Wisdom Road Trip

I’m back in Ohio now with my buddy Brady at Kel’s mom’s place, en route to Montana. It’s been a crazy week (to say the least), filled with travels, emotional ups and downs, and plenty of wisdom from good friends and family.

I’ll spare you most of that for now. Last night I stayed in the aptly named town of Omps, Pennsylvania, at a hotel that cost $25. I took some pictures, but I think it’s best to leave it to your imagination. It was great (in a ‘stories for the grandchildren’ sort of way). The owner lived in two rooms on one end of the hotel with her family. To get into the ‘office’ (something of a toddler’s play-room with odd toys and plastic gallon bottled water strewn about), I had to knock on the kitchen window (disturbing the owner and her husband at dinner).

Describing the room itself (I wish I could replay her southern drawl), she told me about how you have to turn the key one way and then the handle the other, and how the door had been kicked in recently, but it still locked, so it’s okay, right?…. I was pooped, so I was just happy to have a place to sleep, and slept I did – like a baby. In the morning the shower backed up, but C’est la vie, I was on the road again.
Today I had an easy drive across Pennsylvania, some of West Virginia, and Ohio to where I am now. On the way I called my dad’s cousin Denny Sloan (half of my namesake: Justin Sloan Whitaker) to see about staying a night with him in Missouri on my way. “Heck Yes!” he said, in his wild-man Missouri accent, “come on down to the lake for some beer and fishin’.” Suddenly the 6 year-old me with a fishin’ pole and container of worms let out a big laugh.

Sometimes life is only as complicated as we make it out to be.

I found a nice road-side produce stand and picked up some strawberries, oranges and green-peas. Really fresh food and good music on the radio can make the hardest of days pretty darned nice. I drove on.

Lastly, after my happy arrival in Ohio, I had a chat with a friend and kindred spirit, Dorian (Sorry D – I said I wouldn’t blog about this, but old habits die hard). Her advice -loosely paraphrased – was that I’m being a bit over dramatic about things and need to just go start living the life I know is waiting for me. I know, ‘easier said than done.’ But it’s true. Whether it is real or just in my mind – or if that itself is a false dichotomy – I have got caught up in a LOT of drama that is not mine.

Other people’s karma becomes your own only if you allow it.

So… as much as I dislike being away from the woman I love, I am on the road, reconnecting with the day-to-day, touching life.