Sometimes when you wake up, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. You probably have a to-do list and barely have enough hours in a day to do it. And when you’re behind the wheel, you may not always have time to enjoy driving. The pace of life can get hectic, and you can forget about the little things, like enjoying a simple road trip. Next time you’re free, get in your car or motorbike, then set off. Drive in any direction and just keep going. This may sound silly, but it can change your life just as it did mine.
This will be my last post for Jalopnik, and I want to send you a smile and maybe some hope for the future.
Let’s rewind the clock to early 2020. The pandemic has just hit and there is a lot of uncertainty in the world. The industry in which I work, K12 education, has enjoyed great success. Suddenly students stopped going to school, they even left their homes. It wasn’t long before my tech work in that industry became obsolete, and I found myself at home doing nothing, waiting for a future for which I had no roadmap. That’s a feeling I’m sure many Americans share.
I decided to continue living this new normal. I met the person who became the love of my life – from Facebook Dating, everywhere – and I still don’t stop doing crazy things with cars. Damn, I even found a way to go on a date while avoiding COVID-19. My first date with the woman I will marry this fall? We approached one of O’Hare’s runways and watched the plane land.
However, that vague feeling still stuck in my head.
At some point, I don’t need to sit around and wait. I can use this as an opportunity to play better on the other side. And to start it off, I’m going to take a trip somewhere specific. So when the shelter-in-place order was lifted, Sheryl and I set off for a trip we didn’t know when we’d get home.
Our steed on the trip was a 1997 Ford Ranger.
It’s rear-wheel drive with a small 4-wheel manual transmission under the hood and a manual transmission. It’s almost as basic as you can get in a truck, which means it’s perfect. We will stick with friends with the sole goal that we will enter the Oregon Gambler 500. But what happens before and after is completely up to us.
During this trip, I saw sights that I never thought I would visit in my life. I camped at a campsite in the middle of absolute nothingness in Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park in Montana. I saw a huge buffalo statue in North Dakota. And we even got to tour Yellowstone.
Along the way, we stopped to enjoy the glory of the American West. America is beautiful, and honestly, you could go on many trips and never fully grasp everything this country has to offer. We came to roaring rivers, seemingly endless mountain ranges, and crystal clear lakes.
I got to swim in a random Oregon lake that to this day remains one of the best waters I’ve ever taken a dip in. There are even beautiful hot springs.
And we found it all by not having any particular place to go. Instead, we just go where our hearts have taken us.
The way home has even more to do with it, as we made an effort to take a GPS-free and non-interstate route. We ended up taking the roads across the southwestern states through the endless desert. There were times when we had driven for more than an hour without seeing another vehicle, and you could forget about cellular reception.
Along the way, we somehow stumbled upon the Bonneville Salt Flats, where it happened so much differently in real life than on television.
We ended up spending about two weeks away from home. I went on an anonymous tour with someone I had known for only two months, and I returned with a changed woman. I feel like I can achieve anything and the phone in my wallet is less important than I thought.
Just a few months later, I joined the Jalopnik team and achieved a dream I had had for a decade. It’s been over a a year and a half of the adventure, buy car, and even fulfill a lifelong dream of flying in the sky. I love it and don’t regret a second of it. And now, it’s time to give something new to yourself again.
Today, I don’t really look in the rearview mirror of life anymore, and I’m always thinking about the next silly or wonderful thing ahead. The world is definitely full of fascinating things right now. And it sometimes drags me down with it. But when I swing my legs over a motorcycle or get in that pilot or driver seat, it all goes away. I may not have control over what happens in this world, but I can control this car and the adventures it will take me on.
If you can rotate it, take a road trip with no destination. Do it as long as you can and don’t be afraid to go where your heart tells you to. When you come home, you can be a different person. That’s OK. Just remember to be true to yourself and don’t let anything or anyone stop you from being you.
If you ever see an old GM RTS feeder bus painted in the colors of Texas A&M in the Midwest, honk your horn. I’ll give you a wave and maybe a hug if you want. You bet I’ll be smiling at the start of any adventure to come. And I hope you will too.
