on the road again

When I took off from Newark International on Tuesday, it felt good to be heading home but that sense of total closure wasn't quite there. This is probably because just about all of my earthly belongings were stuffed inside a five-by-five unit at the American Self Storage in one of Jersey City's more scenic neighborhoods, waiting for their turn to be rescued from the Garden State and whisked back to the south.

As of this morning, that day is nigh.

Plans for what Holly and I have been referring to as the GART (Great American Road Trip) were made official this morning as I booked the truck we'll be driving to New Jersey and back over Labor Day weekend. It's both exciting and daunting -- I'm looking forward to knowing that I'm totally, 100 percent back in the south, not to mention the bastions of road-tripping we'll enjoy (DQ Blizzards, Big Gulps and adult contemporary hits, to name a few), but I'm definitely intimidated by the 24 hours of driving we're going to undertake in the span of a weekend.

This will, without a doubt, be the farthest I've ever traveled by car as one of the primary drivers. And I know how I am, I always think things like this will be just no big deal, no sweat at all, why are we even talking about this it'll be as easy as a GD James Taylor song. But really, I know that much driving can be exhausting. So I'm mentally preparing, mostly by mentally planning on drinking a lot of coffee and mentally imagining the sugary high I'm going to get off of mass DQ Blizzard consumption. Like I said, mental preparation. It's complicated.

Ultimately, though, intimidating as it is I know we'll have a blast, we'll live to tell about it and we'll both be doing one of our absolute favorite things: traveling. Yeah, it's not to some fancy vacay and our destination is actually the same as our starting point. But nonetheless we'll be traveling through five states, passing tons of little towns and funky stops along the way and seeing parts of this country neither of us has laid eyes on before now. It's an adventure, and I'm psyched to say the least.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go perform an ancient Indian gasoline dance and pray to the gods of price gouging that I don't have to give a Citgo attendant my first-born child to fill up our tank in two weeks. Please, Allah. Please.


cheers,
elizabeth