On the Road Again

Whoever said “a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step” must have been an ad man.

You know those folks, responsible for those “come hither” ads for South Dakota that leave out the part about the 106 degree temps in the Badlands in August. The Irish marketing geniuses who lure legions of first-time tourists to the Emerald Isle with picturesque shots of sunny skies over castles and fields, but fail to mention that it rains about every other day. Sometimes two out of three. The guys who promise your cell phone will really get service in the Grand Canyon.

“A single step” my ass, I grumbled through clenched teeth as I tried to remember to water the flowers off the kitchen, find the bottom half of my swimsuit, clean and pack the binoculars, locate a clean nightgown, pour enough cat food into a roasting pan that Smokey wouldn’t starve in my absence, leave the toilet seat up in case I forgot to fill the water dish.

Stashed my son and dog with my ex-husband, arranged for the mail to be picked up, alerted the rest of the kids by email as to their mother’s whereabouts with a maternal bulletin featuring a string of words they had surely never imagined assembled in sequence in the English language: your mother is going to Florida for spring break. Reassured the elderly parents, checked into the car insurance, raided the ATM for vacation cash, eviscerated the purse to lighten the load. Photocopied the major charge cards in case the newly svelte purse got lifted when I wasn’t looking.

The problem with that whole “single step” imagery is that it conjures up a zen-like focus, a deliberate, decisive, methodical advance toward a far-off goal. A rational moving forward, one step at a time. Reality is more like one step up, two steps back, a little shuffle sideways...and then do the Chicken Dance.

This trip was, in fact, a journey of a thousand miles, maybe a little more. It was a mad dash to the Gulf Coast, spawned by the absolute desperation of living through a cold and snowy Midwestern winter that seemed it would never end. The plan was simple—drive south from Wisconsin, meet up in Peoria, Illinois with my friend Kristin who was driving in from her home in Iowa, and keep driving south until we hit the first beach we saw on the Gulf of Mexico. Bask like lizards in the sun for two days, then turn around and head home.

Pretty basic. But impossible to definitively nail down that “single step” thing. Multi-tasking frenzy was more accurate. Herding cats springs to mind.

This is how, as F. Scott Fitgerald once noted, the very rich are different from you and me. They’ve got minions to do the heavy lifting for them. Do you think Bill Gates ever frets that he hasn’t properly packed his travel-sized toothpaste in a quart-sized ziplock bag prior to boarding his private jet? Do you think Angelina Jolie wakes up at three in the morning thinking that she’d better top off the litter box with another inch of Tidy Cats before she leaves? Does Warren Buffett take the time to ask his neighbors to “keep an eye on the place”? Ha ha ha!!!

In some ways, the adventure began an entire day before, with a trip to pick up the rental car at a Sheraton hotel thirty miles away from home, a detour to my boyfriend’s house to stash my own car in his garage for safekeeping while I was gone, and an intervening Bruce Springsteen concert in the eighteen hours between renting the vacation car and actually nosing it south out of my driveway, the front door locked behind me and the porch light on. I’d bought those tickets months before, while there were still vestiges of autumn warmth in the air, and there was no way I was missing that concert. Had it not been for Bruce, the beach basking time could have been extended to three days or four. What a conundrum!

And in and around the car rental were squeezed the comparison shopping for hotel rooms on the internet, the stop at the local AAA office for maps and travel books, runs for sunscreen and prescriptions, reorganizing my collection of CDs for some proper “traveling music,” with Jimmy Buffett and the Beach Boys in easy reach. I’ll never be able to remember the half of it, just the image of a tidal wave of persnickety details that seemed like death by a thousand cuts.

When, against all odds and timing, I was finally ready to leave and was only an hour behind schedule, I nosed the car north, not south.

In my rearview mirror was a driveway coated with sleet from the night before, and the grass still held a heavy frosting of ice. Fog swirled around the car as drove a familiar path toward town, to the drive-thru at Starbucks. I placed my order, inching forward, making last minute adjustments to the collection of CDs in the rack on the visor. Double checked that the driving directions to Peoria were within arm’s reach.

The magic Plexiglas portal above me opened, money changed hands, and finally a tall soy mocha with whipped cream made its way into my car. The familiar aroma permeated the air around me. I relaxed instantly as the hot liquid hit my throat and my tastebuds reveled in the familiar and comforting. I pulled out of the parking lot, and eased the rental car toward the expressway ramp.

The journey of a thousand miles had finally started. Everything else was prologue.