Embrace Life Not Work

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Nico (front) and Christopher relaxing after a day of summer camp. August 6, 2017.

August 8, 2017

I recline my driver's car seat back to a relaxing position. However, I'm not over relaxed. As the pilot of this ship, I want to stay awake on a 700-mile road trip. I have precious cargo onboard. I have worked my ass off the past 2 months. Time to start embracing life and not work.

I love road trips to escape from my everyday reality. The long drive is my window of opportunity to delve into my imagination and explore my wildest dreams on the road map of my brain. My 85,000-word book could go viral, a New York Times bestseller! Or, I come into a lot of money, and I can buy that new house I have been eyeing, and I won't have to worry about the down payment. I can plan my future. I see a future tubing down the Chattahoochee River. Man, is it a good day to dream.

I pull my car from the swale driveway, and we are off. 10 mph, 20 mph, 50 mph. Merging on the highway, the asphalt passes beneath the rubber tires while my car cruises 80 miles an hour on this long highway, and we are on our way.

My car passes the slower vehicles. These drivers are on their own mission to an unknown destination. They are just blurs while I drive quickly out of this town. I hope life is taking them to the places they want to be, other than work, just like I'm doing now as I embrace life.

I need a break from heartache and worry. Life is about work, making ends meet, and just living without worrying. Bills, mortgage payments, and car payments are all life's expediters. Now is the time to cast the BS of work aside, have only my family near me, and start new experiences. I don't mind being known as that fictional dad Clark Griswold from the National Lampoons movie Vacation. He just wanted to be the best dad who offered the best experience for his kids.

The road noise slightly hums inside my vehicle. The car pierces the air and whistles while it works its way to the Florida, Georgia line. We are a missile traveling north through the state of Florida headed for the green mountains of Northern Georgia. I am the captain of this trip, and I'm in control of when and where we will stop. Oh, so I think. Of course, I will be overridden by the Commander. She knows what is best.

"Hey, look honey, Alligator petting zoo, let's stop!"

"No, keep going."

"Henry's Sloppy Joe's oil-based meat served on butter rolls. Let's stop and eat!"

"No, the only gas going on in this car is the gas we pour at a gas station."

The green trees stay in place as my car drives by like a runaway locomotive on an endless train track. My car is slicing through a manmade path. Cows graze in the vast swaths of pastures laid before me like an endless bed comforter. The cows could be the dinosaurs that used to roam these parts well before mankind made a footprint. Instead of a Jurassic Park moment living in a fantasy of my mind, I laugh at the idea of sticking my head out the window and yelling, "Moo."

"What are you laughing at," the Commander asks.

"Speaking to cows on the roadside who think I'm crazy and laugh at me as I drive by because I yelled, 'moo.' But only they stare at me, kind of how you are looking at me now."

I should be more daring and return to dinosaurs and killer snakes. However, no T-Rex's or Velociraptors are chasing me down, only the Dodge Viper tailgating me. 

My car windows are an invisible force field. They take the brunt of the meteors that are showering the front window. They explode everywhere. I use the "sapphire window wipes" to clear the debris off so I can see outside.  

"Dad, what's all that stuff on the window?"

"Those are meteors."

"No, they are not," he laughs, "those are bugs!"

Yes, the bugs explode over the windshield. Their little carcasses splatter and are left as little streaks when the windshield wipers glide over them. Those damn marks will never go away. It is as if they will forever be tattooed there, like the hash marks of airplanes on the side of an Air Force jet that the pilot marks on the fuselage, marking the number of aircraft he has shot down.

I have 400 more miles to go on this trip to Georgia. I can convince the carload of zombies to stop at the deserted haunted amusement park. If I can't convince them to stop, that's okay because my life is good as long as I continue to embrace life and not work.

Hanging out at the Hard Rock Cafe in Atlanta, Ga. July 16, 2017.

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