Road Tripping: The Self-Torture of More, More, More

How many times have you been here in your life? Left or right? The blue pill or the red pill? Whatever choice you make puts a different chain of events in to motion.

at the crossroads

Right = Hotel
Left = More, more, more

When I’d reached this sign it was dinner time – the time of the day when it would be smart for me to think about packing it in and finding a hotel. If I chose going to the right a nice relaxing evening awaited. Naturally, I chose left.

According to the EXIF data I took this picture at 5:40pm. According to my camera roll, my last photo of the day was another 2 hours later and it would be at least another hour on top of that when I finally zeroed in on a hotel. This left or right was the point that “well, since I’m in the neighborhood” became a little too obsessive.

Save for eating some trail mix and a banana in gas station parking lot, I hadn’t eaten since breakfast at the Wellsboro Diner. My mood is the first thing to suffer when I don’t eat properly. I go from being happily curious to becoming anxious about things that are easily dealt with under normal, sufficiently hydrated circumstances.

Generally speaking, I don’t get crazy about finding a place to stay, the weather, or focus on a random smell that passes through the air. But when being more tired and hungry than I care to admit to myself factor in – I become ridiculous. (What’s that smell? Is that burning? Is my bike on fire? Those look like tornado clouds. What if every hotel from here to Florida is booked?)

This self-torturing ritual is something that I go through when I travel alone. I think it might be my way of trying to wring every last drop out of the day. Very often I feel like my day-to-day life is stationary so when I get out and get free it’s hard to reel myself in from trying to see more, more, more.

Besides, why would I want to waste time sitting in a well air-conditioned hotel or drinking an ice-cold beer in a restaurant when I could be out riding through clouds of bugs in the quickly approaching dark, dodging critters and Bigfoot and werewolves?