Confessions of an aging road dog

Old road dogs nev­er die, they just dri­ve away. — Me

We’ve been trav­el­ing three days now, with easy overnights in Missouri and Arkansas launch­ing our Midwest road trip on a promis­ing note. Both states made last­ing impres­sions with their nat­ur­al beau­ty, vibrant down­towns, friend­ly locals, and abun­dance of armadil­lo roadkill.

We’re in Kansas now, entranced by a cerulean sky topped with dol­lops of pil­lowy white clouds. The shoul­ders of U.S. Highway 160 are lib­er­al­ly pep­pered with curled-up armadil­los. We wish they were sleep­ing, but the inter­net tells us they’re noc­tur­nal and pre­fer bur­rows over sun-dried pud­dles of blood.

Why can’t peo­ple just slow the hell down?

The Wichita Airbnb I’ve booked for the night should be easy to find, but it isn’t. I pull to the curb in the leafy College Hill neigh­bor­hood where the “speakeasy-style car­riage house” is pur­port­ed­ly locat­ed. Google Maps says we’ve reached our des­ti­na­tion, but I’m dubi­ous — noth­ing match­es the pho­tos on the web­site listing.

We’ve dri­ven around the block a few times now, grow­ing increas­ing­ly frus­trat­ed by the one-way streets that thwart our efforts at every turn. Jeff keeps insist­ing it’s the state­ly house on the cor­ner that in no way resem­bles the pho­tos — but he’s nev­er seen them, so it’s an under­stand­able mis­take. Our typ­i­cal divi­sion of labor is that I make the reser­va­tions while he plans the next day’s route. Things go more smooth­ly when we play to our strengths.

I dis­agree with Jeff and say so, cit­ing the visu­al dis­crep­an­cy and the listing’s descrip­tion, which he also has not seen. He dou­bles down any­way, lean­ing hard into his asser­tion that Maps says we’ve arrived. Things are get­ting heated.

The street on which we’re quar­rel­ing is wide, but not so wide that it feels safe to remain pulled over long enough to hash this out. I’m in the driver’s seat and want to keep mov­ing, cer­tain we’re not quite there yet. Jeff is beside me — and increas­ing­ly, him­self — equal­ly con­vinced that we are. We’re fight­ing now — say­ing the same things over and over, only loud­er — as if vol­ume is the key to our deadlock.

Finally, Jeff snaps. “WE’RE HERE,” he growls. “PARK THE CAR AND GET OUT!”

Immediately, I switch on the right blink­er, sig­nal­ing my intent to do the oppo­site. Before I can pull back into traf­fic, he bolts from the car and bounds away, bark­ing furi­ous­ly over his shoul­der for me to follow.

It’s on.

Self-right­eous and incensed, I snarl, foamy sali­va flood­ing my mouth. I’m bark­ing now too, all but howl­ing out the open car win­dow that he’s wrong and needs to GET BACK IN THE CAR. He doesn’t obey me, of course, and trots pur­pose­ly toward the cor­ner. I hit the gas and dri­ve away, deter­mined to find the place on my own.

Rage, it turns out, does noth­ing to improve a poor sense of direc­tion. Within min­utes I’m back, hav­ing futile­ly cir­cled the block — again. Jeff hasn’t made much progress, either. He’s wan­der­ing the tree-lined side­walk, mov­ing more slow­ly now than when I last saw him. I pull over, and he gets in the car. We’ve both just lost our shit and we know it, which has a cool­ing and uni­fy­ing effect that enables us to word­less­ly regroup. Together, we even­tu­al­ly find the car­riage house; it’s tucked away behind a black wrought iron fence that we’ve passed sev­er­al times — and it’s perfect.

Vacation sto­ries like these are rare to nonex­is­tent on social media, and when asked how a trip went, don’t usu­al­ly make it into the high­light reel. But maybe they should. A road trip, or any kind of trav­el for that mat­ter, is just a mov­ing mag­ni­fi­ca­tion of every­day life: a high­ly con­densed and extra­or­di­nar­i­ly ephemer­al pas­tiche of proud and not-so-proud moments expe­ri­enced in a dif­fer­ent place. 

Remember that old say­ing, Wherever you go, there you are . . .? It’s the lit­er­al truth on a road trip — and no one trav­els with­out baggage.

Jeff and I try to pack light, but we’ve got issues — like most long-time cou­ples— that don’t stay behind and hous­esit when we decide to leave town. They pile into the car with us, mak­ing it much fuller than it looks. We hope they’ll behave, sit qui­et­ly in the back seat and look out the win­dows, but even­tu­al­ly they start kick­ing the backs of our seats, need­ing to get out and stretch their legs or whin­ing that they have to pee. So we pull over and let them — because if years of mar­riage coun­sel­ing have taught us noth­ing else, we know the dif­fer­ence between dys­func­tion and a dealbreaker.

We’re road dogs, you see, with thou­sands of bumpy miles under our scarred, thin­ning pelts — and the vaca­tion pics to prove it. Our decades of flawed togeth­er­ness have sea­soned and synced us — as spous­es and trav­el part­ners. Occasional back­bit­ing just goes with the ter­ri­to­ry. What more can I say? We’re animals.

In the final analy­sis, we’ve nev­er regret­ted our adven­tures and mis­ad­ven­tures (much), this lat­est one includ­ed. Wichita, it turned out, was enchant­i­ng, as was the state of Kansas in gen­er­al. Nebraska, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois were fas­ci­nat­ing too, offer­ing shared expe­ri­ences that enhanced our appre­ci­a­tion of the world and each oth­er. We fol­lowed our noses through­out the trip, which is our pre­ferred way to trav­el, and the weath­er coop­er­at­ed even when we didn’t — a near-mir­a­cle for mer­cu­r­ial May.

As spon­ta­neous­ly as it began (72 hours after hatch­ing the idea, we lit out), our Midwest road trip end­ed. On Day 17, we decid­ed to head home the fol­low­ing morn­ing. During din­ner that night in Peoria, Jeff turned to me and said what a great time he’d had; that he knew no one else in the world who would enjoy trav­el­ing the way that we do.

I hate to admit it, but I think this time, he’s right.

— Epilogue —

Old habits die hard. When fright­ened by oncom­ing traf­fic, armadil­los leap upward to the height of the aver­age car bumper. As a result, their road trips are gen­er­al­ly short and fatal. Not so for road dogs, who live and breathe for the next out­ing, their rest­less crooked legs twitch­ing night­ly with end­less dreams of travel.

Jeff and I cov­ered 4,500 miles in 18 days — hard­ly a record for us, but not too shab­by, either. That’s 432 hours of grim-glo­ri­ous togeth­er­ness, and I can’t wait to do it again.