Today marks eight months since we locked the door to our house in Florida and set off for a year-long adventure in an RV. Here’s what we learned during the past month:
You’re going to get a suspicious look at best and serious stink eye at worst when you prance up to the grocery store checkout aisle with your fancy east-coast reusable bags. Yer in Texas now (and Wyoming, and Montana), and yer jest provin’ to us all yer not from ʼround here, ya big girl’s blouse.
Don’t fool yourself by thinking that banner above the cart corral in the parking lot that reads, “Don’t Forget Your Reusable Bag” has any real meaning. You WILL be the only one using them. Baggers inside the store will conveniently find a way to move to another aisle when they see you coming. It’s the law.
Those weird little thrown-together meals you’ve been eating, often just consisting of a Nature Valley Chewy Bar or a can of soup, don’t offset all the time you spend sitting as you’re touring around. Sure, you’ll get some exercise walking and doing a little hiking, but if you thought you were going to shed the pounds like rain off a duck’s back, you now know how wrong you were. That ain’t happenin’.
Jumping up and dancing to the Peloton commercial that comes on every five minutes counts as exercise.
Christmas is hard. Not being with the people we love hangs like a constant, low-grade sadness as the day draws near. Driving around looking at all the beautiful lights and watching happy families gather at restaurants for pre-holiday celebrations makes it feel like, this year, Christmas is happening to other people and we’re just spectators. We knew from the very first moment we started planning the trip that Christmas would be hard. It’s harder.
Stop obsessing about the seal in the toilet bowl. Lots of things shrink when they’re too cold. It’ll hold water again once it warms up.
When you’re parked outside a U.S./Mexico border crossing and there are no guards there, but you can smell marijuana like it’s being burned in a bonfire and the air is so thick you could get a contact high in minutes, it’s time to leave before you get involved in something you want nothing to do with.
When you’re in a big city and jonsing for a great meal at a downtown restaurant, make sure you know if there’s an event that’s going to have the traffic in gridlock. And use the bathroom before you leave home, because sitting in that traffic jam will put massive pressure on your mind and your bladder.
When you’re stuck in a downtown traffic jam with a bladder so full the whites of your eyes are turning yellow, just do the smart thing and run into the nearest bar. You’ll have time. And if you’re the driver with a full bladder, let your passenger take over the car’s slow crawl while you run like hell.
Staying in one place for three weeks was absolutely unthinkable when we started the trip. Why waste one moment not seeing the country? By month eight, it’s a blessing. Unplugging our brains gave us the chance to feel fresh and excited again, and to work on other book projects we’ve put on the back burner. It felt great to “stay home” for a little while.
At eight months into it, we’re starting to feel the end of the trip getting closer. What a bittersweet emotion. We’ll be ready to be home again when the time comes, but wow…we’re going to miss this so much. We’re not sure we’ll stop entirely, and plans to think about maybe, possibly, continuing in some form have already been cautiously discussed. What a change from Month Two. We call that progress!
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