Dreaming of the Road

by syaffolee

Sometimes I wonder if I’m ever going to be “settled in”. It seems like I’m always running errands for one thing or another. The to-do list never seems to end. And already, I’m contemplating the notion of moving somewhere else–primarily because my neighbors think that all the noise I make is waking up their baby. Which is total bullshit. I rarely stay up past midnight. I live alone. I don’t talk to myself. I don’t have a television. And any music I play, I can’t hear it in the next room.

Then again, new parents may in general be crazy. Maybe my presence is just a convenient excuse for why they aren’t getting any sleep.

As for work, I think it’s going well. I haven’t yet transformed into one of those nutty, stressed-out post-docs. But other than that, I can’t really talk much about work. There are these rules they have about what one can or cannot say on blogs and social media. I may have to put a disclaimer on this blog about how everything in here is my opinion and not that of my employer–blah, blah, blah–just to be safe even though I write under a pseudonym, don’t talk about work or even say who I work for.

* * *

Recently, my sister and I have been contemplating doing a road trip together. I guess we could go for complete spontaneity, but considering where we want to do the road trip, I do not want us to be inadvertently stuck in the middle of the desert at sundown with no one but weird snowbirds and their dusty RVs to keep us company.

We’ve divided up planning with me figuring out possible routes with a list of cities and towns we might be passing through while my sister, being the discerning foodie, will make a list of eateries that we should visit. (I suspect we’ll be eating a lot of Mexican food as my sister is always complaining that there’s no real Mexican food in Canada.) And other interesting spots we might come across in our research, we’ll just add to our master list of “things to see if we happen to be there.” This way, with our prior planning, we will go see and eat interesting things wherever we happen to be while avoiding the tourist traps and the burger places owned by giant corporations.

Of course I can’t discount the wisdom of prior travelers, so I definitely welcome any suggestions anyone might have. (We will probably go through bits of I-8, I-10, and I-40. The actual route won’t be finalized until we’re actually on the road. And then, maybe not even then.)