Friday 16 December 2016

Kindred

So in case you missed it, I went on a solo road trip to Burning Man this year.  As in, I drove there myself.  (I also tried to drive back by myself, but my van's "rear end" [heh] had other plans.  OH!  That reminds me what I was going to write about on Tuesday!  Hopefully I can remember for tomorrow, yay!*)

I did not enjoy the solo driving road trip.  Pretty much at all.  (Although the same way I hear some women swear childbirth is so painful they won't go through it again but then they sort of forget and, well, there's baby number two... I seem to be forgetting how awful it was, but that's neither here nor there right now.)

At some point during the week, I was hanging out with the new friends I'd made and they pointed to someone across the way.  "You should go talk to her, she came by herself as well."

So I did.  I walked over to this gal and I said hey, I'm Victoria.  The boys over there said I should come say hi, because you've come on a solo (female) road trip and I did too.

She looked at me, "You did?"  I nodded.  "Isn't it awful!?"

YES!  It is!  SO AWFUL!  And we hugged each other and I may have cried a little because yes, it was awful, and thank God someone else who'd been through it was saying it too!

I will forever be grateful to that woman.  For showing me that a solo road trip is totally allowed to suck and that it's totally ok to say so.

Meeting her, and her saying that, was one of the best moments of my burn.

Isn't it awful?

Yes.  Yes it is.

The end.





*I wrote myself a note, I got it.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

i find that really interesting - what was the reason/s you decided to go by yourself ???

and apart from the troubles on the way back why was it awful???

i'm asking this cos earlier this year I had to drive from northern queensland back to melbourne (29 hours) by myself and on the whole i loved it.

Victoria said...

I'm not really sure why I decided to go by myself. It started because the people I usually travel with or had planned to travel with decided not to go. And then rather than trying to find someone to travel with I started thinking about how I could maybe make it work going by myself and that ended up being what got me through.... thinking and planning. And then it was a matter of making it happen.

The entire trip was awful (you can read some of my descriptions of that if you look back a few months), mainly the driving itself in a vehicle I'd not been in before that was not physically comfortable or easy to drive on roads that were challenging. None of it was easy or fun at all.

It might have been more enjoyable had I been in a newer vehicle that I knew and that had, oh, say, a stereo, or the ability to cool myself down, or didn't constantly feel like it was going to tip over or careen off the road.

;)

Victoria said...

Oh, and if I hadn't had the worst, most stressful month of my life leading up to the moment I had to leave :(

Jason Langlois said...

I think your observations about the vehicle and the stress leading up to the trip are spot on. In a safer, more familiar car that hadn't required so much stressful prep, you'd have probably enjoy things a lot more.

I did a solo drive down from Victoria to St. Louis, and back, and it was no where near as bad as your trip. But I was in a brand new convertible, with tunes and no timetable and next to no stress.

I say next-to-no, because I discovered it's really hard to get a hotel room if you don't have a reservation you're trying after 5PM. I ended up sleeping in a couple rest stops and doing some all night driving a couple times.

I'm still impressed you pulled it off, and honestly think you are so much awesome inside that anxiety package.

Victoria said...

I think I would have had a much more enjoyable trip in a (very) different vehicle, but yes, it would probably still had some stresses. I think I would have been too afraid to sleep in rest stops after some of the stories (other) Jason told me to warn me off of trying to do that! And wow, Victoria to St Louis seems like a looooooooong drive!

And, thanks :)

Jason Langlois said...

The St. Louis back to Victoria, via San Fran was the long drive.

And as a white male in the early 90s, my options for crashing in a rest stop were slightly safer. I did it once after I couldn't find a place in Idaho, and then again in Nebraska when I thought the trees on the side of the road were getting too close (it's important to note, there are no trees on the side of the road in Nebraska... I was just that tired).

Would recommend hotel/motel rooms over rest stops any time.

Victoria said...

Yeah, no, that is not a good amount of tired to have been feeling. Oh dear!