My Battle with Road Trips
I have very mixed feelings about road trips. I feel as if movies give road trips some super-glamorous reputation. I don’t know about you, but none of my road trips have involved a convertible with the top town, days of sunny weather and fashionable scarves keeping my hair just the right amount of messy to look effortlessly beautiful. Let’s be honest – I am most likely in pajama pants, a faded t-shirt from college and my hair is in full anime character bed head mode.
I want to believe I look like this (but with an awesome scarf):
When I probably look closer to this:
During my epic 5 cities in 6 weeks trip home, I took a 14 hour road trip from St. Louis, Missouri to Washington, DC. Here are my thoughts.
Girls love to talk
I took this roadtrip with one of my best friends, Rachel. She and I had not seen each other in about 15 months. I flew to Alaska to see her right before my move to Buenos Aires. Her return to the lower 48 lined up perfectly with my visit home, so we decided to drive to DC to visit our friends Ellen and Ben. We started this road trip after dark, so you’d think we would be pretty tired and need to blast music to keep ourselves awake. We talked for 6 hours straight. We talked so much we missed the exit for the better highway. We decided this was not a big deal since there are 2 routes to DC. This turned out to be a bad choice, but hey, we had a lot to catch up on. Rachel and I have done a lot of traveling together and I have always loved what a perfect traveling duo we are. We can chat for 6 hours, but we can also just leave each other alone. We like doing a lot of the same things and skipping the same stuff (no greasy trucker diner stops were made) but we also know when to split up and just do our own thing. It keeps us balanced and, more importantly, keeps us from hating each other. As we rivaled the Gilmore Girls with the velocity of our conversation, I hardly noticed I was driving.
Trolls and Tolls
Okay, so I didn’t actually see any trolls, but as a girl from Missouri, I am still not used to tolls. We found out the reason the route we took is the less preferred – the tolls were outrageous. When some sleep deprived lady in a booth grunted “15 dollars” at me, I was shocked. I almost didn’t have enough cash on me. Needless to say, we made sure not to talk through the exit for the better route on the way home.
Let’s gain 10 pounds in 14 hours
What is it about being on a roadtrip that makes you feel like you have to eat all the time? Normally, you wouldn’t plan out several meals for a 14 hour period, but when you pack for a road trip, you feel the need to prepare yourself for any craving. Rachel and I packed 6 cans of soda each. Who the hell needs a 6 pack of soda in 14 hours?! We also packed 4 sandwiches, chips, and several bags of candy. My back seat looked like the stock of a 10 year old’s slumber party.
You also feel the need to stop when you see a good place to eat, even if you aren’t hungry. It is something to do with this panic mentality. You think “well, what if I get hungry later and there is nothing but trucker stops?! I have to eat now!” Ellen and Ben are good friends and made sure we were fed before we left their home, but when we were only 2 hours into our trip, Rachel spotted a Chik-fil-a. The exchange went like this:
Rachel: (interrupting my story) Chik-fil-a!
Me:(totally forgetting my story) Oh my God, should we go?!
Rachel: I mean, we don’t have to…
Me:(flipping on the blinker and cutting across several lanes) We’re going.
No regrets, people. A few chicken nuggets, waffle fries and a peach milk shake later, we were back on the road with happy bellies.
The never ending sleep battle
A 14 hour road trip requires some sort of sleep. Unfortunately, sleeping in a vehicle of any kind totally sucks. For each of our first driving shifts, we were awake and fine. However, when you get to the 2nd round, you start wishing you had napped earlier. The problem is, napping is nearly impossible. Partly because you feel obligated to keep the driver entertained and partly because you’re not in a bed. Rachel and I both tried to pretend we were sleeping as if by closing our eyes and refusing to open them we would somehow allow us to absorb some sort of rest and recuperation. In all reality, we just dried out our contacts and got about and hour and a half of sleep each, tops. When we arrived at Ellen and Ben’s our excitement to see them and need to eat (again) kept us moving for a couple hours, and then we passed out in mid-day comas on their couch.
All and all, I had a great time because I had great company, the weather was good and I had sour gummy worms and Mountain Dew. Would I rather fly? Most of the time, the answer is yes, but I still do hold some sort of romantic nostalgia when it comes to road trips. Maybe I should buy a head scarf.
