Not after I’m dead, because then I won’t bother updating this blog because I’ll be enjoying the unabated thrill ride that comes after…but I’m not supposed to say any more. No, post-mortem means I’m back from an 8-day trip and the question needs to be answered: Did you write on the road, Robert? And the answer is…I did, kind of, yeah. I’m as surprised as you are.
To frame the hardships involved, think about the mechanics of road trips. This trip was in a small RV (an Itasca Navion 24M) with one other person who is also writing a novel though that’s entirely coincidental. We drove between 300 and 500 miles a day, which is an easy pace, and didn’t really go through any barren regions like if we’d gone through Nevada and Arizona on the back roads featured in the movie Cars. (The town that cartoon was set in really does exist, sort of, and it is way TF in the middle of nowhere. Can’t remember its name, but I happened through there late at night on a random wandering trip late last year.)
Anyway, on this trip, we thought maybe we would trade off on driving and the other guy would go in back and write. There are seatbelts, incidentally, though I personally wouldn’t use them. You should though. As it turned out, we didn’t implement this procedure. It’s just too stimulating to be up front watching the miles roll by and enjoying the fact that we don’t live in some of the places we accelerate through. Although some of them are nice, including the hometown of everyone reading this.
What we did do was go to coffee shops, sometimes Starbucks, where the mocha tastes like hot chocolate in the same way the champagne tasted like coca-cola in that song Lola. Sometimes not, in places where mentioning the name caused safeties to be snapped off. In those places the coffee tasted like coffee, which is bad for me since in spite of everything, I rather dislike the taste or smell of it.
We would go in these places and buy something and sit down and write for about an hour fifteen to an hour and a half. It was ironic that traveling companion Jones happened to be quitting coffee that very week, so it was like dragging an AA rookie through bars, but sacrifices must be made in the name of rule #1 (Write Every Day). Various friends we were staying with along the way were very tolerant of this, even joining us in a couple of cases.
Incidentally, I posted on facebook a couple pictures of the unexpected flying and boating we did on the trip. I also performed the primary mission aspect of the trip, which was to spend time in Portland and Seattle deciding whether I might consider moving to one of them soon. (The odds are against it, though they’re both cool places.) But we’ll see after a number of longer road trips this year. I was also very pleased with the result of Bernadette bunking at the ex’s house, where both of them were reportedly very happy with the arrangement. (Bernie, with her little-kidlike/doglike behavior, is very entertaining to have around, and much less of an upholstery-destroying hellion with her claws trimmed, which I did before I left.)
Out of 8 days on the road, we wrote for at least 1:15 on 5 of them. That’s not perfect and it’s not every day, but it’s not bad considering that on previous trips there was nada. So, now I just have to do that on every single subsequent trip for the rest of my career. I’ll be taking another one in a couple days, to the Grand Canyon via Vegas, and there won’t be many Starbuckses, so I’ll have to find some other way.
