Road Trip

After leaving our house (for perhaps the last time) we drove to Doug’s parents’ house to stay the night. It was fairly late and we were tired – not good company for what may be the last time we see them. I stayed out of the way and let Doug have time with them. We left the next morning, Saturday before Labor Day.

We mad an unusual stop in Rochester. We went to a Barnes and Noble to buy a book, blue highways by William Least Heat-Moon. Least Heat-Moon (whose father is Heat-Moon and older brother Little Heat-Moon) drove what is basically the perimeter of our nation avoiding at all costs the interstates. It is delightful to read particularly when you are driving the very roads he drove back in 1980 or so. It’s fun to read because he can write well making me laugh out loud at times and making me very somber at others. It’s an adventure complete with danger, odd encounters of humanity and self discovery. It is written in short chapters that require little commitment from the reader. I periodically read to Doug as we drove the roads.

Doug and I love road trips. He loves driving and seeing country he’s never seen before. I like road food (translate, fast food like Taco Bell and Subway), stopping for a drink (Pepsi) because I’m thirsty and “having” to eat out because we’re on the road.

We are a good pair on the road. Neither of us like noise so the radio is usually off and we rarely play CDs. I think we played two CDs the entire week we drove. I like to talk. Doug is funny here. If I want to guarantee conversation with Doug, all I have to do (at home) is pick up a book, get comfortable and start reading. All of a sudden he’s Mr. Chatterbox. BUT sit the two of us in a car for hours on end and it’s a one woman show. I remember one road trip he wanted to take. Two weeks out, I agreed with the stipulation that he would talk to me while he drove. Well, the day came and we sat down in the car. For the next hour and a half or so he never stopped talking. I was polite outwardly but inwardly was thinking “Who put a nickel in him?” and “For pity sake shut up!” It was then that I remembered my stipulation. He was fulfilling his end of the bargain. I praised him, thanked him and relieved him of duty. This roundabout trip to D.C. was a good balance of two-way conversation.

I say roundabout trip because we did not drive straight to Falls Church. I have two aunts and a cousin in Kentucky we visited. Doug has a friend from the service in the Gatlinburg area we met with over dinner. We also have a friend in Virginia (a couple hours outside D.C.) we stopped to have lunch with. It was a nice drive to see the country for the last time in quite a while.

If you have never driven the Blue Ridge Parkway, do it. Choose a non-touristy time of year so you don’t get totally frustrated with the single lanes backed up with nature gawkers. There are plenty of places to pull off and take pictures (and eat lunch from your ice chest). There are mountains and trees as far as you can see. The leaves were just barely starting to turn when we were there. We drove past many roads that shot off into the trees to someone’s unseen house.

There have been times of my life that the off roads would have tried my patience. You roll through small towns that set the speed limit at 30 for a couple or few miles. What set this trip aside is that we had almost no time commitments. We needed to be in Falls Church by the 13th of September. We could stop whenever something looked interesting or we had a hankering for a drink or snack. Once in a while we’d drive behind someone who was in less of a hurry than we were and we’d get sick and tired of looking at their bumper. Passing is tough because the road winds constantly. That’s when I’d read or we’d try to peek up those side roads to see what we could see.

Our time together in the car that week was good preparation for our months together in the apartment in Falls Church. More on that in a later posting.

The government paid for accommodations and food for direct travel to Falls Church. We weren’t sure what we’d be reimbursed for since we were taking an entire week and going so far out of the way so we were frugal. We loaded up an ice chest with leftovers from our refrigerator and ate those. The only meals we ate out were with my family and Doug’s friend and our other friend who we saw the day we arrived in Falls Church. We were doing so well eating leftovers I thought we should be eating out just to get the reimbursement. (Sometimes I don’t think very straight.) I will say I was pretty disciplined considering that this was the last week before Laura’s boot camp was to begin. I had very little Pepsi and only two small bags of dark chocolate M&Ms. I also exercised each night at the hotel. I also exercised in the car but that’s another story.