I love to travel, and that means just about anywhere, except of course, East Chicago. But travel with Crabby is always an adventure. I like driving vacations. And when I’m on a road trip, my favorite place to eat is Kentucky Fried Chicken. The thing is, when you get into Kentucky you pass by a KFC about every two miles. And by that I mean you pass by a KFC every two miles. I stop at them all. It’s about 135 miles through Kentucky on I-65. I can make that in six hours and twenty minutes flat. (Two hours driving, three hours for chicken legs, and the rest for mashed potatoes and gravy.)
If you’re going to take a road trip, you’re going to hit road construction. And that is exactly what I did on my last trip to Florida. I mean I literally hit the road construction. When I stopped for the night I had to grab a broomstick and poke the orange barrels out from under my trailer. They had been dragging along under there for the last ten miles. Good news! I turned them in for recycling, and it paid my gas bill for the day. Lamentably, I had to do my orange-barrel-poking in the dark. The story goes more or less as follows:
Me speaking, “There’s a KOA twenty miles up the road, I think we’ll stop there for the night.”
The wife speaking, “There’s a KOA at the next exit. Let’s stop there, have a nice dinner, and get some sleep.”
Me speaking, “It’s only 5:30. We can make the next twenty miles and be in the campground by 6:00. That’s twenty miles less to drive tomorrow.” (Me not speaking, “Plus there’s a KFC at that exit.”)
The wife speaking, “You just want to go there because there’s another g@dd@mn KFC at that exit.”
Me speaking, “Well, anyway, it’s too late. This exit came up on me kind of fast and I missed it.”
Thirty seconds later we saw brake lights everywhere. The six lanes of highway narrowed down to one, and it took four hours to drive those last twenty miles. I had to set up camp in the dark. And worst thing of all? By then the KFC was closed.
The wife speaking, “I’m sleeping in the camper. I have no idea where you’re sleeping.” (Door slamming. Door latch turning.)
Did I mention my tow vehicle is a big old van? You can sleep in the passenger seat, if you have to.
But I don’t always drive. A few weeks ago we flew out to Las Vegas for a wedding. That is just the capitol of crazy town. And most people leave there as losers. Not me though. I avoid the table games and head for the machines. But instead of the slot machines, I pop my ten dollar bills into a change machine and listen to the satisfying sound of forty quarters clinking into the cup. It’s amazing. I break even every time.
Remember that old TV show, On The Road with Charles Kuralt? It was very soothing, and calming, and sweepingly beautiful, and educational. That ain’t me. Well, maybe educational is me. You can learn to swap out an alternator on my van in the dark parking lot of a strip-mall in suburban Atlanta. You can learn to enjoy the middle seat for six hours because I saved five bucks on the plane tickets. You can learn how to pull a twenty-four foot travel trailer through a fast food lane while people stare at you. (When a guy needs a cheeseburger, he needs a cheeseburger.) But my travel adventures, as I like to call them, are not all my fault. I just seem to attract crazy like a magnet. Like that time I got on a plane at six in the morning and watched in horror as the large crazy man wandered up the aisle and plopped down right next to me. When the flight attendant asked if we wanted anything for breakfast he said in his very loud and nasal voice, “I’ll have a bagel…. aaaand a Budweiser.” He then proceeded to blabber the entire flight from San Diego to Milwaukee, first to me, then to himself. A lady in the row in front of us turned around and said “Mister, mister, you are very annoying!” It didn’t even slow him down.
I have a great talent for travel. I can sleep on a plane, I can sleep in a car, I can sleep on a train. It’s like those people in the science fiction movies who go into suspended animation on their star ships. I settle into my seat; I fall asleep; when I wake up I am on the other side of the state or the other side of the country. It’s just great. But I’m glad I’m not actually on a star ship. My wife might push me out the air lock because, well, snoring.
My kids just don’t like to travel with me. I can’t imagine why. As they neared their last years at home, I decided to try one last time. I had to bribe them with a trip to Cancún. It started wonderfully. We spent a day on the beach, right after we settled into our second room after heavy rain brought water pouring through the light fixtures of our first room. It was all good though. There were no electrical fires. The next day we went on an outing to a cenote. That is basically a big sinkhole going down to an underground river. We changed into our swim pants and took the limestone stairway down into the cave-like place. We found ourselves swimming with tiny blind bullheads in the cool flowing underground stream. Floating on our backs, relaxing, looking at the sunlit hole far above, with jungle growth poking into view way up there and green vines hanging down the vertical stone walls; it was magical. A few hours later we got back to our room and turned on the TV machine. There we saw a hurricane. Well, what we actually saw on the TV was a big gigantic yellow spinning graphic depicting a hurricane filling the entire Caribbean from the coast of Venezuela to Cuba. Right through the middle of that was a big red flashing arrow pointing directly at our hotel room. This just goes to show the Weather Channel is very good at what they do, which is to scare the living sh*t out of you. And they can scare the living sh*t out of you even in Spanish. We soon figured out that only a few hours out to sea, at that very moment, there were 210 mile per hour winds and fifty foot waves. One glance out the window showed our hotel room to be twenty-five feet above the beach. We soon learned the airport was already closed, all buses out of town were booked, and the designated tourist hurricane shelter was a school about three feet above sea level. Long story short? I rented the last car available (just a bit bigger than a bread box) and we drove inland to the airport at Merida. $7,000 of last minute plane tickets and thirty hours of sweaty non-stop travel later, we were home. My kids just don’t like to travel with me. I can’t imagine why.
But still, I do enjoy it so. Travel teaches so much. Like, for example, that there’s no place like home. At least that’s what I’ve heard. I’ll let you know if I can figure out how to get back there. I think I’m lost…