The Road Whip

A good road trip will allow you to sing bad songs, stop for useless pictures at scenic spots, spot some wild life in nature doing some sort wildlife in nature type thing and maybe stop at a fruit stand to buy a watermelon because every road tripping person needs fruit to pass the time, on their way to a new city.

But I wasn’t on a good road trip. In fact, what I was on was a notch below the road trip. I was on a day trip. Which meant that I had to squeeze all the potential fun of a road trip, into a mini: get in the car have fun and drive back home event.

It’s pretty much the equivalent of a chocoholic being satiated with a snack size plain M&M bag instead of the “big daddy” the craving killer original one and only yellow regular bag of peanut M&M’s. No comparison.

Mistake #1: Instead of hooking up the iPod and searching through the library for Sublime or even Michael Jackson’s, Off The Wall Album to get a “good” road trip started, we opted for an audio book of Iyanla Vanzant’s, Peace from Broken Pieces.

It's a good book don't get me wrong, but in retrospect a book about abuse is probably not the best way to start a road trip and so the tone is set.

I was trying to give it a go however… I wasn’t going to let the somber mood coming out of our car speakers set the mood. I was trying to offset Iyanla’s tales of repeated cycles of abuse with my camera and open window. I was hoping the fresh air coming in would take the heaviness of the air out the window onto the 15 freeway. It didn’t.

Look! A fruit stand! The trip is starting to get better. Time to get my watermelon.

The truth is that every time I stop at fruit stands, I can’t help but wish I was the: green- hippieesque- buy local and make a fabulous meal from scratch- wear recycled clothes- own a chicken and plant your own gardening writer from the 60’s. The truth is that whatever fruit I buy comes from a romantic notion that I’m somehow more in touch with myself then the people who go to Ralph’s and buy their fruit there but I somehow doubt that, that theory is based on any sort of reality- imagined or otherwise.

(Come, walk with me through the fruit stand...)

Since I knew that the fruit would likely be in the car all day taking bumps and bruises from our gallop through winding roads, I decided that I couldn’t really buy one of everything like I wanted. So instead, I bought the hardiest fruit I could find. A pomegranate. I didn’t really plan to eat it on the road. After all, I can’t eat one without first making sure I'm wearing black and have 25 napkins and ginger ale in case I stain my blouse. I bought it because I can’t go to a fruit stand and NOT buy anything. So, for 75 cents I bought my pomegranate put it in my purse (because it’s not “green” to put it in a plastic bag) and went on my way.

I was feeling good right about this time, deciding that however grim Iyanla and her book were making my thoughts, my camera was going to capture the beauty outside, so I snapped away.

With my camera I was capturing the windy roads turning left and right, leaning this way… and that way... and the hills going up and down, up and back down, curving left, curving riiii…

All of a sudden I started to feel nauseated. I couldn’t breathe and was feeling like if the car didn’t stop winding and going up and down, and if Iyanla didn’t stop recounting years of physical and emotional abuse over my car speakers, I was going to make Kristal wish she had suggested staying home and renting movies (where a toilet was near).

That’s when Kristal noticed that the color had flushed from my face.

I had gotten real quiet, and was breathing heavier then when I climb the stairs at work. Quickly Kristal reacted; Iyanla was turned off, the windows were put down and Kristal made a U-turn to head back.

Oh no…. now we have to drive back in order to GET BACK.

Kristal was driving slower this time and the radio was turned on with happy music. To be honest I wasn’t sure that driving slow was the best idea considering that prolonging the length of time I had to keep my last meal down was raising the odds that I’d lose that battle.

We were nearly out of the woods when she spotted a sign…. “Sam’s Mtn”.

Oh Look, I thought, see everywhere I go, my kids go with me. So we stopped to take a picture.

I snapped the picture and sent it to Sam.

I was about to take another picture of the mountain when suddenly:
I was flying up off my seat, my head was ricocheting back and forth between the headrest and seat and I think I heard birds chirping over my head but that could have been Kristal laughing at me.

The dip we hit didn’t nearly affect her as much as it did me. She was sitting up driving preparing for what was coming next and I was completing reclined in my seat with no idea that my body would feel like it was free falling onto jagged rocks.

Kristal, well she couldn’t stop laughing.

I, I couldn’t stop the random tears and red nose that had shown up on my face… don’t feel bad for me, it was funny, but it also felt like my neck took a lashing… a whiplashing that is.

Road trips are fun. Day trips can be fun too. Just make sure that the next time you take one, you also take an iPod full of good music, plenty of money for the fruit stands, a motion sickness pill, a seat that is fully in the sitting up position, a neck brace just in case and spray bottle to squirt the person who laughs at you when your nose hits the ceiling.

This post is dedicated to Desi- who wanted another story.

Tell me about an incident that happened during one of your road trips in the comment section!

Comments

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sweet!!

Posted by: Jamie | 11/25/2011 at 04:43 PM

HAhahahaha loves it Gav... And you and Kristal are all to familiar with my road trip story!!! Lets just say that it was an experience that Mayah and I will never forget....that was the day that Mayah fell in love with her rescuers!

Posted by: Desi | 10/17/2011 at 07:56 AM