The Journey is the Destination

I do believe that life is more about the journey than the destination. When it comes to vacations though, it's about a little bit of both for me. I'm planning on taking some vacation at the end of the month and I've been thinking about what my options are. The thing is, I just don't have a lot of patience for air travel. I resent having to spending any part of my vacation dealing with the frustration of air travel which over the last couple of years has only gotten more painful.

So for my money it doesn't get much better than an old fashioned road trip. Unfortunately, I had to be ten years removed from my childhood to really gain an appreciation for the road trip experience. This was due to the fact that my only road trip experiences were the rather fateful ones I took with my family as a child. They were without a doubt some of my most unpleasant childhood memories.

The first problem with family road trips was that we always chose to enjoy the open road in the middle of the summer and usually when our car's air conditioning had crapped out. It almost seemed like my dad would come home one day and tell my mom "Honey, the air conditioning in the car just went on the blink." At which point they'd look at each other and in unison declare, "Well, let's grab the kids and a cooler and hit the road before temperatures drop below 85 degrees." Despite the many mechanical malfunctions of every vehicle we ever owned there was one thing that never seemed to break. No matter how many prayers I said, that tape player never stopped churning out those songs my dad enjoyed so much. It was such a great reminder to me that the good Lord did indeed have a sense of humour. I didn't ever get his jokes but one of these days that punch line's going to hit me and I am going to have the laugh of a lifetime.

It also didn't help that whatever vehicle we were driving at the time was always way too small for a family of six. This meant the four of us kids were always gunning for those two coveted window seats. There was nothing worse than being stuck in the middle of a sibling sandwich for ten hours. Unfortunately it seemed that window seats were assigned based on seniority and since I was third in line I rarely secured one of those. When I did manage to get a window seat it was like a little slice of heaven. If I closed my eyes, plugged my ears, and turned my body at just a slight angle I hardly noticed anyone was there. Plus, I could use the window ledge as an arm rest. One year I got the most amazing one arm tan. At first I thought it looked a little odd but eventually I just decided to own it. I've always thought that symmetrical tanning was overrated anyway.

So I've learned a few things about road trips since those fateful childhood trips. One of them is that the key to enjoying the road trip experience is finding suitable road trip buddies. Choosing road trip buddies can be very tricky business. Even people that I love dearly are not necessarily compatible road trip partners. For instance, my best friend and I took a road trip once. Let me emphasize the word ONCE because that mistake was not made twice. We literally did not talk to each other for six months after that fateful trip so we have not shared a car ride for more than a couple of hours since then.

Next on my list of people I can't do road trips with are my parents. Let me just say that I love my parents dearly. However, it's just something about them and me in a car that just doesn't work. Whether it's my mom howling at my dad to slow down or not follow so closely, it's my dad driving two miles per hour whilst making three calls on his cell phone while also singing and whistling to whatever cassette tape he managed to salvage from the collection left behind by Noah (as in the ark). The problem is I can't tune any of this out because we're in a five foot by foot space. Plus, no matter how loud the music is in my headphones it's never louder than my dad's whistling unless I want to risk irreversible hearing damage which I have to admit for a moment seems like a pleasant alternative. So at this point in our "vacation" I'm feeling like a Dixie Chicks fan at a Republican convention and I'm looking for the nearest exit. Unfortunately, we've just pulled out of the driveway and the only way to make a quick exit involves throwing myself out of a moving vehicle. Sure we're only moving at three miles per hour because my dad's making another phone call but I'm pretty sure that would still be painful and also hard to explain. Honestly I'm not even sure it's the road trip thing that's the problem with my parents. I have a feeling that they could find a way to make a full body shiatzu massage stressful for me because that's just the way they roll.

So if I can't travel with my best friend or with the two people responsible for my existence on this earth you might be asking who can I travel with? Well, it's obviously a short list but there are actually a few people that I've managed to road trip successfully with. If I can't talk any of them into joining me this time I can always go it alone I guess? Of course it's not ideal but I've always been more a fan of the road less traveled anyway.