The Grad School Diaries: On the Road, Again

I walked up to the counter and set down my selections – paper towels, baby wipes, a bottle of window cleaner, and so on. “Do you have any Lysol?” I asked the counterman.

He shook his head and I shrugged; it would have come in handy jus then, both as disinfectant, and also as air freshener, but we could make do without it. I paid the man and wandered back out, past the displays of candy bars, pyramids of soft drinks and beer, and the pallets of bottled water. Convenience stores seem to follow similar layouts wherever you go, I reflected, which really isn’t surprising when you consider that the same three or four national companies supply food and basic non-food merchandise to almost all of them. I spent a while analyzing the basic services and categories four or five jobs ago, when my (then) current employer was considering expanding into the industry…

I passed through the double doors and past the gas pumps to the small parking area, where our daughter and son-in-law to be were frantically trying to clean out their cat carrier with the remains of our housecleaning supplies. “Having any luck?” I asked innocently, earning five dirty looks – my wife, the kids, and the two cats, whose travel accommodations had unexpectedly turned into a septic tank when our larger cat fouled herself (and the carrier) on the way out of Atlanta…

We had just started our return trip to East Lansing, with the cargo area and rooftop carrier on the Torrent full of assorted stuff, and both cats and the dog in carriers in our son-in-law’s car. It’s a long drive – about 800 miles, through five states, which works out to about 13 hours of driving time, not counting meals, refueling stops and comfort breaks. We had wanted to get on the road early and get through as much of the drive as possible before sunset, but it isn’t possible to get four humans and three animals and all of their impedimenta loaded out and on the highway that quickly, even when you aren’t also dealing with the habits of four non-morning-people. Still, we’d managed to exit the Atlanta freeway system and were making reasonable time toward the Tennessee border when we got the text message about the cat accident and pulled off at the next exit to find a service station…

Between the four of us, we’ve probably spent a hundred person-hours planning this trip; when you include the time of all of the other parents, step-parents, grandparents, work associates, faculty advisors, travel agents, hotel clerks and personal friends, it’s probably twice that. We’ve got almost any substance a driver or passenger could possibly want to eat or drink for this voyage, as well as maps, books on tape, medicine and first aid supplies, hand sanitizer, newspapers, satellite radio, GPS navigation systems, web-enabled smart phones, laptop computers and movies on DVD – and the whole thing has been derailed by twelve pounds of nervous cat. You could use it as a metaphor for most human activity, if you wanted to…

The next twelve hours will include a massive traffic jam and resulting detour somewhere in Tennessee, a fast-food lunch somewhere in Kentucky, dinner at a Cracker Barrel somewhere near the Indiana/Michigan border, and too many comfort breaks to count, along with music on the XM radio, good conversation, the occasional news story, and a few bottles of wide-awake to make sure we keep on the road. It’s going to be a hard day’s travel, and long before we see the Lansing Metroplex in our headlights we’re all going to wish it was over. And perhaps someday in an unknown future we will find ourselves setting out again, for another new city and another new challenge and another new life…

For the moment, however, we’re all standing around a gas station parking lot, somewhere in Georgia, waiting for the cleaning solvent fumes to clear…