has documented his previous travels in a video featuring one second of every day of his life during the year 2013.

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