The Introvert's Party

Growing up in Hawai'i, road trips were not a part of my childhood.  I didn't start traveling the country until I was in college and suddenly six hour stints in a car seemed normal.  I suppose attending college in the Midwest has a few perks; Chicago, of course, and being an acceptable driving distance to all other parts of the country.  From LA to DC would necessitate a plane, but Chicago to DC?  Drive it, baby.  And drive we did.

Then I met a man who practically lived out of the driver's seat of his red Ford pickup and together we drove all over the country and bounced between cities, never quite content to set down roots.  As another big move approaches, I look to ol' Papa Steinbeck for insight:

"In the pattern-thinking about roots I and most other people have left two things out of consideration.  Could it be that Americans are a restless people, a mobile people, never satisfied with where they are as a matter of selection?  The pioneers, the immigrants who peopled the continent, were the restless ones in Europe.  The steady rooted ones stayed home and are still there.  But every one of us, except the Negroes forced here as slaves, are descended from the restless ones, the wayward ones who were not content to stay at home. [...] Perhaps we have overrated roots as a psychic need.  Maybe the greater urge, the deeper and more ancient is the need, the will, the hunger to be somewhere else."    - John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley

Travel, move, explore, play.  It's part of our genetic makeup, I do believe that.  The concept of home as a house or a town is relatively new and (I think) commercially constructed.  Home is your tribe, whoever and wherever that may be, and home travels.  My home?  My Bat-nerd, cine-phile, Jack Lemon-y curmudgeon of a John Wayne-esque cowboy husband and our man-hating dog.  But how could you hate her when she looks like this: