It buzzed in someplace between Des Moines and Omaha, and Jake’s got a death warrant for its beady little eyes. He’s thrashing around and opening windows and hooting and hollering at it, and I’m yelling, because “Jake, you can’t possibly kill a fly! You will never catch that fly! And if you can’t make peace, it will drive you and me insane and off the road and into a ditch and have you ever even seen Breaking Bad??”
We are, truly, having so much fun.
It’s a sunny day in Boulder, where we’re taking a pitstop for a few nights after five days on the road. Yesterday, we hiked Bear Peak and stayed the night with the parents of a friend. (I go to a liquor store on the way and ask the attendant for a bottle of wine that says, “Thank you so much for having us, people we have never met before.” And also, “We are college kids, living off peanut butter and black beans, if that gives you a sense of price range.” He picks out a nice Merlot.)
The view from South Boulder Peak, at 8,549 feet
Dear all, here is the plan:
Me, my whitewater rafting friend Jake, and my 2009 Toyota Corolla from Western Mass to Berkeley, CA, where I’m reporting for Cityside’sRichmond newsroom and living in the UC Berkeley student co-ops.
We camp in fields and beaches, and eat rice and beans and peanut butter, and pay our way cross-country with 8-ounce jars of local maple syrup shaped like maple leaves.
We commit to not feeling rushed.
We make peace.
At this point, the car needs an oil change, so we pull into a Walmart Auto Center (BAD IDEA). I’ve never known mechanics to be joyful people, but these ones are downright miserable. After an hour, one comes out and informs us that the appointment has been cancelled.
“We couldn’t get the oil filter cap off,” he explains. And, if at first attempt Walmart does not succeed, it is store policy to just not try very hard.
So we schedule a last-minute appointment at “I know A Guy Automotive,” and “the guy,” Dakota, is perhaps one of the kindest people we’ve ever met. In addition to money, we offer him the dashboard plant we have been slowly killing for the past 1,200 miles. He accepts! The shrub will sit on his desk next to the “Bottled Oxygen: full synthetic blend, Fair Trade Approved,” and a can of “Blinker Fluid.” (Shoutout and apologies to Brian Hamilton, who gave me this Christmas Cactus for college years ago. But Brian, really, I’ve been trying to reckon with my own fallibility in a real way these days — acknowledging when I have erred or need to reach out for support, etc etc — so thank you for allowing this moment of growth.)
The curmudgeonly Walmart crew
Every day is so wonderfully full and so wonderfully slow, I am baffled to think that in five days I have to/get to start a whole new job in a whole new city. This journey is actually just the journey! There is a destination! That night, I call a friend, and we laugh about endings and beginnings and everything in betweens. And for the evening, I no longer feel like I’m hurtling down the road at 70 miles an hour. That there is some present, and we can slow in its rotation. Eventually, all that’s left while we sleep in the outfield of this Iowan baseball diamond are the windmills above — churning and spinning, circling and pushing round something close.
And as I’ve gotten older and become less type-A (I no longer wear a watch — I am now sometimes late!!), I find myself living out some deeply-rooted faith in a sense of possibility. I’m reminded of that Vonnegut quote: “interesting things happen to people who tell good stories.”
I’m filled with gratitude (amazement, really) at this nature of the road. And as we unload the car in the hail of a Nebraska storm, I wonder what wonders this state holds. Really, I think, could it get any more serendipitous?
And that’s when the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile pulls into the hotel across the street.
