Hegel (Alvin studying German, planning trip to Germany, while writing letter to Lance's sister, refers to Love as a Ghost, the German for "Ghost" is Geist, Geist is a Key Hegel Koncept, Geist = Ghost, Mein, Mind, Spirit, Soul, Breath, Psyche, etc):

Alvin Lanced = Avalanche = Spiritual Shake-Up

Lance = Alvin = a split/double consciousness struggling to unify, the struggle between master and slave within one and the same consciousness struggling to experience unity

One road, divided = Alvin, divided against himself

Road makers, guiding and illuminating the way = various markers in the inner (mental/spiritual) and outer (natural environment, Lance, Old Man, Woman) worlds guiding and illuminating Alvin's breakdown and reunification/healing

What Alvin the Unhappy Consciousness wants is to see himself as part of the Unchangeable, to realize that there is something Unchangeable-Solid-Certain-Concrete for himself (and in itself). But the only Unchangeable is the perpetually changing way of change itself, the perpetually changing way of people and of life and beliefs etc. Life and everything in it is perpetually changing, and that perpetual change is the Unchangeable. Alvin, the Unhappy Consciousness, in an attempt to force stoicism and rationality and Unchangeablity on his girlfriend and Lance and the Road he's on, ends up turning against himself and changing; he becomes for and against himself, changing from becoming the master of Lance to the servant of Lance, experiencing a re-awakening, etc, thus actualizing the Unchangeable and becoming one with it.

Socrates:

For the Alvin to be what it is for himself to be, he must first become what it is what he does not want to be (Know Thyself......), he must lose himself in himself to become dismembered and thus undergo the spiritual journey to put all his pieces back together again

Hegel divided philosophy into three categories - logic, nature, spirit, and the film unfolds in that order, beginning with logical Alvin (thesis: morality, rationality, stoicism), venturing into the nature of Lance (antithesis: primitivism, lower consciousness, skepticism), culminating in a reformative transformative battle that results in a Jungian reunification of psyche mind+conscious+unconscious) (synthesis: unification of consciousness)

Lance = Young Alvin, Alvin confronted with himself as a carefree lusty impulsive young man

Old Man = Alvin of the Future

Old Woman = Ashes of a relationship, ashes of a life, she's the girlfriend who took flight, she' the pilot of man because man decides life and fate based on woman, woman piloted mankind, woman a pilot because she steers relationship and steers men and carries men and children also takes flight from men

Alvin and Lance two contradictions unified/held together by old man, forming triad, and sustained by memory of Woman

Ah Geist

Alvin - Father Lance - Son Old Man - Holy Geist Woman - Pilot of them all, birthing them and steering them, licence lost in geistly fire

In addition to the0end's explanation,

"Alvin" etymologically denotes "noble friend", "wise friend", "loved by all", which in turn connotes the traditional meaning of "Prince"

Alvin = noble wise friend = Prince (think Hamlet; O Noble Hamlet! Sweet Prince!)

Alvin, the noble wise rational stoical Prince, was lanced (pierced) by the ignoble impulsive falsely-emotive skeptical Lance, resulting in an Alvinlanche/Avalanche

Lance lances Alvin, triggering Alvin's emotional/spiritual avalanche, and the lancing is key to the film

The lancing sets up the basic film trope of two contradictory people at odds with each other, and sets up the real point of the film - the philosophical and spiritual splitting of Alvin's Mind/Spirit/*Geist.

The lancing is the division of Alvin into Alvin and Lance, the division of Alvin from himself, the slicing apart of the mind/spirit/Geist mechanism, and the lancing is the fusion of Alvin and Lance, the fusion of Alvin back into himself, the healing mechanism. Alvin is trimultaneously split apart from himself (creating Alvin and Lance......) and thrust into a battle with Lance and fused with Lance, the entire process the avalanche.

One road (Alvin), divided. Road markers (lances) creating division in road. The signs (inner search) illuminating the way.

*At the very beginning of the film we learn Alvin is learning German and has planned a trip to Germany. Alvin writes in his letter to Lance's sister "true love is like a ghost, which everyone talks about but no-one has seen". Ghost = "Geist", a polyvalent German word meaning Ghost, Mind, Spirit, Soul, Life, Breath, a word that, depending on context, has religious/spiritual, mental, and/or intellectual connotations. Geist just so happens to be a core principle foundation of the German philosopher G.W. F. Hegel's philosophy. Hegel renovated "Geist" to collectively connote the religious/spiritual and the mental and the intellectual. And Hegel's "The Phenomenology of Mind" (also translated as "The Phenomenology of Spirit") is this movie - this movie is Hegel's "unhappy consciousness" dialectic cinematized.