Road Trip!!!

I know the three exclamation points may create an air of false enthusiasm, like when you write to a friend "I can't wait to see you!!!" what you really mean is "It really hasn't been that long since we saw each other last and honestly so little has happened that I'm afraid we'll run out of things to talk about twenty minutes in, but it's important that we keep in touch because emotional connectivity is what separates us from the animals!"

But I'm actually really excited about this road trip. It's the first one Brooke and I will be taking together, if you don't count the time it took us nine hours to drive home from Key West. But that was our mistake. The normally three-hour drive became a nine-hour odyssey due to Memorial Day weekend traffic. It was so unbearable that halfway through we pulled off for margaritas, pulled back on two hours later into the same traffic, sat for half an hour, and then pulled off again into the same restaurant for more margaritas. (Note: It's not considered drinking and driving if you're just drinking and inching forward.) So yeah, I don't think that one counts.

This time we're headed to a small fishing town on the Florida panhandle called Apalachicola. (I like to think the natives gave it such a stupid name to scare away infiltrators who may be intent on pilfering it's fresh seafood, old-world charm and gold.) I haven't studied up on it much, but I do know that for the next four days Brooke and I will be staying in a quaint bed and breakfast (cute!), chowing down on fresh oysters (sexy!) and . . . antiquing maybe? I don't know. This is uncharted territory for me. The last time I drove through the Florida panhandle I ended up at a foam party in Panama City. But I don't think it will be anything like that. Hopefully.

For the record, Brooke just came in and read that last sentence over my shoulder and said, "What do you mean 'hopefully'? You never know what's going to happen. That's the beauty of a road trip!" Um, really? Because I always thought the beauty of road trips is the quiet contemplation of a barren straightaway; the cosmic gut-check of experiencing the world's enormity one mile marker at a time; the liberation from schedules, lunch hours, and the awful familiarity of the day to day; and, of course, the freedom of the open road.

He knows what I'm talking about.

Happy Labor Day, everyone. I hope your long weekend isn't so baaad.