Eat, Sleep, Drive

Yes, it’s 2:38 in the morning, and yes, I am actually just starting to write this. But don’t be fooled, some of my most memorable posts have been inspired by a heavy lack of sleep and/or an intoxication of highly caffeinated beverages. This may or may not be the product of both of those variables, but please, don’t judge.

For full effect, download “Rivers and Roads” by The Head and The Heart and play at maximum volume throughout the duration of this post.

Now don’t be fooled by the title, this isn’t some type of feminine feel-good post about discovering the true meaning of life by gorging myself on European delicacies and petting elephants in New Delhi with Julia Roberts as my sidekick. No, this is the story of the last 35½ hours of my life, and the lessons I learned while a trio of great men compressed themselves into a ’93 Corolla and journeyed to the strange land of Pocatello with all-you-can-eat buffets and homemade peach pie as our only fuel, and attempted to convince a handful of potato pushers that they need to begin looking a bit further south to pursue their college degree. 

Yes, this has been the story of my life for the past three years. And it doesn’t look like it’s going to change any time soon.

When you’re trapped in a car for 13 hours, your mind starts to play tricks on you. Almost to the point where you begin asking yourself the question “Is This Real Life?” in a “David After Dentist” accent.  And yes, you read that correctly, three very intelligent sexy men were behind a steering wheel for 1/3 of the past day and a half, and boy did we stay busy. Whether we were having some of the most outlandish shouting matches over NCAA football, singing three-way harmony for an hour and a half to a Garth Brooks playlist, or regurgitating our dinner with a farting contest just after midnight, we claimed that car as our sanctuary, and boy did we get our money’s worth out of her.

Road trips do some crazy things to you; that I can surely attest to. Not only mentally, but physically as well. When you’re on a road trip you begin to develop an accute taste for unhealthy food, or what is commonly known as “Road Body”. When someone develops this unhealthy disorder, they begin gorging themselves at places that only offer an all-you-can-eat menu. The justification for this unhealthy splurging is that there are no wives or girlfriends to keep one in check; therefore we can eat until our zippers pop open. After gobbling down turkey steaks, pot roast, and cinnamon rolls lined with ice cream for two nights straight, I swear the big man upstairs is going to turn us all into Somalian orphans in our next life.

Speaking of life, for a brief moment on this trip I actually thought I had died. True story. Tell me what you would be thinking if you woke up from a nap and suddenly you were in the back corner of Maddox, stuffing yourself silly on fresh rolls and raspberry butter, meanwhile an iPad was set up on the table streaming the BYU-Texas game live, all of this while you sat in the company of two very dear friends. I’m not kidding, for a split second I thought I had literally died and gone to what my version of heaven looked like. Either that or I sniffed some heavy hallucinogens in my hotel last night.

In all reality, this trip doesn’t really mean that much to you.  In fact, nearly every single one of the stories I write about on this blog don’t mean a thing to you at all.  My life on the road, my backseat escapades, my buffet feast-fests, these are all my stories. Not yours, mine. You can’t really appreciate what these tales mean to me, or who the handful of characters are that play their supplemental roles. Heck, I’m impressed that you’re actually still reading this blog because none of you really have that emotional tie to this story at all. It really means diddly-squat in your eyes.

But the great thing about our existence is that every single one of us has our own story to tell. And as cliché as that sounds, those stories are more valuable to us than nearly anything else in this world. Those stories are what keep us going every single day of our measly, mundane, monotonous routines that we pathetically classify as a life. 

As for me? Nearly ripping my pants at a buffet, contorting myself like a gymnast to fit in the backseat of a tin cup, and singing along to Garth with two other guys, well those are some of the best times of MY entire measly, mundane, monotonous life.