Ahhh, the almighty road trip – a wonderful blend to entice man’s love affair with the open road and that sense of adventure that can only be found when unearthing the family and half of it’s belongings to travel across the country in search of fun, entertainment, or at the very least, Grandma’s house. The time-honored tradition of over-the-road traveling has been critiqued by columnists and the well-opinionated as far back as the history books allow, and even before then it wouldn’t really surprise us all that much to find mentions of baby brontosauruses uttering something along the lines of, “Are we there yet?!” during the herd’s migratory activities…
About nine or ten days from now, I’m going to be taking a similar journey – you see, my own herd is moving west in search of a more abundant supply of greens…no wait, that’s not right at all! What I mean to say is that I’ll be taking to the road myself very soon, in an effort to travel the some 1382 miles northward back to the icy tundras of Northern Michigan for “vacation,” and if my calendar serves me correctly, this means that I have roughly seven or eight days left to procrastinate before getting ready for my big trip. That having been said, let’s just all meet back here next Thursday and we’ll continue our little discussion then…
…just kidding…
Unfortunately, you see, all joking aside, I’ve been known to experience to very distinct problems when trying to plan trips such as this. Of course, I wouldn’t exactly say that they’re limited to cross-country travel, as I can just as easily suffer such “brain farts” when traveling to work in the morning or even across the street to the nearby grocery store! My problems, simply put, are quite, well, simple – I procrastinate and I forget…but not necessarily in that order. And mind you, lest we not forget that I’m only the ripe, young age of twenty-four, but that’s another column for another day!
Nevertheless, having such valiant traits as these serves to be quite an experience when it comes time to take to the open road because obviously, I don’t give myself a lot of time to pack things up and prepare, and when I do get, oh say, a few hundred miles away, it’s only then that I remember such important items as my laptop’s power supply or my cell phone charger being left behind on the dining room table. Come to think of it, pretty much anything requiring an adapter altogether has a better than average chance of being left behind on one of my trips…which explains why I end up having half a dozen of the things after I’m forced to track one down in a local store and pay double or triple what I could find a replacement for on eBay…but I’m certainly not bitter about that!
So this year I’m doing things a little differently, wherein I’m only taking with me the shirt on my back and that’s it…boy, is it going to get chilly up there! Nah, this year I’m actually preparing all of my things ahead of time because, in traveling nearly 1400 miles over a two day period, there just isn’t any time to turn around because of my own ignorance…’nuff said. Any of you who have driven the distance before knows that nothing sucks worse than traveling from Florida all the way to Ohio, only to realize that two-year-old Billy’s stuffed Binky is still resting quietly back in the playpen, and Billy will be doing nothing of the sort until he is reunited with the stuffed lizard! Imagine the same thing with a fully grown man only being able to get in two hours of Warcraft III, much less any actual writing work, before the laptop batteries take a dive and ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got a situation on our hands…
Of course, once everything is loaded and ready to go, the rest of the trip should be a piece of cake…or so the Germans would lead us to believe…and you’d better believe that I’m going to be sure to fill you in on all of those details next week as this humor column comes to you live from the road…presuming that I remember to bring the laptop in the first place! Until then, tie a piece of string around your finger, setup a reminder on the computer, or even just leave yourself a sticky note – whatever you have to do to remind yourselves to remind me to stay on top of this thing – only you can help prevent this writer’s forgetfulness!!!