So I wasn’t surprised when, mere days after our crazy breakfast conversation in Tucson, she ordered a book entitled Live Your Road Trip Dream. I came home from work one day to find her reading it, a notepad in her lap and a pen between her teeth.
The first thing I noticed about the book was the photo of its authors on the back cover. They were a husband-and-wife team—“the Whites”—who appeared to be my parents’ age. They were probably retired, living their golden years. That, of course, is when most Americans, if their health and finances allow it, entertain the idea of an extended road trip. They sell the house, buy an RV, and set forth to rediscover their own country.
Other than an itching wanderlust, Jill and I don’t have much in common with the Whites. We’re 30 or 40 years from retirement; our recently purchased home isn’t worth what we paid for it; and, even if we could afford an RV, we’re not really RV people. (We’re more tent people.)
Jill had already skimmed the book’s first chapter (“You Too Can Make This Happen”) and was immersed in Chapter 2: “Financing Your Dream.” Good luck with that, I thought. Take copious notes.
Let’s get this out of the way right now: We ain’t rich. The few friends with whom we’ve shared our intention to take yearlong honeymoon know as much, and they tend to respond to our news in a strikingly similar way — with expressions that at once convey sincere happiness and deep confusion (and, in at least one case, poorly concealed pity at our utter naiveté).
Every time I tell someone of our plans I feel a bit like a morbidly obese man who’s just proclaimed he’s going to run marathon. The typical reaction is like, “Wow, that’s really great, and I totally support you. But … um … how exactly are you going to do that?”
It’s a fair question. In fact, I’ve looked in the mirror and posed it to myself a few times. How are we doing this?
The simplest answer is that I live with Lenin. After reading (skimming?) the Whites’ book Jill constructed a ramshackle budget, pounding our poor calculator is if it had committed a sin and scrawling unrecognizable figures in red ink.
“I think maybe the red pen is a bad choice,” I said. She ignored me.
In short order Jill created a rental flyer for the house, tossed all her unnecessary clothes (there were legions) in bags for Goodwill, and hired a financial planner to manage the extra dough she made through her freelance photography this year. (This last bit, by the way, is where she and Lenin sort of go separate ways.)
Jill also quit her job with startling ease — dare I say gusto? — and purchased a shit-ton of new camera gear. I should mention, too, that she taught herself, through many nights of trial and error, the rudiments of HTML and codex so she could build this blog. (I admit freely that I was of absolutely no help in this matter. Until very recently I thought codex was a brand of tampon.)
It was apparent to me that if I didn’t do something, apply myself to some moderately helpful task, Hurricane Jill might leave me behind, standing dumbly in a field of swirling cherry blossoms. So I stopped fiddling with the still-weird wedding band on my finger and did what I know best: I cleaned out the garage and sat down to write a letter.
—Scott