I have never been one for road trips.  Growing up, my family did not go on a lot of far away vacations, but when we did, we usually drove.  Straight through.  Interstate the entire way.  We’d pack up blankets, pillows, a cooler of food to fuel our bodies and drive until we reached our destination, only stopping to fill the gas tank and take a restroom break.  Did I mention that the first road trip I remember taking was to Los Angeles-a 24 hour drive from our Washington home?  While I was excited for the trip, we arrived exhausted after being awake for so long, getting bad sleep, not getting any exercise and being stuck with each other for 24 hours straight in a small car.  So my memories of road trips are not fun.

Fast forward to adulthood.  I married a man who’s favorite summer college job was being a pizza delivery man.  He had a cooler in the car set up with snacks for the day and was in hog heaven.  As a kid, he wanted to be a truck driver so he could spend all of his days on the road.  He is the guy who takes old abandoned highways and gets distracted by the worlds largest ball of yarn along the way.  He loads the car full of music he loves or books on tape and thoroughly enjoys being in the car.  He would drive three states out of the way to go to the grocery store if he could.  Sometimes, I think he has tried.

I guess opposites attract.

In planning our wedding and after our marriage, our road trips consisted of sitting in congested traffic going from New York to New England.  Not fun.

But five years ago, we decided to leave Brooklyn and move to Nashville.  It was then that he finally trained me in the art of road trips.  We had to get our car from  New York to Nashville somehow.  The answer:  ROAD TRIP!  It is approximately a 15 hour trip if you drive directly from Brooklyn to Nashville.  It took us 6 weeks.  We took the long way looping around the entire country so we could drive along Route 66 and Pacific Highway 101, neither of which was directly on our route. We had both left our jobs so we weren’t stressed to answer calls or email requests.  We emptied our apartment and had an iPod, cell phones, two cameras-one digital, one old school, a laptop, overnight bags, and a trunkful of belongings with us.  Oh and a Road Food book, a travel book, and What to Expect when you are Expecting.  Yep, I was six months pregnant at the time.  It meant making a few extra stops for ultrasounds along the way and some longer stays at restaurants to sample homestyle cooking.  But it turned out to be a great trip.  I finally learned that road trips can be fun.  But I also still hate being in the car for too long.  And I get impatient staring at the ball of yarn for too long.  But I do enjoy taking pictures and later revisiting our memories as we page through photo albums.

Tessa Lemos is a Chicana who grew up and was educated in the Pacific Northwest, blossomed in New York City, and now lives in Nashville where she continues to learn and grow. She is a lawyer by training, administrator by profession, and organizer by habit. She spends her days with her children and her nights with her husband and squeezes in the words as much as possible.
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