Journey vs. Destination

I’m a planner. I’ll just cop to that and have done with it. So, let’s review the current plan: leave Tuesday morning from Plymouth (Massachusetts), then stay nights in Cleveland, Chicago, Minneapolis, Bismark (North Dakota), Billings or Bozeman, extra day in Yellowstone, Wells (nowhere Nevada), home.

When C said he didn’t get to see his sister much, I figured we could extend the trip a day but then realized I do want to be home so, while we’d say we were extending the trip, I suspect we’d bail on the extra Yellowstone day. (Though C just said it is going to rain in Plymouth on Tuesday so now he’s not excited to stay.)

And when C mentioned flying back, despite my ambivalence, I started to generate a plan for that. First, it would cost about $450 each in plane tickets (about a hundred less if we’d be willing to stop in Phoenix, probably not). That is slightly more than we’ll spend on hotels on the way back but only slightly more. We’d have to give back the rental car and accept whatever fee they charged us, probably less than their weekly rental fee, definitely less than gas. We could stay an extra day or two, maybe fly back on Thursday afteroon (flights leave around 4:30pm from Boston). That would give us more time with family and still put us home a few days early. We’d have to check some bags, probably ship a few things and also abandon cooler (possibly we’ll call that “giving it to my inlaws”). That’d be ok.

It isn’t about the cost, though. This trip is supposed to be about seeing the country and pushing our personal boundaries. And I’ve heard the food scene in Wisconsin and Minneapolis is dynamite.

Except, C is what is known as a fearful flyer. Unlike some, he knows how a plane works (heck, given his enjoyment of flight simulators, he could probably talk you through a landing) so his fear isn’t ignorance based. It is a control thing. If he’s in the car, he’s in control, even though it is statistically far more dangerous to drive than to fly. Plus there is the sitting-next-to-a-stranger unhappiness that comes with all forms of public transportation. And the germs.

I can’t say I enjoy flying. The security checkpoints are intrusive and the flying part is just bothersome. But 6.5 hours of annoyance needs to be weighed against 6 days of mild irritation interspersed with fun and serious annoyance.

Some people suggested that I drug C for the flight here. But they didn’t understand, it isn’t the flight that is hard; the problem is the constant anxiety in the days and weeks leading up to a flight. If it was just the 6 or 8 hours (counting airport time), I would suggest chemical means. But not for a week leading up to the flight.

As we crossed the never ending nothingness between Albuquerque and Oklahoma, C admitted that it might be less stressful to fly than to keep up the constant angst of driving, eating out, and hotels. (Remember, Albuquerque’s Best Western sucked and the first Whole Foods was Oklahoma city.) He said he wished we’d flown.

That is a pretty big breakthrough for him. I wasn’t sure how to take it. We’d talked about desensitizing him to flying, maybe taking a trip to Anaheim (45 minute flight) and spending the weekend at Disneyland and Dodger games before flying back. With a trip all about fun, maybe it would be worth it to him. If he could learn to give up the control, maybe we’d go somewhere further afield. But we’d shelved that project for another day, maybe this summer.

So now, what do I want to do? Once I got into it, I was pretty excited about traveling around the country. I’ve had a really good time seeing the country. Given how different the states were as we traveled west to east, I’m very interested in seeing the differences along the northern route. And yet.

And yet, if I could transport home right now, I would. To sit in the warm sunshine in the lounge chairs in the backyard, hanging out with the dogs and a glass of something cold, fizzy, and fruity. To spend part of my day applying my mad problem solving skills** to problems that need solving. To not need to go for long walks in the early morning to alleviate my own anxiety. To be able to eat foods that aren’t exciting, food that I cooked myself.

I don’t know what we’ll do. It is up to C. But I don’t know what I want so I don’t plan to pressure him either way. There is goodness along both paths. I won’t be disappointed to fly home. And I might learn something on the drive home. His choice.

** We were discussing my reception snack acquisition and I mentioned that one of my skills was making things happen, I just needed a goal and I turned into a guided missile. My sister-in-law (not the flute playing one, the mathematician one) said she really wanted to pet an Abyssinian kitten. Darn if I didn’t actually look up the local Abs rescue before I realized I’d rather nap than attempt to grant her wish. She’s spoiled enough.

At some point this evening, after I finished packing clothes (deciding to go with the many-small-bags approach), identified the few things that still need to go in the laundry and added things to the List (socks!!), I realized something shocking and horrifying:

OMG! We are going to leave for a month starting Sunday. We are going to DRIVE across the continent. Are you kidding?!?

I avoid driving to Mountain View unless I’ve got a good reason. Going to SF usually requires an immediate monetary reason. And despite the rumors of beautiful beaches, we’ve never been to Mendacino because it is too far.

Shouldn’t someone stop us? Talk some sense into one of us?

This trip has always been in the future. And even though we’ve been getting ready for weeks, it has still been in the future. But if we decided to leave a day early, we’d be leaving tomorrow. To drive across the continent. For a month.

This is just insanity. I’d never agree to this. I’m sure I’ll wake up any minute now. Or transition into taking college exams naked…

Where ever you go, there you are.

I find that statement dumb. I don’t know what about it makes me slightly crazy with “duh!” but it grates on me. Of course, it is true. But sometimes you are where you didn’t go, or didn’t mean to go, but there you are anyway. And sometimes you are there when you didn’t move at all because you were there before.

There was a point, I swear, I was working on one. But now I have no idea what it was. Like walking through a room to figure out what it was I forgot, let’s start with the title… C asked me a week ago why we were nervous about this trip (we both are) and what does it matter where we are on a given day. After all, we’ll have the internet, food, shelter, and showers. We could live nearly anywhere and be able to do what we do. And we have each other so we’ll be happy. Why does physical location matter?

I love California. I’ve lived here all my life so I suppose I don’t know if I’d love living somewhere else (other than Pittsburgh in the summer, which I did not love). The beauty of California is hard to top but is a familiar beauty. We sometimes go for a walk when the sunset looks nice over the hills or the moon rises over the far mountains. And the beach is a half hour away and we play hooky pretty often (it is supposed to be 85F on Friday, so expect some slacking soon). But, you know, if we don’t do it today (or Friday), it will be the same tomorrow, next week, next month. There is comfort in that sameness.

There is comfort in our life. We’ve worked hard to get the house the way we want it, the kitchen organized for us and pretty to look at, the garden full of bees and squirrels and flowers, the TV set up to do what we want, our jobs such that they amuse us, etc.

Here, the internet is fast. The food is exactly what we like. And when we go out, we know where we are going, what restaurant has great food, where is good to chat, what is minimum fuss, who has good takeout, where has nice outdoor seating for dawdling, what is new and should be tried when we feel adventurous.

We have choices but once we decide on, say, pizza then the next choice is delivery, pick up or sit. Once we decide that, we know where we are going. We know what to expect when we get there. And we enjoy the anticipation of knowing we’ll be getting something good and the ease of choice.

When we travel, we’ll lose all that context. We won’t know where the good pizza is, at least, not our definition of good. And we won’t know which hotel to stay in. We’ll be faced with a barrage of choices at every stage.

These choices have consequences: this gas station or maybe drive a block to save $5? will this grocery store have our preferred yogurts? if we eat at this dicey taco stand, will we regret it for thirty minutes or three days? if I go for a walk in this neighborhood, is there a chance of getting hassled (or worse)?

Some of those can be determined by asking for help from the natives but we aren’t good at that. Sure, Google is our friend (does this hotel have wifi? internet? free? secure?) but we aren’t that good at asking for help. We are accustomed to figuring it out ourselves or knowing the answers from long association. Talking to people is hard.

We will experience lots of new things. I feel a little sorry for future-us, it will be a firehose of newness and uncertainty. As someone who sometimes gets catatonic faced with the array of shampoo choices in the grocery, this overload of options is going to be hard.

So why do it? Well, let’s stop dwelling on the causes of the fears and start thinking about the investment we are making.

First, it doesn’t matter which shampoo I choose. It doesn’t matter which hotel, gas station, or lunch. Sure, there are consequences but the consequences are minor, remember that. The best options and the worst options will average out over time. And if they don’t, that is ok (remember that too). No one dies.

Second, that phrase, no one dies, is an important one. Our last road trip was due to my mother’s failing health. It was horrible. Terrible. Awful. All that and so much worse. Maybe someday I’ll tell you about it but as aversion therapy, it was excellent. Neither one of us wanted to leave the house for months.

We need to get over it. A weekend in Half Moon Bay or Paso Robles is enough to prove we can. But those aren’t real road trips and we want to be ok with this, to prove to ourselves that we can do it, to show that when something looks difficult, well, at least it won’t be as tedious as driving through Nevada on the last leg of a 6,891 mile journey.

The third investment requires some creeping up on so let me take this from a different angle.

When you are sick (or injured) for a long time, you get used to the limitations. You get used to pain and not going out because it hurts. You get used to avoiding commitments because you can’t be sure if next Saturday will be a good day or a bad day. Even though it is disappointing, annoying, exhausting and frustrating, you get used to it. It makes the world small. We went through this with my health a few years ago (all better now, thanks).

That smallness of the world? I don’t feel the walls close in now because my cage is of my own making and so very luxurious. But I don’t delude myself, my world is fairly small. That is ok with me, I don’t know if I would try to stretch it out unless pushed. (But we were pushed, a little.)

What if there is more? What if one of the consequences for all those choices is something better? It is like finding out that the disgusting slimy Brussel sprout of my childhood is a nutty delicious thing. I could be wrong about my certainties of what is best. Things we know to be true will turn out to be (at best) partial answers. The beauty of California is a given. I know New Mexico is amazing too, in a totally different way. What else is there? That is the big question: what else is there?

We’ll see huge extremes, things we’ve never seen. And we’ll see little ways of doing things differently. We’ll come home with stories and ideas.

Change is scary. But if we pack snacks and hold hands, it’ll be all right. Our world will be bigger when we come back.