Road Trippin'

A Shakespeare play is considered either a tragedy or a comedy based on the ending. It's a comedy if it ends with a marriage and a tragedy if it ends with death.

Going by that classification, road trips are tragedies, for they almost never end in marriage and almost always involve the participants being bored to death (if not killed by their traveling companions and stuffed in a trunk).

For serious, though. Road trip = 10% adventure and 90% brain-melting, body-numbing boredom. I should know--I just came home from one.

My family set off on the trip lively humans capable of intelligent conversation and returned weakened and stupid by the many, many hours in the Mormon Assault Vehicle. For it took many, many hours to get where we were going. For we were going to Nauvoo, Illinois, not-so-recently the home of Mormon pioneer ancestors on my mom's side.

A brief commentary on each of the states we passed through:

Utah. People working together. What a great place to be. Blessed from heaven above, it's the land that we love. This is the place.

Wyoming. Characterized by semi-interesting rock formations and cheaper gas.

Nebraska. Flatter than a pizza, a sheet of rice paper, or Flat Stanley. There were no mountains, which was horrifying. From Nebraska on, I had no sense of direction.

Also, I got the feeling that nothing exciting ever happens in Nebraska. Please feel free to provide evidence to the contrary.

Iowa. You really ought to give it a try.

We saw a million Iowan businesses with 'River City' on them. It made me like The Music Man that much more.

Illinois. About two years ago, Little Sister did not know that the 's' in 'Illinois' is silent. This brought great joy into my life.

Missouri. I spent the entirety of my time in Missouri calling it 'Missoura,' as I have been led to believe that is the proper pronunciation. No one corrected me, so either I'm right or I was bringing great joy into their lives (see above commentary on Illinois).

Kansas. When we stopped for gas in Kansas, Little Sister suddenly said, "I want there to be tornado while we're here. Not a big one. Just a small one that will follow alongside our van but not destroy anything in its path."

Colorado. It was windy whilst we were in Colorado. I had a sudden desire to spit on the concrete of a parking lot during one of our stops.

Now, I don't randomly spit in public. Excepting those times when the Chess Master would spit in the grass after track. And I would too because he did. We'd spit, and then we'd jaywalk.

I'm not proud of it, okay?

Anyways, I had that sudden desire to spit, but I had a just as sudden image of the spit being caught by the wind and striking the face of the guy gassing up his car a few feet away.

Other than that, I slept through most of Colorado. Also, listened to my mother traumatize my brothers by telling stories of giving birth.

I was a little traumatized, as well.

So yeah. That's an overview of the wheres and wherewithal of the trip.

I was only going to write one or two blog posts about this trip. But it ended up being so interesting, Imma write 3-plus instead.

Road trippin' posts, ho!