Road Trip!

This Friday I will be leaving on a road trip up to Houghton to visit my friends Abby and Ryan. I will be riding in a car with four other people. For about nine hours. One way. I'm not a fan of road trips, in general, but I'm trying to reason with myself that this trip will be fun. The following are some pros and cons. Let's start with a con.

I'm not a big fan of driving. I just want to be there, already. Driving is such a waste of time. You can't multitask at all. Well, you can't multitask very safely. I have in fact written out checks, wedding cards, and grocery lists while at the wheel. I have compiled said grocery list from flipping through a flyer. I have read the next page of my book, or the next chapter. Granted, all of this was (mostly) while traffic was stopped at stop lights or really long construction delays, but it's still probably not the safest thing ever.

On the other hand, driving with people is a much safer form of multitasking. You get to socialize while traveling. And if you're not the one driving because you're riding with people who actually like to drive, you can read or make lists or write checks with no major repercussions on the horizon other than maybe a little bit of carsickness.

I do get a little carsick sometimes when I sit in the back seat. Just in the nauseated sort of way. This comes from seven years in which I've mostly driven myself everywhere.

On the other hand, I have these acupressure wristbands that look like something out of a movie from the 1980's. They work. I won't have to spend the whole trip trying to sleep my way through the carsickness.

Speaking of sleeping, on the long trip down to Pennsylvania I have the back seat to myself. This means I can stretch out for naps. On the trip to Houghton, I won't be able to do that. I'll likely be sharing the back seat with two other people for the whole trip.

On the other hand, these two people I'm thinking of are Lisa and Mara. If I fall asleep leaning against the seat behind me and end up against one of their shoulders, it won't be awkward.

And then there might be sing-alongs, and reading out loud, and trying out our Office character skills, and those really deep conversations you can get into in a dark car when nobody has to make eye contact with anybody else. And at the end of the trip there are two friends waiting for us, and a weekend full of both invading each other's space in ways that will be good for the practice of patience and of spending time together in ways I love.

Sometimes I just need to talk myself into things to realize how great they are.