Ramblin’ Wreck Road Trip: New Faculty Drive Cross Country to Georgia Tech

Two of Georgia Tech’s newest assistant professors spent most of the summer taking the scenic route to their new home in Atlanta. Veronica Rivera and Alex Ozdemir drove nearly 4,000 miles from California to Georgia for their new jobs at the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy (SCP) starting this fall.

Rather than rushing the drive, the couple’s cross-country road trip included several stops to visit family and friends, explore new parts of the country, experience changing landscapes, and enjoy the adventure of the open road.

The journey began in Claremont, California, where they met as students at Harvey Mudd College. After packing their belongings into Pods, they headed north to Sacramento to spend the Fourth of July with family. From there, they drove to Eugene, Oregon, to visit more family and friends.

Then they turned east and began the long drive to Georgia. 

Rivera and Ozdemir stayed two nights and a full day at nearly every stop. The plan was to have enough time to experience each place they visited while still making it to Atlanta in time to watch the World Cup Final at their new place.

The trip went well overall, but summer weather presented challenges along the way.

“At every stop, we experienced a different kind of heat,” Ozdemir said. “Boise’s dry heat was the worst, and Nashville came in second for its humidity.”

“Boise’s heat made it feel like our skin was going to melt off our bones,” Rivera said.

Both said the trip was unlike anything they had done before. They had traveled outside California, but neither had taken a road trip of this scale. The journey gave the couple a chance to see much more of the country.

For Rivera, one highlight was the ecological diversity.

“Oregon was lush in parts, and very dry and flat, like California,” she said. “We just got back from Germany, and in Europe you have to travel between countries to see the diversity we saw in the U.S.”

The drive took them through the Rockies, the Great Plains, and ultimately the lush mountains of Northwest Georgia.

“I didn’t want to fall asleep in the car because I didn’t want to miss the scenery,” Rivera said. “I really liked the mountains in Oregon and western Colorado.”

Ozdemir also enjoyed the changing landscapes, but he said his favorite part of the trip was the people they met along the way. He enjoyed seeing family and friends they do not regularly get to visit.

The couple found different ways to pass the time in the car. As they drove through each state, Ozdemir would look up facts about it and read them aloud. They also filled the miles with music and audiobooks, listening to two books from Freida McFadden’s The Housemaid series.

“It kept us guessing until the end,” Rivera said of the audiobooks.

The playlist ranged from Noah Kahan to the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Southern rock classics. When Rivera was driving, Taylor Swift was a regular in the mix.

The stop in Nashville added another memorable soundtrack to their road trip. They were struck by the abundance of live music throughout the city. From the farmers market to restaurants, “it felt like everyone was trying to make it as a musician,” Rivera said.

To keep them company during their journey, Rivera and Ozdemir shared their road trip with an unexpected travel companion: Buzz the Bee.

When Ozdemir interviewed at Georgia Tech, he received the plushie as a gift. The plushie accompanied them on the cross-country trip, appearing in photographs at California’s Arches National Park and beside several state welcome signs along their route.

After their weeks long long odyssey, they arrived in Atlanta in mid-July, just in time for the World Cup final. Or so they thought. Atlanta traffic and spotty internet nearly derailed their plans.

But after arriving at their Midtown apartment, the couple managed to stream about half the game over a mobile hotspot before their wireless provider limited their service.

“We watched the second half of the game with varying levels of video quality,” Ozdemir said.

With the journey from where they met to their new home in Atlanta behind them, Rivera and Ozdemir are preparing for the new academic year. Ozdemir is a security researcher specializing in programmable cryptography, while Rivera focuses on human-centered security and privacy.