I’m not sure if you know this about me, but I’m not really a joiner.
Like, I enjoy the company of humans and socializing with like-minded people (or open, un-like-minded people) over unprocessed nibblies and the warm buzz of alcohol, but when someone tries to add an element of organization to the gathering, I get all sweaty and uncomfortable. Read the rest of this gem…
I may as well admit it.
We are displeased. Read the rest of this gem…
I have a busy month coming up, kids. Read the rest of this gem…
I traveled to Hawaii for the first time in February, 2008. Read the rest of this gem…
Right now, I’m in the mountains.
Or at least on my way to them.
Not the craggy, hassleback peaks of the Alps or the snow-capped and rugged expanse of the Rockies, but the rolling, layered, ripples of the Appalachians.
Specifically, the Blue Ridge.
Unlike the jaggedly exuberant and youthful Himalayas (they’re still growing, you know), the Appalachians are ancient. Worn. Wrinkled remnants of a continental collision between masses of land that no longer exist. Like so many humans, they shrink with age and their beauty takes on the understated glow of wisdom.
In the summer they’re covered in blankets of green and blue, but in fall? Their famed and fiery warm hues are nationally — and perhaps internationally — renowned.
I can’t wait to see it.
And neither should you.
But right now, you can’t. So in the meantime, take a gander at these juxtaposing images from my 30th birthday celebration in the Florida Keys last week. (My little sister, Kelly, is the beauty with the long blond hair. My bff, Alaina, is the beauty with the short blond hair. I know. I like to surround myself with beautiful people.):
It’s hard to believe. One week I’m riding around a string of tropical islands on a motorized scooter with my new homosexual sugar daddy, and the next I’m facing autumn’s cool mountain beauty, nestled snugly in the warmth of crackling fires, spicy red wine, and a well-known embrace.
Life, when I travel, is difficult to grasp.
And that’s just the way I like it.
Where We Stayed:
Island: Key West
Hotel: Sheraton Suites
Recommendation: I’m not going to lie. I was initially disappointed when my sister Kelly, best friend Alaina and I waited until the last-minute to book a room for a Friday night in Key West because it seemed like all of the great B&B’s near Duval Street (the island’s “main drag”) as well as some of the larger beach hotels were completely booked. But Kelly pulled through with a 2 room suite at the Sharaton. For just shy of $300 for the night (after taxes, fees, and all of that extra hotel jazz), it was an excellent place to stay. The lobby (complete with complimentary virgin mojitos) was chic and welcoming, as was the staff. The outdoor bar was great, and the ‘tender made sure my non-virgin mojitos were very tourist friendly. The room was stunning with 2 queen beds, a pull-out couch, and an exemplary bathroom (granite counters and a tile shower surround). I’ll admit I was baffled by the fact that the hallway outside of our room had the ocean view, but really. Our main purpose for the space was to sleep. And I can guarantee that we probably slept much better there than outside of the crowded bars of Duval. Of course, it was a bit of a drive (5-10 minutes) to get to town, but we had a car and some locals with a free parking space, so it wasn’t too cumbersome. Also, the hotel offers a free shuttle and the phone numbers for cabbies if you don’t care to drive.
Have you ever seen so much cabinetry in a hotel room?
Also. If you can drive from Miami to the keys, do it.
Driving across a dotted chain of islands, over a series of bridges and out into the Caribbean ocean is an experience best tried first-hand.
And the thing is, you never know what gems you’ll unearth along the way.
The biggest challenge, I think, that most people have with traveling, is finding the ability to strike a healthy balance between squeezing in all of the high-energy sightseeing they can possibly manage and actually getting a little R&R.
If they’re not careful, their vacation can turn into work.
Me?
I don’t have that problem.
I know when I’m feeling energized, and I know when it’s time to stop, find a cafe with outdoor seating, and sip a glass of wine.
Striking this balance can be particularly difficult on a road trip when, if you’re spending extended periods of time in the car, it can feel like you’re resting because you’ve been sitting for several hours, but in reality you’ve been a highly concentrated ball of compact energy — shifting music whenever the mood strikes; passing, passing, passing on the left; belting out the lyrics you remember to Billy Joel’s “My Life;” almost peeing your pants when you pass a cop and realize how fast you were going; spending the next half hour daydreaming about living in Europe and doing nothing but driving the Autobahn for days on end; telling yourself you don’t need any more homemade trail mix; and matching your vibrations to those of the vehicle while guzzling your double-shot skinny mocha.
When I left Angie’s place in Virginia, I felt refreshed. Energized. Her perfect energy of physical labor combined with wine-laced porch-sitting was exactly what I needed to rev up for the second leg of my trip.
I knew Erin would still be at work when I arrived in Annapolis, so I took my time getting there, opting for back roads (Hwy 310, anyone? Highly recommended if you’re making a journey up or down the east coast.) over the congested interstates with never-ending repeats of McD’s, T-Bells, and Flying J truck stops.
My method for road trip food selection is simple: If I see a place I like the looks of, I stop. If I see a sign that catches my attention, I stop. If Urban Spoon happens to tell me there’s something along my relative route that’s worth stopping for, I stop.
No need to overthink it.
That’s how this happened.
When I arrived in Annapolis, I decided to stop at a Trader Joe’s for the first time ever to pick up some of their infamous “3-buck Chuck” wine to bring to my compadre’s place. I wandered the aisles, impressed-yet-refusing-to-be-sidetracked by the numerous offered delicacies. I finally asked a sample girl where a sister could find some booze on this lovely afternoon, and she looked at me with what can only be described as an expression of the sincerest empathy. “In Maryland,” she said, because clearly I was a foreigner, “grocery stores can’t sell alcohol.”
Say what?
Having lived in various states and counties south of the Mason-Dixon line for quite some time, I thought I’d already witnessed the gamut of restrictive alcohol sales. In Georgia I performed the grocery store walk of shame on more than one occasion — carrying my case from the registers back to the darkened shelves on a Sunday afternoon.
But this? This required people to make a whole other stop.
“But I just came from Virginia,” I whined.
She looked at me like I probably should’ve stayed there.
No matter. I stopped at an upscale winery and delicatessen where they wearily eyed my selection, poised to judge. “Hey!” The counter lady’s eyes lit-up. “This one’s a very popular choice!”
Apparently my skills are improving. Or rather, my luck was improving, since I randomly selected the bottle based on price and the label. But I smiled anyway, like I hear that all of the time, and went on my merry way.
Now let me just say this. Erin doesn’t actually live in Annapolis. She lives on an island just across the Chesapeake Bay, on the other side of one of the coolest bridges I’ve seen in my life. I’ll have a photo in another post, but hear me: If you have a chance to cross this 4-ish mile bridge in your life, do it.
That is all.
I arrived at her adorable house, ready to curl up on the sofa with a book and a beer I knew she’d left me in the fridge.
But then I saw it.
Her view.
I was shocked.
Not just by the generosity of the Red Stripe, but by the fact that she lives on an inlet that leads out to the Chesapeake Bay.
In fact, if I would’ve stolen her canoe and paddled out just past that last house you see on the left, I would’ve had a spectacular view of the Bay Bridge.
Then I probably would have drifted out to sea, never to be seen or heard from again since I have zero upper body strength, but at least I would’ve died happy.
Instead, I spent the rest of the afternoon curled up in a lawn chair alternating views of my book and the water.
Hey. Don’t judge.
I’d already had a long day driving and shopping for wine.
And that’s the thing — when you find yourself alone in a new place, or especially with people in a new place, it’s easy to run yourself ragged trying to do all there is to do and see all there is to see. At some point, you have to force yourself to accept the fact that you’re never going to do and see everything. That life is an ever-changing kaleidoscope of actions and reactions, mirage-like events that sometimes you see and sometimes you don’t. And sometimes you just have to sit back and enjoy the ride.
So to me, I wasn’t wasting time.
I was enjoying the moment.
As Billy would say,
I don’t need you to worry for me cause I’m alright —
I don’t want you to tell me it’s time to come home.
I don’t care what you say anymore, this is my life —
Go ahead with your own life, leave me alone.
Thanks, Mr. Joel. I’m glad someone gets me.
What’s your travel style? Would you have camped out with a beer and a book, taken the canoe, or hopped back in the car to explore the town? How do you strike a balance between work and play when you’re on the road?
The thing I love about road trips is their fluidity.
Remaining untethered to some airline’s asinine rules and sordid idea of an itinerary–
Since passengers who boarded before you carried all of their worldly possessions onto the plane in order to avoid paying our exorbitant checked baggage fees, we’re going to have to place your expensive and beloved DSLR camera in the hold…
We’re experiencing a delay either because of inclement weather in Denver OR because the flight crew is busy getting hammered in the employee lounge…
Flight 136 to Atlanta has been overbooked because we enjoy collecting your money for a service we never intended on providing. Please come to the desk if you are willing to reschedule.
— is a freeing feeling. One that can only be fully understood if you know what it’s like to throw your clothes into a suitcase or bag in your trunk, only to realize you’ve forgotten a great pair of shoes, your leather jacket, your tripod, and a bunch of CD’s you burned in the late 90’s, so you toss those into the backseat along with a cooler full of water, caffeinated beverages, homemade trail mix, and several haphazardly assembled chicken salad sandwiches and finally, unrestrictedly, hit the road.
You can pack what you want, as long as there’s still leg room and the windows can open.
(Okay. So the Tracker has limited leg room by default and only 3 of her electric windows still operate, but she’s in incredible working condition — especially considering we met back in 2002, just 3 years after her birth, and since then we’ve had the longest, closest, mutually caring, non-blood-related relationship of my life — with the exception of Alaina, who may as well be blood — and have traveled well over 150,000 miles together. We’re kind of in love. I’ve known her longer than my husband, and she’s never tried to start a fight with me via text message because she knows I hate that.
It’s almost like we’re soul mates.)
Even so, there are some”rules” for road-tripping that, while are certainly less restrictive than the spoken (no electronic devices during take-offs/landings, buckle your seatbelts while seated, don’t pack more than 50 pounds worth of crap) and unspoken (the passenger in the middle seat gets dibs on both armrests, hold all farts until you’ve exited the plane, feed fussy babies pre-flight cough medicine cocktails) rules of air travel, should be abided — or at least acknowledged — in order to guarantee an enjoyable trip for all involved.
Even if it’s just you.
1) Break it up, man. Sure, I could’ve driven directly to Philadelphia to meet up with Justin and his family in an easy, less-than-9-hour day trip. But really? Where’s the fun in that? I have people, you know. People I like to see whenever the mood strikes or when one of us feels like making the effort. And a couple of these people just happen to be living along the general path I had to take to reach Philly from North Carolina.
So I did what any plan-hating, inconsiderate domestiphobe would do — I messaged them on Facebook and told them to get their guest rooms/futons/air mattresses ready, because I’d likely be needing them either sometime the week before or the week after Easter.
Whichever turned out to be more convenient for me.
Or them.
Or mostly me.
This is not the exact path I ended up taking, because I’ve found over the years that U.S. interstates are grotesquely dangerous freaks of infrastructure overcrowded with semi trailers and minivans and repeating clusters of national and regional fast food chains that only serve to make you feel ghastly and bloated and pimply when you finally reach your destination.
Which brings me to:
2) Take the road less traveled. Cross the bridge uncrossed. For real. You see a fork. The left prong takes you on a whirlwind tour of rest stops, gas stations, and enough deep fry oil to sink the Titanic. The right prong takes you to sleepy towns, privately owned restaurants, and probably still enough deep fry oil to sink the Titanic.
But the food it fries, 9 times out of 10, is much, much better.
Let’s see McDonald’s bring you this.
The streets are emptier.
The roads have less potholes.
And the views are… well… they smell better than the back end of a truck stop.
3) Eat well. Seriously. Feed yourself. Feed yourself things you can’t/don’t/ wouldn’t dare cook at home. Discover new places. New dishes. New tastes.
After all, who says the vacation has to start when you’ve reached your destination?
4) Don’t pack light. I shouldn’t have to tell you this, but just in case I do, here goes: You’re in a car. You know, that mobile vehicle with wheels, massive in comparison to a single airline seat and quarter of an overhead compartment, so use it. What are you afraid of? That someone will judge you? Elbow you? Stare at you creepily while you try to absorb yourself in The Hunger Games because you’ve become completely obsessed even though it’s a heinous storyline semi-ripped off from or at least probably partially inspired by Richard Bachman’s (aka. Stephen King’s) little-known gem The Long Walk, and you didn’t even know this latest book craze existed until a few weeks ago when everyone started talking about the movie and murderous children and a Peeta that wasn’t a bread/sandwich (pita) but a character in this book that was supposedly so good or disturbing or mind-numbingly twisted that you wouldn’t be able to put it down so you bought it and didn’t actually put it down for 3 days not including sleep and socialization and pee breaks?
Are you afraid that will happen?
Well, I have news.
That only happens on airplanes.
In the safety of your car, no one judges. No one nudges. And no one stares except for when they pass and catch you singing along to Billy Joel’s greatest hits with more enthusiasm than Peeta would show if he were told he could finally have consensual sex with Katniss and she’d actually like it. (I’m only partway through Book 2, by the way, so if you ruin this for me I might have to hate you forever. Or at least for a couple of hours because I have a short attention span, but even so, spoiling plotlines would truly be an evil undertaking.)
The good news is, if you do forget anything, it’s not a big deal to stop somewhere along the line and buy it. But the more you pack, the more money you save, and the less guilty you feel for buying that completely-awesome-yet-unnecessary dreamcatcher from a Pueblo roadside gift shop in Nevada.
5) Bring good music. This is completely subjective, believe it or not. And while modern music is acceptable, anything that inspires nostalgia is better. Billy Joel? Go for it. Avett Brothers? Have at it. Toadies? Go ahead and send me a copy. Because no one judges. (See #4.) And if anyone who happens to be with you does, you can accidentally-on-purpose forget him at a truck stop off the side of I-95.
Or, if you’re nicer and have been paying attention, at a diner off the side of Highway 301 within walking distance of a riverside park and an all-you-can-eat Maryland crab shack and a sign for RedNex sporting goods.
6) Be flexible. Okay. So you want to avoid the interstates, especially around busy cities, but there’s this truly amazing sandcastle competition they hold every year in Cannon Beach, Oregon, and you know there’s no way you’ll make it in time if you completely avoid I-84. Not to mention the fact that sometimes the interstate is just safer, especially while traveling solo, in the way of providing the occasional modern convenience or (hopefully) friendly passerby in case you run into trouble.
So if the situation calls for it, take the interstate. If you have time to peruse a used book store in a quaint seaside village, do it.
Basically this rule means that there are no rules. Kind of like Fight Club, except we get to feel free without having the crap beat out of us.
Good deal, no?
7) Earn Your Keep. This has more to do with the stops between times on the road. When someone’s putting you up for a night (or two, or three, or however long you plan to leach from their generosity while enjoying their company), they’re doing more than providing a bed. They’re providing water, food, hygienic facilities, and a place far more comfortable than your car for stretching out with a good book.
Usually, they’re sharing their home. Knowledge of the place they live and love. Absorb it all, whatever they want to show you, and pay it forward. For our relatives in Philadelphia, I have a gift planned. To Erin, I brought olives and wine. And for Angie?
Well.
Angie opted for manual labor.
So on a sunny Sunday afternoon, we took her front lawn from this:
To this:
And while I may have taken the occasional break to sip water on her fabulous front porch and point out spots that could use improvement, (I was on vacation, after all), I also managed to help a little, and all-in-all felt pretty great about squeezing in some physical activity between wine and food samplings.
So there you have it. Seven rules for road tripping that are subject to change without notice as I become older, crotchetier, and take in more of what this world has to offer.
I’m going to be honest.
This was one of those weekends I wish I could do over.
Not because it was so spectacularly awesome, but because I feel it was relatively wasted in its entirety. Aside from a fun night of drinks with a girlfriend on Friday, I didn’t do anything notable or interesting. I accomplished exactly nothing. I took not one step forward in any aspect of my life. In fact, I actually took one step backwards because we had to return the curtains I ordered for the bedroom.
They weren’t right.
See, they were incredibly white. And shiny. And they felt like a bridesmaid’s dress, except they didn’t get prettier when I got them drunk.
Ba-dum-dum.
*Update: My buddy Dennis commented that it’s ME who would have to get drunk in order for this scenario — and joke — to work. That’s what I get for writing posts before 7:00 a.m. Why do you always have to be right, Dennis? WHY? (P.S. I don’t think I get prettier when they get drunk. Since I mostly walk around my bedroom naked, they’re not exactly lookin’ at my face, if you knowwhatI’msayin’. Ba-dum-DUM.)
And actually, I made Justin return them, poor guy, because I couldn’t face the idea of going into town to shop. Especially not for curtains. Because apparently bedroom curtains are my Achille’s heel of decorating. Well curtains, and pretty much anything else that requires money and a commitment.
But don’t feel too bad for Justin because he volunteered. Probably because he wanted to get away from me and my manic online curtain shopping — that torturous hell hole of grainy photos, 80’s valances, and mixed reviews.
Oh, the reviews. I read them for what feels like hours and was eventually convinced that it would be better for me to go pick a fabric and sew my own damn curtains even though the most I’ve ever sewed is a button but then I realized that in order to get fabric I’d either have to go out and shop, or I’d have to look online and read more reviews since everyone knows the reviews are the only thing allowing us to make a semi-confident purchase over the internet and still, because of my shiny white grommety curtain fiasco, I’ve learned that even the reviews are confusing and not always reliable and I’d probably end up with some kind of poop brown velvet that a bunch of strangers across the internet convinced me would be a good choice because of its energy-saving qualities and machine washability.
No, thank you.
Fortunately for me and my sanity, I’m learning how to live in the moment. To step away from my privileged white girl problems, crack open a Yuengling, and surf instead for interesting road trip destinations and cheap tickets to anywhere.
It’s called escapism people, and it’s a beautiful thing.
That is, until you realize that an entire 48 hours have passed, your house is dirty, the laundry has piled up, you have no food in the fridge, you’re still only halfway through your book club book and the meeting is on Wednesday, you haven’t written anything worthwhile in an embarrassingly long amount of time, and you still have no curtains.
I don’t like wasting a weekend. It makes me feel icky. I’m one of those people who doesn’t feel right if something doesn’t get done.
But really, I’m thinking of moving us back into the bedroom anyway, because curtains are mostly just for the sake of the neighbors who don’t want exposure to the things that might happen in there, like reading in bed or swinging from our sex toy chandelier. But honestly, if they don’t want exposure, then maybe they should just stop looking.
You know?
The good news is that I officially have something to look forward to, besides public displays of sex toy swingery.
Here’s a hint:
Okay. That’s more than a hint.
It’s a road trip, baby!
So it’s not quite the epic cross-country trip that’s been consuming my thoughts, and it’s not even as far as Miami where I drive to visit my sister, but it’s something.
And some of those places are new to me.
And some have old friends.
And wonderful family.
And good food.
And a bed for me to stay.
Because while this trip could easily be accomplished in a single day, you know, in your heart of hearts, that it’s me.
It’s travel.
It’s unquestionable.
When it comes to going anywhere, I always take the long way home.
What about you? Do you need to feel a sense of accomplishment over a weekend, or are you happy to relax and let one slide by? Any fun trips planned? Anyone else like to take the scenic route?
*Post title from “The Long Way Home” by Norah Jones. Love it.