Day 11/12 - Blitzkrieg Blues

I'm glad it's over. Not the vacation, that I wish was still going strong. The trip home though, I'm beyond glad that it's over. With the exception of a short layover it was a long and stressful 30 hours of driving. I undid in 2 days what it took me a week and half to accomplish. The drive home was the complete antithesis of what the vacation was meant to be. It was all about driving, taking the interstates I had spent the whole vacation avoiding, driving through every major city between Albuquerque and Atlanta. And it was on the way home I felt all those bad habits coming back.

Through out the vacation I had very few urges to go much faster than the speed limit, which coming from a self admitted lead food says a lot. I was in no hurry to get anywhere. If I got stuck behind someone slower than me, I didn't curse them asking why they couldn't at least do the speed limit. If a chance to pass them without much effort came I took it, but otherwise I just slowed the pace and enjoyed the scenery. The trip home was a different story. I went as fast as I thought I could get away with, and sometimes faster. When I got near cities and in congested traffic I was weaving back and forth trying to get one car closer to home. I was afraid the trip home was going to completely undo all the goodwill the rest of it had garnered.

With all those mind numbing hours and miles to go on the way home I had a lot of time to think. I had done lots of thinking throughout the trip, but it had been about how beautiful things were, playing around with new ideas for stories and books, and just letting random thoughts come and go as they please. The kind of thinking I did on the way home was the worrying kind. Thoughts like; what if, after I'll I've seen and all the places I'd visited, home didn't feel like home any more. I also thought about work, thinking things along the lines of; how can I go back to working 10-day weeks where the only sun I see is as it rises before I go to bed, or how can I go back to sitting around waiting for things to happen when I had tasted the kind of freedom I had gained on the road.

First off, yes - home still feels like home. I was glad to be home and sleep in my own bed, even if it was only for a few hours because I didn't get home till almost 2am and had to have to rental car back to Hertz at 9am. The second question, and one that I thought was more critical, was how could I go back. The answer is I can go back because I have to. Without that job, this trip wouldn't have been possible. This trip wasn't cheap, which I'm really hesitant to tally up a full total, and without a job I could never have afforded it. But I don't have to do this job forever. I have a renewed drive to finish my book, and because of the trip many new ideas to carry me on. I'm not going back to a repressed lifestyle, I'm going back to a bridge to better days. Something to subsidize my what I enjoy doing and, if things go well, my tickets out.

Over the next several days, and maybe even the next few weeks, as I have time to distill the things I've done, the changes I've made, I'll post updates of the aftermath. There are many anecdotes from the trip that didn't make it into my daily posts (for various reasons) and as I recall and refine those, I'll share the ones worth sharing. One thing is for sure though, after this trip I don't think this is the last time you'll be reading about my travels. I'm already trying to figure out the next one...