I’ve always loved traveling. From the long drives from Delaware to Maine with my dad, unfolding paper maps and matching red lines with real roads, to a weekly trip to visit a boyfriend in college that required navigating the DC metro, two buses, a MD train, & an upperclassman’s car - the unknown combined with the constant movement makes me feel whole.

Traveling is not a blissful paradise, however - you’re out of your comfort zone, you’re hungry, you have to pee, you’re annoyed at your travel companion for literally anything, and you’ve either sat down way too much or not at all enough.

But if you push through the discomfort & inconvenience, you reach beauty. You reach wonder. You end up in some French Canadians’ RV sharing Apple Pie moonshine and stories about how to exist on this planet.

On the first day of our tour, our van broke down. The battery indicator flashed on, the temperature gauge climbed towards “the danger zone” as I like to think of it, and just as I pulled off onto the shoulder of a construction zone, the power steering gave up.

“I’m testing you,” the road whispered. “How badly do you want this?”

“Well, I really wanted to drive to Woodstock tonight,” I muttered back, “and this van moving forward in the correct direction is kind of key to our plan…”

“How badly do you want this?”

“I want it.”

The road tests us. We continue, or we give up. We adapt, or we go home. We find misery, or we find comfort in the unexpected.

I find myself adapting more every day, welcoming the unknown with open arms, sinking into each new place deeper than my bed at home.

-Erin, April 18th, 2019, written on paper at Frothy Beard Brewing in Charleston, SC, while sitting in the shade with Nadia the dog.

Nadia the dog in Falls Church, VA, outside of Rare Bird Coffee Roasters, while the van was in the shop.

Currently watching: The OA (Season 2)

Currently listening to: The Wandering Hours

Current favorite thing(s): $3 Oak Tree sweet red wine & boiled peanuts

PS - Michael wanted to add a note that when we broke down, neither of us killed each other. We were calm and I checked and verified that the serpentine belt had failed and had taken one pulley out with it. We got towed to a shop by AAA and they were able to get us back on the road the next morning. Luckily, we had left a few days early and weren’t late to any shows.

The Road is a Test.