May there be a returning for you

I didn't finish this story while I was out driving. Things got a little too heavy, and it got a little too hard to write. Now that I've had some distance, I want to finish.

Somewhere in Montana, I admitted that I wasn't in love with my boyfriend. It was an admission I had avoided for a long time, because the relationship was comfortable and because I knew that if I did admit it, then I would have to end it. If I ended it, I would hurt him and I would have to pick my life back up and put it back together in a new way.

So I did, and like she always does, my best friend got me through it.

She was there for all the long, angst-ridden conversations afterward, and when she made her first visit back, she was the first one to notice how obviously much happier I was.When she got homesick in Oregon, she called me and I like to think I helped a little bit.

It was a great trip west. We saw Mount Rushmore:

We found out there's stuff in Washington that's not Seattle.

We discovered that wind farms are weirdly beautiful.

We found a pen of puppies in the Badlands.

We survived a terrifying rain storm in the Rockies and then saw a sunset that no photos could ever do justice, especially not the sort I can take with an iPad.

We met a dinosaur. His name is Sinclair.

We made it to Oregon, where I slept every night surrounded by beagles, and I got on the plane and I came back home. I broke my glasses somewhere in the air between Phoenix and Charlotte.

It's been two months since then, and I don't feel any less close to Kate than I did before she left. She's still my best friend. We still love each other. We still help each other through the hard things and laugh about the silly things and have unnecessarily intellectual conversations about Lost Girl.

I had given up on Best Friends Forever, but I know that I was wrong now. It does exist, and not just for other people. Friends are out there for the difficult women, the ones who talk too much and have too many opinions and are too vain and too smart and too strange. It just takes us longer to find each other sometimes.

 

Badlands

Kate says taking a cross country trip with someone is like being roommates for two months condensed into a week. I think she's right. We did a lot of talking today, and I think maybe I got a little of the insecurity shook outta me. 

We drove through some beautiful country over the past couple of days. Not Illinois. Illinois sucks. We sat in its stupid traffic forever, and it stretched on for miles and miles, and it had eight hundred tollbooths (not one of them Phantom), and it's just dumb. Bite us, Illinois. 

Minnesota, though! I don't know what I was expecting from the southern edge of Minnesota, but it was really quite lovely. All big green fields and bright blue skies and a light breeze and 70 degrees. I have never seriously thought about moving to Minnesota until this afternoon, but if I'd had my skates I probably would've just stayed. 

But then I would have missed South Dakota, and that would have been criminal. The Badlands are gorgeous. Not only that, but I've never seen anything like what I saw out the window there. The hills are huge, these sharp, spiny affairs stretching into huge expanses of land just barely broken by fences and scrubby little brush and the occasional twisted tree. The sky goes on forever, and we dipped in and out of the valleys for hours that just flew by. We even discovered a pen full of puppies at a rest stop (don't worry, their people were with them). It was beautiful. 

And of course then there was the crowning achievement of today: Mount Rushmore. The straight on front view was pretty cool - those heads are indeed huge, and the plaza leading up to it is neat, too. A large group of Navy vets had gotten there just before us. Their jackets declared them all Vietnam-era veterans who had been aboard the Essex class aircraft carrier USS Bonhomme Richard, and they were a charming group of gentlemen. 

Now we're in a hotel in Wyoming, and I have nothing to say about the scenery here because it's dark. 

I want to see the stars from the mountains tomorrow. We got a little flash of them in the middle of a wind farm in Minnesota last night, and I want another look.  It's easy to forget the stars in Northern Virginia. Except for the very brightest, they're invisible. We lose all that delicate glitter in between the bold print. I don't know how long it might be before the next time I'm out of the streetlights and the buildings that never go dark. I want to enjoy it while I've got it. 

Trapped in Toledo

The title of this post is misleading. We are not actually in Toledo. We are just south of Toledo, in a town called Perrysburg. The gas station at which we are stranded is on a street that could have been pulled right off of any main drag of any suburb in America - Target and McDonald's and Chili's and pavement. 

What this place lacks in unique local color, however, it makes up for in available services. The moving truck company will have someone out here to fix the truck in an hour or so, and in the meantime we can feed everyone and take the dogs out for a walk. We are reminding ourselves to be grateful that this is not happening in South Dakota, which would be phenomenally worse. The sign on this gas station does just seem extra sad under the circumstances, though. Irony, you vicious asshole. (And it is irony, because we totally thought "get in. Get out. Get going." was what we were going to do, and then we did not. So shut up, irony police.)

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

We have officially survived Day One. 

We of course didn't get out of Fairfax until about two hours later than planned. Given the nature of the trip (moving the entire life of two people across the country), I kinda figured that would be the case. Nerves were frayed from the lack of sleep the night before and the final bits of heavy lifting in the morning, and the beagles were not at all pleased with being packed up into a car. We successfully got on the road, though, and then everything was going really pretty well. Sailed around the Beltway without encountering anything that anybody from the DCMA would call traffic, got through Maryland, and then the first official kink in my plans showed up. 

"Daniel really wants to go to Mount Rushmore," Kate told me somewhere around stop number 2 or 3. Daniel is Kate's brother who took the train in from Portland to help with the trip westward. 

"Does he know that's in South Dakota?" I asked, because I remembered that she thought the Grand Canyon was on the way. 

"Yeah. He wants to go there." 

My freakout reflex immediately kicked in. South Dakota was not in the plan. North Dakota was in the plan. More importantly, visiting Jamie in Wisconsin was in the plan, and that was really the one stop on the trip that was actually important to me. In the midst of my freaking out, I didn't think we could possibly do both. My understanding of Midwestern highways is extremely limited, so when Daniel said something about taking 80 out of Chicago, I didn't remember that 80 runs with 90 there and we would essentially be following the exact same path. Just the idea of a change to the plan had me panicking a little. 

As it turned out, we could easily have done both. However, I got an email from Jamie while we were at the bar telling me that everything that could possibly gone wrong with her move to her new apartment had, and she wasn't going to be able to make it. So...it was a panic for nothing. 

A lot of my panics are for nothing, I think. I get all wound up about what I think is true, or what I think people are saying, and immediately begin to freak based on completely erroneous assumptions. It usually comes up because I find other people scary and assume that they hate me and everything I think or say or do. Once I get all upset about what I think is true, I find it really hard to calm back down when I realize what is actually true--I get locked in this terrible guilt/shame spiral over being wrong and possibly upsetting someone else, and then I just want to go hide in a closet somewhere. 

I have survived this latest episode of be wrong/have someone else be right/have things not go according to plan, however. We all got a decent night's sleep here in Perrysburg, Ohio, and now we're ready to truck on across the northern midwest. We're going to make this a longer driving day since we have no need to stop in Wisconsin Dells, and we are now Mount Rushmore bound. Huzzah! Look at me being flexible! Clearly the yoga is helping. 

When Tomorrow Comes!

Tomorrow is the big day. At approximately 10 a.m., Pat, Kate, and Daniel (Kate's brother) will arrive at my house to pick me up, and we will be headed north and west.

Things I have done to prepare:
- purchased a cooler, bottled water, soda, hummus, and fruit, as well as hummus vehicles (Pretzel Crisps and Pita Chips) and Chex Mix. Did you know Original Chex Mix is vegan? We had no idea until this past Friday. Learning! But I digress. Snacks are good to have between stops, and they are much much cheaper purchased ahead of time at the grocery store than purchased bit by bit at gas stations.
- Got my hair and nails done. People will be taking pictures, and I am not about looking trashy in pictures. And with a can of dry shampoo, I can make this blowout last all the way to Portland.
- Pulled all the clothes I intend to take along. They just barely fit in the small suitcase. Since I will also have shoes and toiletries and whatnot, we're just gonna go on and upgrade to the large suitcase.
- Sent all the emails to make sure my work is covered while I'm out of town

Things I still need to do to prepare:
- OH GOD SO MANY THINGS. I need to check in with Jamie about meeting up with her in Wisconsin, and I need to get my hair products and whatnot into their little travel bottles, and I need to buy Kate some Diet Dr. Pepper, and I have to make sure I'm taking the right pajamas, and I need to check all the weather and figure out if I'm going to need long sleeves other than the light jacket I already washed, and I need to pick up some Excedrin, and I need to check the mail for my prescriptions, and I need to print out the maps/directions, and y'all, I really can't stand here talking. I've gotta go. 

Over the River and Through the Woods

I made separate geographical playlists for Days 2 and 3, but I sort of feel like they run together. Part of it's because I'm picking songs for places I've never or seldom been. The midwest is all one big mystery to me. I'm pretty sure corn and snow both feature heavily, but that's nearly all I've got.

It makes me wonder how people who have lived in Peoria their entire lives and have never been to North Carolina envision it. Some sort of giant tobacco field full of bbq and NASCAR with a beach on one end, which is approximately 9000 degrees hot every afternoon? We all have a pretty solid image of places like New York and Los Angeles and New Orleans, whether accurate or not, because they feature in a lot of the stories we see and hear. The place I grew up, or the places a lot of others did, not so much.

So now I'm thinking over the media and experiences that shaped my vision of these places I've never been. Dorothy and Oz, Jack and Diane, Chicago, The Hold Steady, Dan Fogelberg, various truck commercials, my friends from Iowa and Wisconsin and Illinois, my father's time as a kid in Minot and Omaha - all these snippets of green grass and golden fields and small towns and big, cold cities that stand like islands in a sea of prairie come together to form a patchwork image in my mind. It's lovely, but vague. You're a big quilt to me, Midwest - I'm looking forward to seeing what some of your squares look like in real life.

Dairyland, USA - Toledo to Wisconsin Dells
Wide open spaces, northern European immigration, second cities, and a struggle for clear identity

The Andrews Sisters - "Beer Barrel Polka"
Edith Piaf - "L'accordéoniste"
Antsy McClain & the Trailer Park Troubadours - "Falling in Love in America"
The Samples - "Indiana"
Dan Fogelberg - "Illinois"
Sufjan Stevens - "Chicago"
Frank Sinatra - "My Kind of Town"
Bon Iver - "Brackett WI"
The Hold Steady - "South Town Girls"
Bruce Hornsby - "The Valley Road"
Counting Crows - "Omaha"
Dar Williams - "Iowa (Traveling 3)"
Lady Gaga - "You and I"
Eddie from Ohio - "The Train Song"
Elton John - "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road"


Where the Buffalo Roam - Wisconsin Dells to Bismarck 
Cowboys and plains and a stark contrast of light and dark

Crash Test Dummies - "The Country Life"
Big & Rich - "Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy"
Toby Keith - "Should've been a Cowboy"
The Old 97s - "Mama Tried"
Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Johnny Cash - "The Highwayman"
Neil Young - "Cowgirl in the Sand"
Sting - "Fields of Gold"
Carbon Leaf - "One Prairie Outpost"
Patty Griffin - "Chief"
Ryan Adams and Emmylou Harris - "Return of the Grievous Angel"
Arrogant Worms - "Last Saskatchewan Pirate"
Great Big Sea - "The River Driver"
Neko Case - "Middle Cyclone"
Eddie From Ohio - "Number Six Driver"
The Hold Steady - "Ask Her for Adderall/Cheyenne Sunrise/Two-Handed Handshake"

The Song Game

Everybody has their favorite car games for long trips. My family was always a bit unusual; I can never remember us playing License Plates or 20 Questions or whatever that game is where you find Volkswagens and hit people. Volkswagen Violence? I don't know. I was unpleasantly surprised to discover in 1st grade that hitting people upon spotting a VW Beetle was even a thing.

Anyway - our usual car game of choice was one we just called The Song Game. Like most car games, it's simple: pick a category, and each person in turn sings a snippet of a song proving that it fits into the category. Categories included Names of States, American Cities, Girls' Names, Boys' Names, Weather, and even one exciting States: Challenge Mode in which my father and I tried to match each other's states (that is, he sings a song with Delaware in it, then I have to find another song with Delaware in it. Surprise: there are not many songs with Delaware in them.)

Dad was also always a big maker of mix tapes. He always called them Road Tapes - and indeed, when I first encountered them, they were on cassette and carefully recorded from other cassettes and vinyl for the purpose of always having the perfect driving music on hand. I can remember him helping me make my own for the first time when I was about 5 years old. My Brownie troop was having a Dance Party, and everybody was supposed to make a mix tape with their favorite songs to dance to. Mine involved Steeleye Span's "Misty Moisty Morning" and Bon Jovi's "Livin' On A Prayer" and Steely Dan's "Reelin' In The Years."  I was very proud of it. The other Brownies and my Troop Leader were not impressed.

"These were supposed to be dance music," Mrs. Johnson informed me with a sigh. Apparently she was expecting something else for dancing in 1987. Whatever, Brownies. If you don't like my jams, you can go do Arts & Crafts without me. I didn't like your lame troop meetings anyway.

Anyway...based on this fine family tradition of mix tapes, weird musical themes, and I Like What I Like and Screw You For Judging Me Mrs. Johnson, I have begun making a few mix CDs/playlists for the Greatest Adventure. Right now I have 7 different sets - a geographically-themed mix for each of our days on the road, one gloriously lengthy We Love the 90s mix, and an almost equally lengthy set themed around travel/driving. There will undoubtedly be more before we're done, and of course I know Snarky/Kate will be bringing along a few of her own. I'm looking forward to seeing what she comes up with - her taste tends to involve more screaming women who love their vaginas and fewer twangy tunes by the politically problematic, but we have enough crossover (and deep, abiding love of karaoke) to have fun with each other's collections.

For a taste of what's coming from me, I now unveil the Day One geographical jams:

Cities of Steel and Glass: Virginia to Ohio
Industrial Revolution, suburbia, working for the weekend, and the beauty in despair.

Mary Chapin Carpenter - "Down in Mary's Land"
Simon & Garfunkel - "America"
The Magnetic Fields - "100,000 Fireflies"
Bruce Springsteen - "Born in the USA"
Bruce Hornsby - "That's Just the Way It Is"
Alice in Chains - "Rooster"
Eddie From Ohio - "This Is My Town"
Billy Joel - "Allentown"
Great Big Sea - "Chemical Worker's Song"
The Head and the Heart - "Down in the Valley"
Seven Nations - "Blackleg Miner"
Hem - "Half an Acre"
The Old 97's - "Buick City Complex"
Seven Mary Three - "Punch In Punch Out"
The Vogues - "5 O'Clock World"
Elton John - "Rocketman"