© 2004 Brian Hodges - Please do not remove the copyright from this essay

auren and I are finally back from our month-long road trip.  You didn’t even notice we were gone did you?  Typical. 

Yes we made it around this great country in just under four weeks.  We saw the great plains of Kansas, the Big Skies of Montana and the red red rocks of Colorado.  We battled sandstorms, a blizzard and a road dubbed “The Loneliest in America.”  We took hundreds of pictures next to lighthouses, the Saint Louis arch and the world largest ball of twine.  The trip was humbling and invigorating and through it all we learned two very important lessons:

#1: Being from New Jersey can be a curse and a blessing.

#2: There just aren’t enough bathrooms on America’s million miles of highway to satisfy a pregnant woman.

Did I mention that Lauren was thirty-two weeks pregnant when we left? 

It started on the Blue Ridge Parkway, a scenic route over the Appalachians where at any given point it’s at least ten winding miles down to the nearest town – twenty to the nearest town with an open gas station.  We had a roll of toilet paper stashed in the back seat next to a Ziplock bag labeled: “DO NOT USE FOR FOOD.”  Lauren became adept at doing her business on the side of the road, but the security of all those Virginia pines did nothing to prepare her for the wind-blown openness of the Kansas prairie.  With no trees to hide her or block the wind… well it wasn’t much fun.  For Lauren I mean.  I had a ball.

Whenever we actually made it to a bathroom, everybody was gracious and sympathetic to my wife’s plight – the only glaring exception being in San Francisco.  Not all of San Francisco of course.  I’d hate to generalize.  It was just all of the Chinese people who were mean.  On the long walk through Chinatown, all of Lauren’s pathetic pleas to the restaurant and shop owners were met with a stern, “NO!”  I did my part as the chivalrous husband.  For the rest of the day I ignored every Chinese person who tried to hand me a menu.  I had the notion to drive back through the area blasting “One Night in Bangkok” just to torture them, but there was no way our car could have handled all those San Fran hills.

We’d taken Lauren’s Mazda Protégé instead of my Geo Metro only because it had cruise control (important for my sanity as the lone driver) and a working CD player (important for Lauren’s sanity since I’m a chronic channel changer).  It already felt awkward to be driving something other than my beloved Geo for an entire month, but I have never felt so self-conscious in any other car as I did on this trip.  Besides the fact that a line of cars formed behind us whenever we went up a mountain (the Geo never had any trouble on the Continental Divide), but also Lauren’s car has New Jersey plates on it. 

Any time I did something stupid out in the sticks – like making three U-turns in a dirt parking lot – I was no longer just some goof kicking up dust, I was the moron from New Jersey.  If I merged and accidentally cut some redneck off, I wasn’t just an inconsiderate driver, I was the jackass road hog from New Jersey.  The Jersey plate did come in handy once when I got pulled over in Page, Arizona.  Because now I was the bumbling total idiot from New Jersey. 

“Oh wow, how fast was I going officer?  Fifty-five?  Wow.  And what’s the speed limit?  Thirty?  Oh wow.  I was just looking for the Motel Six.  Can you help me?”  I got off with a warning.

By the time we were heading back through Illinois, none of this mattered.  We were on the interstate with gas stations and bathrooms every twenty miles.  Plus Chicago drivers drive the same way they do in Jersey, so I was able to cut them off and flip the bird without a moment’s hesitation.  I shared the long drive across Pennsylvania with many other Jersey plates and I exchanged sympathetic nods at all the rest stops with the other fathers-to-be. 

And after one last marathon stretch at the end of a long and fruitful month on the road, we were finally home.  Not like you missed us or anything.  Selfish.