In less than 30 days I will be on the road. Possibly somewhere in North or South Carolina at this point. That is my favorite part of taking a trip: being on the road. There is something to be said about traveling by car in this country. The silly things you find on the side of the roads, the somewhat frightening podunk kind of towns you run across as you fill up gas. And when traveling in the South, the varying degrees of accents you run across at each station.
I simply adore rolling into parking lots in the middle of the night, with the lights illuminating the view. How around 3 am you have to crank up the air conditioning to force yourself awake as you drink shitty cappucinos and prompt the rest of the car into one more rousing session of "sing it if you know it". Or that feeling of hitting the florida state line at 5 am, where the wind immediately shifts and everything begins to feel stickier.
This year the exact nature of the road trip is up in the air. I could not say for certainty that we will even be stopping to spend the night somewhere. However I have been promised a roll into Savannah. For that, I am at least grateful. This much I do know, at some ungodly hour on Friday the 13th (cue the scary music) my family will pile into my mother's new ride with 2 yapping dogs and 1 sleepy kid. We'll bid adeiu to the house. Water the plants one last time and Dad will begin the trip behind the wheel.
It will all seem very "Leave it to Beaver".
25 minutes down the road something calamity will occur. Like that one year the windows began leaking, it downpoured and by Lebanon Junction we were all soaked to the bone. This year I predict something will begin to beep in my mother's ultra sensitive van and we won't know how to make it stop.
Approximately 1 hour into the trip my Dad will begin to bob his head. Mom will ask him if he'd like her to take over now, and he'll agree. He'll say "just for a little while" and he will really mean, "at least until we hit the Florida state line".
At this point I'll assume position in the front seat with my mother as the boys and dogs doze in the backseat. During this time we will get lost, argue over directions, listen to way too much bad music and quiz each other on useless trivia we think of as we pass various cities.
If there is anything for Lucy and Ethel to get into, this is when it will happen.
And I can't wait.
But mostly I can't wait for a very laid back vacation. I've warned everyone I'm traveling with that all I want to do is lay on the beach and take tons of pictures all week. I don't need to run all over Timbuktu, I don't need to see everything in the world, I just need relaxation and a break.
I think I have a tendency to run on full throttle when on vacation. I guess it has to do with how alive I feel when doing something I love, like traveling. I always want to see, touch, feel and do as much as possible. And in the process I can lose focus of what a vacation is really about. It's the simple moments I always remember most, not the ones I freak out over and try to create.
Like the very first time I walked onto the beach with Jonathan. Or eating key lime pie last year with my toes in the sand which was so simple and unexpected. And the night I sat on a pier for four hours with a pigeon staring me down the entire time. The last one I bitched and complained about the entire time it was occuring and yet it has become one of my favorite travel memories. Because it was quirky and unusual.
Remind me to take more pleasure in quirky and unusual, okay?
So that's what I'm doing here, I'm vowing to myself that I will chill out and promise to not run on maximum pressure for 9 days. I'll just sit back and enjoy the ride. Even if Jon sticks his stinky feet in my face the entire time.
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