Monthly Archives: February 2011

With a half-birthday just a few days behind me, I’m six months short of being 25- years-old. In the space of those years, I’ve been to 32 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, defining been to, as one of the following conditions: I’ve lived there, spent the night there, I’ve driven clear across it, or I’ve been lost in it for three or more hours. Counting layovers in Kansas City, St. Louis, Pittsburgh and Phoenix, it makes 36. In a few weeks, I’ll cross Hawaii off of that list. I boarded an aircraft for the first time at the age of 16—and we’ll just say—you never forget your first time. Most of these places, however, I reached by car (hence all of the getting lost). If there’s anything I love, it’s a good road trip.

Where haven’t I been? New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and the majority of the states in the Northeast, including, but not limited to: Rhode Island, Delaware, Vermont and New Hampshire. I also haven’t been to West Virginia, which is certainly a missed opportunity, as there it sits, tucked between a smattering of states I have been to, for better or worse.

First, a word on Indiana. I’ve never spent the night in this particular state, that I recall with clarity, but I’ve driven vertically across it—literally—three times, from Evansville to Gary, and vice versa, so I know enough about it to call it. The first time I drove through this fine state, my car was vomited on (seriously) for a stretch of four or five miles. I had thought, initially, that someone had thrown a water bottle out of a window of the minivan in front of me, but when I turned on my windshield wipers to watch liquid-brown chunks of god-knows-what smear across the glass, I realized I was dealing with something far more sinister than a bunch of inconsiderate litterers. Luckily, the minivan and I pulled off at the same time—I, to remove the acidic human secretion, and they, for gas—so I had the opportunity to accost the passenger-side sonafabitch, just as he was ducking into the men’s bathroom to puke some more. I then proceeded to accost the driver for switching into my lane everytime I tried to get away from the vomit, but he claimed he wasn’t paying attention. Something about his Cubs jersey and slurred speech told me that he was quite possibly drunk, and I vowed, mentally, to slit his tires at the next rest stop, in the name of saving the good patrons of Wrigleyville bars from the band of vomiting fools.

My second memorable experience in Indiana was less disgusting, and by less disgusting, I mean disgusting, but less. I had stopped at a Wal-Mart in West Lafayette, home of the esteemed Purdue University, at the outset of my journey toward Morristown, Tennessee (home of the esteemed Davy Crockett) for the Thanksgiving holiday. I thought I’d pick up a book-on-disc. All that need be said, is that I emerged from that particular Wal-Mart,book-on-disc-less, and shaken to my core.

But, I wouldn’t trade it. Other things I wouldn’t trade, include: floating down a nondescript creek for three hours in an easily forgotten Franklin, North Carolina, and getting stung (in the swimsuit) by twenty pissed-off wasps; getting pummeled with an ice block on a tarmac in Cincinnati; nearly getting trampled by a tour-horse in Savannah, Georgia; paying ten dollars more for a “garden view” in a Boise, Idaho hotel at 11:54 p.m.; stopping in Medora, North Dakota for the hell of it, and finding a sign that tells you the exact number of miles from that place to Portland, Oregon, and St. Paul, Minnesota (the very city we were headed to); finding out that your best friend (the one who stopped in Medora with you), who braved the journey from Portland to Detroit in a 2004 Ford Focus in under three days, was pregnant with her first child the whole way.

I walk around, admittedly, with a jump-on-a-plane, pack-it-up-or-sell-it, attitude. I moved to Portland on a whim and a man, and I can’t say I’ve based any truly consequential decisions in my life on a well-crafted plan (but I’ve been over that before). Consider this: I applied to three Florida universities my senior year of high school. I was accepted to all three, and it came down to the University of Florida, and the Florida State University. The UF-FSU game, 2003: the winner was taking my four years-worth of tuition. As it happens, FSU won that game (a game they wouldn’t win again until 2010), and as it happens, nine months later I was moving to Tallahassee. As it happens, it’s a decision I wouldn’t trade for all of the National Championships in the world. But maybe the further away things get, the more fondly you remember them.

Even now, I pay some people’s monthly salary in rent, and have found myself day-dreaming about owning a home. Not some luxurious downtown condo with views of the city—but an achy, whiny old house in a quiet, friendly  neighborhood—with a yard and a fence and a real dining room. Space, and walls I can paint, and an address I confidently put on a driver’s license that expires in 2018. And yet, as much as I yearn for a place that’s so completely mine (read: I detest landlords), I yearn more for mobility. Even if I’m not planning on going anywhere, I really like knowing that I can.

I’d like to live everywhere, at least for a little bit. The places I that I love, and those that I don’t love yet, but know that I would. Places I could live sleepily, dreamily in, and places that I could make a career in. I had the chance once, to be a professor’s wife. Following my husband’s job to whatever rural town it landed me in, bound to a university, and tied to tenure. I said no, but another girl, shortly thereafter, said yes, when I couldn’t commit to settling down.

If I had to guess, I’m guessing I chose right.