Troubled times

Approaching the half way point of the epic road trip, there are several problems that have reared their ugly heads. If I'm honest, I should have foreseen at least 2 of them. The rest? Well, nobody has perfect foresight, but hindsight is 20-20. Hopefully, I'll be able to avoid making the same mistakes again in the future. And some of the problems are beyond my control, so I just have to resign myself to dealing with them and moving on.

See, there are few things worse on a road trip - or any long trip, for that matter - than being sick. And so far on this one, I've had a cold that turned me into a travelling snot block between Boston, Philadelphia and Washington. And then, as we pulled into Chicago - snot free at last - I realised that I'd done something to my back. Something that made walking extremely painful. Potentially, something caused by driving through the storm from hell the night before - that's what I'm blaming. It's mostly eased up now, after experiencing Chicago largely by bus rather than the usual method of transport for L and I in cities - foot. But now, every time I have a long drive, every time the bed isn't just perfect, it twinges. I have to be extremely careful carrying my enormous pack, and I hate not being able to just throw it around. But physical impairment pales in comparison to some of the other problems.

Because whilst driving through some of the flattest, dullest scenery that America has to off in its northern states - thanks Iowa and Nebraska - L has become sulky. She's bored. And this has uncovered a fundamental difference in our travelling philosophies that was masked while we were jetting around Europe. She's all about the destination. And I mean ALL. The journey itself? Well to her, that's just the prelude where you plan what you're going to do when you get there, so anything that takes longer than reading the Lonely Planet is just wasted. Whereas I - the instigator of the road trip - am quite well able to cope with long stretches where there is very little to see. I'm not sure if it was my early training, taking long car journeys up through Australia's eastern seaboard, or if I'm just taking the Baroque view of things, where the journey is almost more important than the destination, but either way, I cope better. And by the end of a long day, where I have done the bulk of the planning and almost all of the navigation, since L struggles with map reading on the go, we're both niggly. And things get said. Like the bit where, after the longest day on the road that we will have, we were pulling into a budget hotel in Sioux City.

It was getting dark quickly, we'd missed a couple of turns and had to back track. All day I had been asked questions that I didn't know that answers to, that I couldn't know the answers to, never having been to any of the places before. And when she cruised into the car park - or what we thought was the car park - and asked what I thought was an idiotic question before accelerating so I couldn't see where to navigate her (because I have to tell her where to go, she not being used to or comfortable in unfamiliar places), I snapped. I told her to slow down, to stop asking me things I couldn't know, to take a look for herself. And we barely talked for the rest of the night. We unpacked the car in complete silence, she threw her stuff onto the bed (always the best bed...I don't know how she does it), and we went to dinner without her doing more than nodding. Last night was hardly better when I informed her that spending an hour at Mt Rushmore (which I knew would turn into 2 hours if I agreed to 1 - I know her photographic habits too well to rely on estimates of time to see places), at the expense of a couple of places further down that I really wanted to see, on a day when we will be spending around 8 hours in a car, that just so happens to be my 30th birthday, is not something I'm prepared to do. Sure, we'll be stopping there. We will see it. But she knew going in that this wasn't going to be an easy trip. And I think she underestimated just how much road time we'd be logging, and just how unprepared for long boring stretches she would be.

But not all of the problems relate to her (although her tendency to open the curtains before we're fully dressed, regardless of the outlook - or in-look - has caused me some anxious moments, as has her drifting and abrupt driving style). Perhaps the biggest problem is that I am fast running out of money. Boston and Washington DC sucked up too much of my cash and I'm now in the unenviable position of looking like I'm barely going to make it into the 3rd week of the trip before it's all gone. And when it's gone, there is no more. I have no resources to tap into. So how I'm going to pay my share of the car extras is beyond me. Although part of that is also caused by L and her insistence that she be put on as an extra driver, even though she refuses to drive in any of the cities and only does a few hours in the morning when we're in the country, or the evening when we've left a city that morning. Bam, there goes $145 of my carefully planned budget.

That's not to say that I'm not enjoying the trip, though. As I type this, I'm sitting in Custer, with a view of the Black Hills on the other side of town. Today sees us heading through the Wild West, towards Cody, and then Yellowstone. I'm loving what I've seen so far. I just wish there weren't niggles and worries to get in the way. And I've resolved never to do a road trip with L ever again.

The morning tap

This morning I woke up with a tap attached to my face. It was there in place of my nose, and it was dripping. Constantly. When it wasn’t dripping, it was tingling. Well, I suppose you get that when someone replaces your nose with a tap. It’s bound to feel a little funny. In this instance, the funny made me sneeze regularly. The tap has been there for a few mornings, recently. It seems to disappear before lunchtimes. It’s a morning tap, a spigot without an ‘off’ position. It’s visited me before.

During my school days – back before the dawn of time, or of the millennium at the very least – I struggled through mornings just as I do now, a wodge of tissues permanently at the ready and the constant threat that, if I ran out of them, I’d end up looking like a toddler with a cold. Mothers would come up to me, pinch my nose and demand that I ‘blow’. I lived in fear of morning assemblies, daunting ceremonies that always had an uplifting theme, designed to stir us on to ever greater heights, illustrated through stories of inspirational women and uplifting hymns. We were expected to sit silently through these events three times a week, not wriggling too much as we sat on the hard wooden floor, or being caught talking when we were deemed old enough to have a seat in the balcony of the school hall. Most of the girls had their blazer pockets stuffed, one with their hymn book, the other with various coping mechanisms – usually of the sweet, chocolate- or sugar-coated variety. I always carried things that might work well as nose plugs, should the need arise. I’d always assumed that it was something in the hall that triggered my - sorry, this is going be gross – river of snot, but it turns out it wasn’t. It’s the morning generally that does it.

I’m allergic to mornings. By lunchtime, it’s gone. It was always second period at school before I could breathe through my nose, before I could enunciate clearly and not sound like a rugby player who’d just been pinned on the bottom of the scrum by his head. Now, it clears by the time I’m at my desk and have cleared my email inbox – a time that, admittedly, gets later and later every day. And rather than a pocket full of tissues, I have a roll of toilet paper sitting on my desk. I’m all class.

The way I see it, some people are morning people, and some people aren’t. I clearly fall into the latter category. I would love to be able to bounce out of bed in the morning, doing my very best impersonation of Tigger, but I have long resigned myself to being a shambling incarnation of a crime scene photograph when I first arise. The tissue plugs up my nose probably don’t help the appearance.

I’m going to be forced to get my act together, though. Word came down from on high that I am to be at a new desk location by the end of the week. The moment will be put off as long as possible. As much as I want the company of other people, I enjoy the luxury of having nobody nearby to see just how late it is when I first plant my head on my desk and reach for the toilet paper. Sitting with other people, I’ll have to start functioning through the snot. At least there's no mothers handy to offer me a handkerchief.