The first thing that comes to mind when you hear the words “road trip” is fun. Images of the open road, music blaring, the wind blowing through your hair, and the excitement of adventures not yet had, start dancing in your head, as soon as you hear those three little words.
If you’ve never been on road trip then the ante goes way up and the thrills become unimaginable but just as fantasy filled. There is nothing on the open road, yet nothing seems more tempting at times. It could be just the thought of being far away from home. It is an unspoken rule that the farther away from home you go, the less you have to act like your real self.
Then one day you get extremely lucky and somebody asks you if you would like to go on a road trip with them. They start telling you what they have to do and how far they plan to go in how long, but you don’t hear any of that, you just hear yourself saying “I’m there”.
After planning and packing you hop in the car and head off for a week long drive across the U.S., which happens to be over fifteen hundred miles, but it doesn’t occur to you, how much time has to be spent driving, for you to be able to make that two way trip in one week. All you know is that you are so there.
Everything starts off amazing as you leave one state and head into the next. The excitement is overwhelming as it floods your system with adrenaline; well it does for a few hours. A couple of states later, you start wondering how many miles did they say it was going to be, and when would you be stopping to eat, sleep, get the feeling back in your back side. You finally succumb to sleep, only to be awakened by the loud horn of the semi that was honking to wake up the driver of your car. It’s about this time that the reality of what you are doing starts to hit you. By now you are hundreds of miles from home and there is no going back.
Finally you and your road trip partner stop to get something to eat. The food is okay but not double the usual price okay; it’s obvious they smell tourists coming from miles away. After about day three and ten hours of sleep, you start to feel very homesick and homicidal at the same time. It seems you’ve agreed to go on a road trip with a person who happens to be stuck on a power trip. They will not let you listen to the music you want or drive, even when they are clearly ready to fall asleep at the wheel. They also forgot to tell you, or you were not listening when they told you, that you would hardly be stopping during this trip because they need to be back for work in a few days. After driving through a summer hail storm with, a half asleep egomaniac, at the wheel, it is official, you want off this ride.
It is now time to take matters into your own hands and do the most logical thing possible; you get to the nearest bus station and catch a bus home. As you settle into the seat for your long ride home, you feel the bus swerve and wonder how long it’s been since the driver last slept.
