Here’s another excerpt from “It’s Not About the Miles”
Getting to Tennessee
“If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.”
~ Sun Tzu
I hadn’t been on a road trip in over a year. In fact, I bragged that in the entire 15-16 months of the pandemic I had to fill my car’s gas tank only three times. Now I was going to drive 1000 miles there and 1000 miles back.
The little kid in me took over, which helped make the time go by. Depending on where you’re from, you may or may not know about Buc-ee’s. They are a chain of travel centers with locations in Texas, Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, and Florida – and more to come! They are massive, but most importantly, they have the cleanest bathrooms you’ve ever seen at a roadside travel area. And food galore! I stopped in every one I came across and my google maps route took me past many of them. Since my bladder was happy, my body said “thank you.”
I binged podcasts. I have never watched Oprah. I don’t think I ever watched an entire show. During my “younger” days, I didn’t have time and didn’t care. I found the podcast (for me it’s a miracle to find anything on Apple podcasts) and listened. They were her old shows, but just the audio. They kept playing one after the other, so I just kept listening to one show after another. I thoroughly enjoyed them and learned so much about Oprah, her history and causes and many of the people she’s had on. Once I had been called to be on the show but my bozo brother gave some lame excuse why we couldn’t go on, so that was that. This binging behavior really helped pass the time.
My age, my genetics, and my recent lack of experiences all reared their ugly heads, though. I pulled over in a downpour because I couldn’t really see and felt unsafe. I probably never would have done that in the past. But fortunately there were only a couple of downpours even though there was a lot of rain. Going this way, my genetics knocked on the door and said “Hey, you’ve never let me in your house, but I’m a friend of the family. I snuck in the back way, so here I am!”
I came to these bridges in Louisiana that went straight up and then straight down. Heart pounding, sweat threatening to let my palms slip off the wheel and total terror soared through my body. “How on earth am I going to get over this thing?” I’d never been afraid of heights, although my father and my brother were – and, of course, I used to tease them about it – who says there’s no such thing as karma? If I’d had an opportunity, I could have pulled over and used EFT[1] help me get over it. I was in the wrong lane to pull over and I don’t think there was any place to stop anyway. I just grabbed the steering wheel so tightly I was white-knuckling it and slowed to almost a crawl. The people behind me were really ecstatic at their luck I’ll bet. Eventually I made it over, flabbergasted though I was. This had never happened to me. I was so shaken up that I didn’t stop to think “um, you know there may be more of these things. You might want to pull over now and do your tapping.” Nope, never entered my spun up brain at all. I think there were three and right after the last one I knew I had to find another route home, far away from these bridges.
After the rain and the bridges and closer to evening, I looked for a place to stay and found a pleasant hotel somewhere. I don’t even remember where I stopped. But it was nice, and I got a lot of rest. I didn’t want to drive at night, and this was cozy.
A good night’s snooze and off I went the next morning. Not in any hurry. I hoped to get to Kimball on Monday. And I did; totally exhausted, however. I dumped all my stuff in the room. A downside of driving is that you bring too much stuff, especially considering you’re only going to take a tiny amount with you for ten days. Oh well, story of my life – too much junk. I went over to the Walmart area to get something for dinner, came back, and went to bed.
Tuesday was a day of relaxing and walking over to Walmart again so I could get whatever I needed. Did I mention I already had too much stuff? Oh well. Add some more to it. Then we had what’s called “the next to the last supper” where most of us gather – those who could make it in by then. It was a lot of fun and great to reminisce with people I’d missed for so long.
Life Lesson – Know yourself and what you’re up against before you head out on a major endeavor. While you’re at it, prepare for surprises.
[1] Emotional freedom technique (EFT) is an alternative treatment for physical pain and emotional distress. It’s also referred to as tapping or psychological acupressure.