A month on the road is a long time. I knew I needed a way of keeping up with all this time, all the things that would happen, then pass. While packing, I searched through my stack of travel journals, but none had enough empty pages to hold 4-5 weeks of thoughts. So instead of buying a new journal, I thought I would turn to blogging and share this all with my friends, along the way. So here we go, I invite you along...
Day 1 on the road, for me, was spent sleeping off a cold contracted just in time for departure on our month-long journey. So I'm skipping description of that day, besides to say that we spent the night in Nashville.
Day 2 started somewhere around 8AM (could have been 9 - I'm not really sure what time zone we were in. This also means we may have very well gone to bed at 7PM "new" time, the night before!) The plan was to make it to Tulsa, Oklahoma sometime this afternoon, but today has been another full day of driving, and as I write this at 6PM, we're just making it to Little Rock, Arkansas. I console my type A personality with a paragraph from my favorite road trip book:
"Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process, a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safegaurds, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. Only when this is recognized can the blown-in-the-glass bum relax and go along with it. Only then do the frustrations fall away." ~John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley in Search of America
It's true - the road has some secret, mischiveously divine power. You think you can just get on it and drive, but it twists and turns everything into something different, unexpected, unplanned. But I have faith in this process and know that wherever the road takes us and whenever we get there, good things will be found.
In honor of Steinbeck and his drive across America, I have named our travelling vehicle "Rocinante," which I drove for the first time today.
A few things about our little Rocinante...
She is an unpredictable beast of an RV. She hiccups, and cups and plates fly from her cabinets, as we're trying to make our way across I-40. As we're driving, she rearranges all her insides so that when you stop, toothpicks come at you like little wooden daggers. She's also sensitive. When you handle her, she won't accept much force, and if you give too much on the wheel, she'll threaten to teach you a lesson or two, a lesson big enough that it'll make you fear for your life. (Driving Rocinante for the first time was truly one of the scariest experiences of my life and made me want to cry for about the first 30 minutes. But I've tamed her now, and can easily get her up to 70 mph.) And with her strength comes protection. She is our home on the road. We sleep in her belly. And even with all we've loaded and packed inside her, she keeps getting us there.
Good night, Rocinante. Good night, friends.
Amanda
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