Travel Adventure Tips

I missed the posting deadline again for our SpinClass Writers Group this week 
(http://spinclass.wordpress.com) - so as I had this burning a hole in my brain, I had to put it here instead...(recovered and updated from my old Geo-cities website which now lives in the Geo-cities Archive project http://www.geocities.ws/sandidv/)

This post could also be titled "Ways to make or break a relationship."

While I am not a jet setting world traveler, I have taken two outstanding cross-country trips – one with my boyfriend, who later became my husband perhaps because of our trip, and one with a college girlfriend who I have “unintentionally” lost touch with.

If you'd like to test the strength of your relationship with your significant other, before you commit to something longer term, I suggest taking a cross-country trip – and by “take”  - I mean DRIVE. Our trip was round trip, New York City to Seattle Washington.  But if you attempt to do this with your love interest, in order to thoroughly test your relationship it’s worthwhile to note that the destination is not as important as how you get there...  (and please note much of this should be read with an undertone of sarcasm)

So here are a few tips to remember:

• Try to over pack - and then also cram all possible belongings you think you could possibly find yourself needing in an emergency into the back of a 90's Acura Integra hatchback. 
• And for extra safety, be sure to properly position the huge load you crammed into the back of the car so that you are unable to see out the rear window.
• If you don't own a tent, don’t buy one… borrow one.  But be sure it is no bigger than a two-man pup tent (this is especially important if your significant other is over 6 foot tall)
• Empty out your bank accounts but be sure the money you both bring only totals just enough to get you one way across the country.  
• As you drive cross country at night, make sure your significant other is so awed by the incredible starry Montana night sky that he has no choice but to stop his now invisible black car in the middle of the unlit highway and turn off his headlights to get a better view of the stars – this will help you to feel like you are about to pee your pants in fear of a speeding truck or other vehicle coming along and being unable to see you or stop…
• Feel flattered after your trip when your boyfriend tells you “if you can travel cross country with someone and not want to kill them along the way – maybe they are a keeper…”

But be assured that Cross country (driving) trips are also recommended for testing the strength of your friendships.

• And again, be sure to first empty out your bank accounts and to take only enough money to get you one way…
• Encourage your friend to bring her hundred pound dog, which you are probably allergic to.

• Be sure that the dog is having an allergic reaction to flea bites and is losing her hair in patches which gently float on the breeze in the car when you have the windows open
• Be sure to have no air conditioning in your early 80's Subaru wagon (so you almost always have the windows open… see previous item)
• Be sure to travel through New Mexico and Arizona during July when you can catch those record high temps (it really is a dry heat… and see the two prior items)
• Be sure to visit Chaco Canyon and don’t let your friend warn you ahead of time about the scorpions and rattlesnakes that may settle outside your tent at night.  (best to not pee before you go to bed to assure you will only see them with your flashlight just before you potentially step on them on your way to the bathroom…)
• be sure to also make a side trip to rescue an additional hundred pound dog from a white supremist-racist in Kentucky who lives on a former slave era tobacco plantation and who named the black furred dog “watermelon”
• be sure to enjoy peacefully sleeping over on the plantation once you realize its too late at night to drive on unlit and unpaved Kentucky back roads though the tobacco fields and then try to escape as quietly as possible the next morning without having to see "the man" again
• be sure when you put the second hundred pound dog  in the back of the car that it will fight constantly with the first one
• be sure that the second dog ,who has never traveled before, is also so traumatized by the trip that he constantly tries to climb into the front seats and sit in your lap while you are driving
• If your friend then takes you and the dogs to her cabin in the remote mountains of Idaho, check ahead of time to be sure that there is no running water - and especially that the outhouse is far enough away from the cabin that you are sure to get lost in the dark coming back from it.
• Also be sure that the outhouse seat is cracked and painfully pinches your butt no matter how you try to sit on it
• Additionally be sure that the particular breed of dogs that you are traveling with is a herding breed – so when you frolic ahead of them in an Idaho field, enjoying the sun and breeze – they feel the need to run behind you and nip your ass to keep you in line!

but most of all - bring an open mind and find the fun and humor in it all - on a road trip and in life - there's always an adventure to be found!

“Sometimes it's a little better to travel than to arrive”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values