Long Drives

If you had asked me 2 years ago, I would have told you that I hate long drives and road trips, particularly if I have to drive. This is because I have a notorious habit of not being able to drive more than 45 minutes without getting tired and drowsy at the wheel. Like... Saturday evenings, after 3 hours of intense volleyball. Or Sunday afternoons, after Pho. Even getting from Plano to downtown is tough.

But, Bethany has been gracious enough to see this as a weakness of mine, and she's always willing to take over the driving for me if I need her to. This helps her to feel safer, and it saves me from the pressure of that horrible feeling of having to drive but knowing you're dead tired and that your tiredness is really putting your life and the lives of your passengers in danger.

So... road trip. 6-8 hours of driving for each leg of a 3-leg trip. Two years ago, I would have said no way. But, I think my confidence was up a little bit after being able to do some long chunks of driving this last summer when we road-tripped to Detroit with friends.

And I'm happy to say, I did pretty well. I'm actually pretty proud of myself, and I think Bethany is proud of me too. For each day of about 7 hours of driving, I'm able to pull off the first 5 hours without getting tired. This is huge! For those of you who have ever been a passenger in my car when I'm tired, you know that this is no small thing (xacto, mravery, ecl, and others).

We start our drives early in the morning, before the sun is up and blinding. I have a 16-oz Nissan Stainless filled with hot coffee which will stay hot for hours. And (if Bethany is napping) I listen to podcasts of Security Now, which is a totally geeky but totally intelligent and informative weekly show on the latest Internet Security news. Yes, it keeps me awake to hear experts talk about forged SSL certificates or dns cache poisoning. Riveting.

And then, there are external motivations to keep on truckin'. Motivations like hunting for the first Sonic after 2pm so that I can get a strawberry limeade for half-off. Or motivations like getting to the Hyatt Tamaya as early as possible so we can enjoy it as much as possible.

Or, like this morning, as we crossed into CA, knowing that it would only be a matter of time before I could get to this:


All of a sudden, road trips don't seem so bad.