“Buckeyes and Bourbon”
7/24/15, “The Old and the New”
En route, I-78 W, New Jersey (Garden State Parkway)
Anyone who knows me knows how much I love my routines, how much I fear
the unknown, how, for all of my adventures, I am so afraid to leave my comfort
zone. Now, there is some sense of irony
to the fact that someone such as I is feeling what I’m feeling now. For the past few weeks, ever since I got back
from my last trip (maybe even since I left for the trip or earlier), I have
felt a general sense of apathy towards all the things in my life that used to
give me pleasure.
This is not the life
has no meaning speech. In fact, it’s
quite the opposite. The irony here is
that, while I am feeling so apathetic to the old pleasures of my life, I am
even more actively seeking out new pleasures and new experiences. Having lost interest in the old things in my
life, I have found it so much easier to shirk my fear of the unknown and do
things that used to make me feel uncomfortable.
I will explore this topic in a companion piece in my personal journal,
but I have made it a point in my Day 0 entries to explore the current state of
my life to give better insight into the mindset with which I embark on these
trips.
My previous trip, the last great
summer road trip adventure, was a great one, but we learned a key piece of
information on the trip. San Antonio got
a new World Heritage Site, which means it would not have a Plaque for quite
some time. Once we locate the Plaque, my
mother and I may very well take that trip together. The irony here was that my friend, the friend
who is currently driving, and I were going to go to San Antonio together in
August. The new WHS designation made it
no longer a good option for me to join him, though he will still be doing the
trip alone. We take a trip together
every summer. 2012, it was Missouri,
2013 Minnesota, 2014 Washington and British Columbia, now, 2015, it’s Ohio and
Kentucky.
Cincinnati is the closest
major city I have not visited, and it will allow me a new capitol, two new
iconic restaurants, and four new NPS units.
To further add to the irony, two of those NPS units are nominated as
WHS. Next summer, one of them might get
inscribed, and then, well, this trip would be in vain, but, who knows. Also, joining us on this trip is one of my
best friends, the guy I hang out with every night. I would categorize that friendship as one of
the new experiences, since it is less than six months old, while my older
friends are starting to bore me. It’s
not that I don’t want to maintain those friendships anymore. It’s just that I have become apathetic to the
older things in my life, that the people I love, the bonds of friendship, while
those bonds show no sign of weakening or dissolving, the friendships just do
not provide the enjoyment value they used to.
It is for that reason mostly that I am finding it less difficult to
engage in those new experiences.
A road
trip like this is a very new experience for me.
It is three of us, two of us equal partners in the finances, so we
negotiated the schedule together. The
third, the newer friend, he is glad to come along for the ride, and he was
quite happy with the schedule we derived.
This was basically just a “let’s in the car and go trip.” We started talking about Cincinnati two weeks
ago, and we didn’t even start planning it until this week. We didn’t have everything finalized until
last night. We don’t even have a
formalized itinerary, just the order of stops, our dinner restaurants, and the
hotel for tomorrow night. That’s the
other reason why this is a new trip for me.
There will be no hotel for Days 0 or Day 2. We are driving overnight both of those
nights. We will be in Columbus tomorrow
ere the sun rises, only driving and sleeping in shifts in the car, and we have
a full day of activities booked in Ohio and Kentucky before we get to our hotel
in Frankfort. We will do the same thing
on the way home, a full day around Cincinnati, driving home overnight on
Sunday, again sleeping and driving in shifts, which should get us to work
Monday morning well rested.
There is one
other trip like this I want to take, and that is to the Carolinas. It would be a similar trip, but it would have
to be my agenda, not a mixed agenda, since I have two full days of NPS sites I
would want to see. I was supposed to do
that last year, but it fell through. In
fact, I think I’ve been talking about it for two years, but I need to find
someone who can split the overnight driving with me. I was going to do it this year, but this trip
happened instead. I have no doubt this
will be a great trip, and being in the company of good friends, one old and one
new, will make it even more adventurous and enjoyable. We are about to stop for gas and food, so I
will close and treat the events of Day 0 in full once we get to Pennsylvania.
I have been writing about the old and the new, and so much of this trip
is old and familiar, my old travelling companion acting the way he always does,
making the same demands on the trip he always does, wanting to make sure we
don’t leave the state before we’ve tried every food item listed on the
Wikipedia for the state’s food page, even if it means eating six meals a day,
the constant barrage of meaningless questions, the constant nagging when I am
trying to reflect, write, or just relax, that is all familiar. The fact that we are doing it in a new state,
under new circumstances, and with a new travelling partner, none of that makes
it any less familiar, but it is a new experience, nonetheless, a mix of the old
and the new.
Today was a very typical
Day 0, so much of it familiar, the fact that I am a passenger in an overnight
drive not much different than being a passenger in an overnight flight. In fact, being in the car is much easier than
being a passenger on an airplane. The
three of us have the car to ourselves, and we can set our own schedule, be as
loud or as quite as we want, eat whatever we want, and we have plenty of room,
too. Okay, so how did my typical Day 0
play out? Well, there was a mix of new,
too.
We saw Paper Towns last night, a
typical YA movie, the awkward teenager falls in love with the prettiest girl in
the school. Story of my life, right? It was a great movie, and I’d recommend it to
anyone who likes the YA genre. We went
back, and my friend went home.
Meanwhile, our other mutual friend called me to let me know he wanted to
crash on my floor, which he is always welcome to do. He was utterly and royally toasted, having
drank with some coworkers. I finished my
cigar, and we went to sleep. My plan was
to get to the office an hour early to do some data entry I had put off for too
long, and I knew I could be done with it in that hour if I got in early. Well, I was woken up at 6 AM by his alarm,
and it rang every fifteen minutes, which troubled me in getting back to sleep. I needed to wake up around 7:30 AM to get in
that hour early, but the alarms fucked that up, each time it rang being too
early for me to wake up. The alarms
stopped. When I next woke up, it was
8:15 AM, which meant I would be able to take my time getting ready and get to
work at my normal time. I was sure if I
was productive all day, I could do the data entry and all my normal stuff.
I texted my friend about Paper Towns, and she
responded that was excited to see it.
She is probably the only person I know who loves YA as much as I
do. The best YA movie I’ve ever seen was
on her recommendation: “The Perks of Being a Wallflower.” There is a quote from that movie, well, the
book, that has kind of defined the past few years of my life. “People accept the love they think they
deserve.” There is so much meaning to
that quote. People who have a low
opinion of themselves will accept abusive relationships because that is the
love they think they deserve. They will
accept people who do not love them fully because they do not believe they are
lovable enough to deserve someone who loves them fully. I do not feel that way, and I refuse to
accept any love less than the love I deserve.
I tried otherwise, and I learned the hard way not to accept anything
less. Wow, that was quite a
tangent. Okay, so, her response to my
text was what woke me up, as is often what wakes me up in the morning.
I got ready, having packed last night,
showered, shaved (somehow missing the bottom of my chin), and got to work right
on time at 9:07 AM. I had no appetite
for breakfast. In fact, I had not had
much of an appetite since lunch yesterday.
I had a big meal for lunch, and I had a cookie after work. That was the only food I ate after lunch, not
being hungry for dinner. I was still not
hungry for lunch, which I usually take at 11 AM. I had a full agenda of things I needed to do
during my lunch break, not even having time to stop at the cigar store, where I
hadn’t been since lunch on Tuesday. The
aforementioned new experiences taking up my evenings on Tuesday, Wednesday, and
Thursday. People at the shop where even
wondering where I had been, since they knew I was around in NY, not
travelling. They thought maybe they dad
something to offend me. Cue Alicia
Silverstone, “As if!”
No, Tuesday night
I played kickball. Wednesday night
drinks with my philosophy professor.
Thursday, birthday party for someone on the kickball team. I had to go to each of those straight from
work. Wait, no, I did stop at the shop
Tuesday night. But, still, for me not to
show up two nights in a row is quite unusual, so people started to wonder. That is the old. That is the familiar. This was the new. This was the unfamiliar.
Okay, so, my lunch break. First, I had to stop at the post office. I had neglected to mail my aforementioned
friend her birthday present (a picture of the two of us with Amanda Seyfried
from the night we first met, signed by Amanda, and a keytag with her name from
Banff), so I took care of that at the post office, then I had to go to Men’s
Warehouse to exchange the vest for my brother’s wedding for one size
larger. After that, I finally got my
traditional pre-departure lunch at Hop Won, the old and the familiar. I also had to stop at Duane Reade for my
Nexium, which had run out. That easily
took the full hour.
I went back to the
office, and I had a very productive day, finishing everything I needed to
do. I had picked up my dinner, too, at
Hop Won, but I still had no appetite when it was time to leave work. That was odd.
Well, it’ll still be good on Monday.
I went to the cigar shop, where my friend works now. I got some snacks and a soda, but it wasn’t
enough. I needed protein, but the line
at McDonald’s was too long, and I couldn’t find anything else I wanted. I had my H. Upmann and bought a couple of
cigars for the trip, including the new Davidoff Escurio, which I am very
excited to try.
We headed downtown to
meet my other friend, and we hit the road.
We had like three hours of Dutch built in, but the thing is we need to
use that full 3 hours of Dutch time because I need daylight to take my picture
at the Ohio State House, and the next site doesn’t open until 8:30 AM, which
means we can’t leave there until 8:35 AM, and another site doesn’t open until
10 AM. In other words, there is no way
to push ahead the schedule by making good time.
Best case scenario, we get to Columbus early, and we sit in the car
until dawn. That appears to be what will
happen.
I changed into my pajamas after dinner, and
we got back on the road. As soon as we
entered Pennsylvania, I proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close
so that I can publish and sleep until we get to Columbus.
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