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May. 15th, 2022 12:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psipsyI'm starting to get jazzed about the upcoming road trip. I'll probably get even more amped about it in about a month. Warmer weather has that effect. When it's freezing snowy rainy yucky and the sun sets early, I don't really want to go anywhere if I don't have to. I'd rather just stay at home and watch anime. When it's warm and sunny, I start to get that itch to go places. I've set aside 2 full weeks, but I'm probably not going to use all of it for the road trip. I've learned it's good to have a couple days for wind-up and cool-down. A day or two before to make sure everything is all set, and a day or two after to decompress and unpack (or if needed, a spare travel day).
Lemme tell you about the first-night anxiety that tries to sneak in. That's a thing I've noticed about myself. It's nothing serious, a slight crackle of static that's just loud enough to notice, but that's it. In fact I don't know if it's strong enough to qualify as an anxiety. What happens is, I'll set off on my trip, and drive however far I can the first day. Then in the evening, there's that low-level urge to go back home, with the logic of "if I turn around now I can get back home in only a few hours". I have to fight that urge. It's not much of a fight, and it ends when I reserve a room for the night. "Well, I just paid for a room, so I guess there's no turning back now." When I wake up the next day, that static is gone. I'm off and running, and ready to keep going. After that, the only time the return-urge comes back is when I'm starting to run out of days. Then I'm like, okay, you have a point there, it's time to start heading home.
The origins of that are somewhat logical. Usually, when it's time to stop for the night, I'm still relatively close enough to home that I could get back in several hours, and my night-owl tendencies allow for this easily. This happens frequently when I go places like Ocean City or Skyline Drive. It's less about "what if this or that happens" and more about "let's just save a few bucks on a hotel and go back home". But it doesn't account for the time used. Which is why that urge disappears after that first night, because when I wake up I'm in a whole different area, (mostly) new and (mostly) unexplored territory that's right there, strange new places ripe for immediate exploration, no 4-5 hour lead time required. And then I'm that much closer to where I want to go next.
Sometimes that static wins out, such as when I'm down in the Ocean City area during the summer, and my choices are to either pay $250 for a night at a rundown motel ($300 if I want to keep both kidneys) or make the 3-hour drive home. And as it usually happens, at the times I'm heading back home, I skip the worst of the traffic. Light traffic on 4-lane roads in good weather makes for quality night-driving.
If all goes well, I'll start looking at doing something even bigger next year. Something historically significant that I've been wanting to do in some capacity for the longest time: Route 66. Of course, if Japan fully re-opens to tourists by then, that'll add a wrinkle.
Lemme tell you about the first-night anxiety that tries to sneak in. That's a thing I've noticed about myself. It's nothing serious, a slight crackle of static that's just loud enough to notice, but that's it. In fact I don't know if it's strong enough to qualify as an anxiety. What happens is, I'll set off on my trip, and drive however far I can the first day. Then in the evening, there's that low-level urge to go back home, with the logic of "if I turn around now I can get back home in only a few hours". I have to fight that urge. It's not much of a fight, and it ends when I reserve a room for the night. "Well, I just paid for a room, so I guess there's no turning back now." When I wake up the next day, that static is gone. I'm off and running, and ready to keep going. After that, the only time the return-urge comes back is when I'm starting to run out of days. Then I'm like, okay, you have a point there, it's time to start heading home.
The origins of that are somewhat logical. Usually, when it's time to stop for the night, I'm still relatively close enough to home that I could get back in several hours, and my night-owl tendencies allow for this easily. This happens frequently when I go places like Ocean City or Skyline Drive. It's less about "what if this or that happens" and more about "let's just save a few bucks on a hotel and go back home". But it doesn't account for the time used. Which is why that urge disappears after that first night, because when I wake up I'm in a whole different area, (mostly) new and (mostly) unexplored territory that's right there, strange new places ripe for immediate exploration, no 4-5 hour lead time required. And then I'm that much closer to where I want to go next.
Sometimes that static wins out, such as when I'm down in the Ocean City area during the summer, and my choices are to either pay $250 for a night at a rundown motel ($300 if I want to keep both kidneys) or make the 3-hour drive home. And as it usually happens, at the times I'm heading back home, I skip the worst of the traffic. Light traffic on 4-lane roads in good weather makes for quality night-driving.
If all goes well, I'll start looking at doing something even bigger next year. Something historically significant that I've been wanting to do in some capacity for the longest time: Route 66. Of course, if Japan fully re-opens to tourists by then, that'll add a wrinkle.
