To set the mood for the rapidly approaching, and for lack of a better and less overused word - epic - road trip, I decided to set down the series of George R.R. Martin books in which I've been immersed, and pick up John Steinbeck's "Travels With Charley" for a long-overdue re-read.
It was a good call. Steinbeck writes:
“Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process, a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. Only when this is recognized can the blown-in-the glass bum relax and go along with it. Only then do the frustrations fall away. In this a journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.”
Looking forward to letting the journey take us - to new sights, new experiences, and new friends....
Just two months now!
~ Carolee
