September 26, 2014 -- On the Road Again

It seems that having a bucket list is a rather trendy thing to do. As always, I am anything but trendy. I have never been one that has worried about a bucket list. Since I became sick, I have had a good deal of time to contemplate all of the things that I have missed in my life and to be honest with you I just don’t feel like I have missed anything of real significance. I suppose there are some things that I have never seen that would be amazing but I’m not sure that I want to fly to Egypt to spend 45 minutes staring at the pyramids.  It would be exciting to walk along the path that Jesus traveled during his life, but I’m not sure I want to be worried about dodging a stray bullet or bomb along the way either.

All in all, if I happened to get hit by a bus on the way home, I would have to say that I would have been very happy with the life I have led and the things that I have experienced.  There are some things that I miss though, some things I would like to do again.

It would be nice to wake up in the morning and not have half of my body screaming at me to stop moving so fast as the other half creaks as I get to my feet.  It would be nice to comb my hair after a shower without having to be a landscape architect to cover all of the bald spots. It would be nice to be able to read without having to find my six dollar Costco glasses first.  It would be nice to remember where I put my glasses or my keys or my wallet. It would be nice to be able to do something athletic and still be able to move the next day.

One of the things that I did when I was younger and can still do is drive.  Back in the day when gasoline was $0.50/gallon, it would make a lot more sense to drive to a vacation spot than hop in a plane.  Driving from Ohio to Florida was no big deal.  I would start at in the evening and drive for 18 hours straight only stopping to get gas. If you had to pee, you better make sure that you timed it for when the gas tank was empty.  I would order a pizza or two and put them in the back seat to dine on during the trip.  A Trip-tik from AAA was the way to go. It was light years ahead of having to read a map while driving.

It didn’t seem to bother me that I would have to make the same trip home in seven or eight days with nothing to look forward to except work on Monday morning. I would get to see parts of the country (albeit at 75 miles an hour) that I normally never got to see. The heavily wooded hills through Tennessee, the red dirt of Georgia and the smell of dampness when you finally got to Florida all made it worthwhile. Of course, avoiding radar and finding a “caravan” made it even more exciting. How I stayed up all night and never seemed to get drowsy amazes me to this day.

When Jason decided late this summer that he did not want to return to school in South Dakota, it created a dilemma since he had a storage unit filled with clothes, supplies, a TV and mini refrigerator.   It was of enough value that we didn’t just want to walk away and eventually see Jason’s stuff on “Storage Wars” so we had to come up with a way to move his various boxes 1,300 miles without having to take out a second mortgage on the house. Julia looked into moving companies and found them to be ridiculously expensive.  She found another route that was more affordable but it would require someone to get his things ready to move and then wait around for the shipping company to show up.  Both of these were doable but it just didn’t seem like the “best” way to handle the situation.

It seemed to me that I would have an opportunity to relive my youth and get to have another one of those crazy driving road trips.  Well, I can’t drive for 19 consecutive hours anymore, but I sure can drive for six hours and take a break, have someone else drive for a while and eventually find a hotel to sleep off the stiffness of sitting in a car for 12 hours. Jason was soon designated as my co-pilot and plans were starting to be hatched. Julia thought I was an idiot for doing this, but she just never could understand the enjoyment of the quest.

I had everything planned that I could including getting an SUV from Enterprise for the trip that we were going to pick up Tuesday night so we could get on the road at 6 AM and miss all of the traffic.  As I stood at the Phoenix airport Enterprise counter, I came to the realization that I was in the middle of a senior moment. When I set up the reservation, I limited my search to airports only since most off-airport locations rarely have specialty cars. Little did I know that I had actually made the reservation at a Scottsdale location. 

I called the Scottsdale location and was told they closed in 20 minutes. If I got there in 19 they could handle me, a minute later and they would have shut down all of their equipment.  I then started to break every speed limit posted between the airport and Scottsdale yet hit virtually every red light.  We pulled into the lot at 6:04 PM and watched five people pull out, one even rolled up his window as Jason approached.  This was not the way to start the trip.

When we got there at 7:30 the next morning, I went through the normal procedure to get the car which took about 15 minutes. However, when I got in the car, I found that the fuel light was on which added another 20 minutes to our wait.  This was starting to look like a mistake.

I took the first shift and the old thrill started to return.  Nothing like being on the road driving through new places.  I was going to add New Mexico, Nebraska and Wyoming to my list of states and all was good.  Jason and I got to see a camel farm, deserts where there should be green and green where you would think there should be desert.  We were able to visit the largest motorcycle rally in the world.  We made hotel reservations as we drove and hit Hooter’s with regularity. It was a good old road trip with everything but the beer and the women.

When we returned four days later with an SUV filled with Jason’s belongings and a wallet emptied by the cost of gas, we had accomplished what we had set out to do.  We had made it home with all of Jason’s things still working and had managed not to be run off the road by a semi or some other crazed driver late at night.  But what we came home with was something more, something that I had not counted on.

You see, the thing that you don’t think much about is what you are going to do for four days in a car. This was not going to be a trip where we stopped every few hours to see the sights. It was two days in the car getting there and two days back. It was just us and the freeway.  But what it turned into was something special.  Imagine four days in the car with your soon to be 20-year-old son with nothing to do but talk.

Jason has never been much of a talker.  Very quiet and sometimes an island, Jason opened up.  In the end, if I would have had to pay him by the word, I would have been even more broke.  We talked about anything that suited us at the time. There were no preconceived notions of accomplishing this or that. It was just talk.  I think I learned more about my son in those four days than I had in the previous four years. 

All of this just reiterated what Julia and I have thought for a long time.  Although far from perfect and certainly not a carbon copy of either of us, we have a great kid that makes the right decisions and does the right things. I’m not sure even he knows what he will be doing moving forward in life, but I feel pretty confident that he will continue to make the right decisions and continue to be the type of person you can only hope for when you hold your child for the first time.  It’s funny, you start out worrying about how far you will get your first day and in the end you come home with a whole new perspective on your kid.  Next time you have a chance to entrap your kid in a car for a few days, give it some thought.