Muscle Atrophy is Just Part of the Fun!

I’ve been planning an all US, drive until the car breaks, lost leg muscles to atrophy ROAD TRIP.

This means I’ve been staring at maps with blurry eyes, adding and subtracting road buddies, figuring gas mileage, planning food preparation, tent operation, state park location and alien arrival festivals, all the while creating an overwhelming sensation to gnaw my own arm off!

GET A GRIP! I just physically shook myself. Why am I so concerned with details?

My first real out of state road trip took no planning at all. That was the beauty of it.

JANUARY 1998.

For about 2 months I was mooning over this FARGO (the movie) snow globe at the local film store. It displayed the “foot in the wood chipper” scene. Alas I waited too long and some other morbid soul bought it.

I had a car and 2 days free. So I thought, why not drive to Fargo, North Dakota and buy one.

My friend Lee took post as navigator and we quickly devised a plan. Drive to Fargo, buy snow globe and drive back. It sounded relatively simple.

So with nothing more than a couple blankets, a map of Minnesota and a few hundred dollars to our names we hit the road—jack.

We estimated that the drive to Fargo would take 14 hours.

7 hours later we arrived. We scoured gas stations, trinket shops, etc but NO SNOW GLOBE! And when I asked people about it they actually seemed offended. To my surprise, the city of Fargo was not proud of the movie FARGO and therefore had no “foot in wood chipper” snow globes to sell me.

So we went to Denny’s because that’s what you do when your bubble of hope bursts.

With all the extra time on hand, we did some road trip “restructuring.” Do we go home? Continue? Where? West—South?!

And the SOUTH WINS because it’s January and it sounds warm.

Al, our attractive server, located North and South Dakota maps, gave us the SENIOR discount on our food and wished us good luck! What a guy.

Oh South Dakota how I love thee! 75 miles per hour! Casinos attached to gas stations?! And the air was different—bold and clear—like it was preparing for a blizzard. Crap.

I am an AWFUL winter driver. I tend to slam on the brakes and do 360’s until I land with a thud in any nearby snow bank. Then walk to the nearby farmer and ask him to pull me out with his tractor.

So there I was, driving 35 mph through South Dakota in a blizzard—I am hyperventilating with every slip and slide as the snow continues to tumble down. I CAN’T HANDLE IT!

“You drive,” I tell Lee as I maneuver the car to the side of the EMPTY, repeat, EMPTY road.

No cell phones. No cars. No nice farmer with trusty tractor. We were in the unfreaking unknown. And I feared greatly I was going to experience FARGO (the movie) first hand. Stupid snow globe.

But Lee powered through like a champ while I threw a blanket over my head and whimpered like a puppy that needs to be let outside.

We pulled off the freeway to SAFETY! And pie. And we sat in a quiet, odd little diner right out of Twin Peaks and watched the snow fall... and just let it all be.

Eventually the snow dissipated and new maps appeared—NEBRASKA come on down! And I, O, IOWA!

Because, well, why not? I had geography in school—why not see what it is that I studied?

There we were—2:00 a.m. in Sioux City, Nebraska. I took a picture of Lee.

There we were, 2:10 a.m. in Sioux City, Iowa. She took a picture of me. I still have it!

Contrary to what we had idealistically believed it wasn’t warm though and we were tired and low on funds. It was time to go home.

And roughly 10 hours later that’s exactly where we ended up; in my driveway giddy from our conquest. We drove to 6 states in 28 hours. Crazy? Maybe. But we really experienced the freedom and adventure of the open road.

With that, I throw my hands in the air over this current inflated road trip. Ripping up my careful notes of mileage and tossing them in air with sweet freedom and blood from paper cuts.

I leave the planning to fate and my strange obsession with snow globes…and cheese. Because a tour of cheese houses could be just what this girl needs.