Jill and I were having breakfast at Hotel Congress, in the little café adjoining the lobby, and I found myself surveying the room between gulps of pulpy-fresh orange juice. A guy in motorcycle leathers sat at the counter, his helmet perched next to a steaming cup of coffee. Two stools down, a scraggly dude in hiking boots shoveled huevos rancheros into his mouth while reading a paperback book. At the table behind us a twentysomething couple, unmistakably European, studied a map amid empty plates and half-filled glasses.
“I miss that,” I said.
Jill followed my glance to the scraggly reader at the breakfast counter. “You miss what?” she asked.
“This place is full of travelers. I miss being one of them.”
“You are one of them.”
Technically, she was right. We were 120 miles from our home in Phoenix, relishing the back end of a one-night getaway. We had attended a concert by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit in the hotel club the night before. But now it was Wednesday morning, and a workday awaited us both at the end of a drive northward.
At the time (April 1, 2009 — a fool’s day), Jill and I were four months removed from an impromptu engagement and six months short of a fantastical-seeming wedding at a Tennessee campground. It was a dreamy space we were living in, a nebulous swirl of romance and possibility that momentarily obscured the responsibilities of planning a far-away marriage ceremony. In such spaces casual observations sometimes mutate into actual ideas. And suddenly I had one.
“What if, for our honeymoon, we take a month off work and do a big road trip?”
In retrospect, the idea doesn’t seem all that audacious. But back then the notion of convincing our employers to set us loose for an entire month was laughable. Then there was the question of where we would go. As our conversation unfurled, it became clear that our wish list of road-trip destinations could never be checked off in a mere 30 days. I wanted to take Jill to a few of my favorite places and visit states I’d never set foot in; Jill wanted to take me to places I’d never even thought about going. The cities we respectively reeled off are separated by thousands of miles of interstate and terra firma.
Then she said it.
“Why don’t we just quit our jobs and travel for a whole year?”
She said it with a smile. I smiled, too. I took a swig of juice and rubbed at a smudge of black ink on the back of my hand, a remnant of the stamp pressed there by the guy working the club door the night before. I was 37 years old. I had stayed up until 3 a.m. on a work night, nearly 2 hours from home. I was running woefully late, and my head hurt from too much whiskey. But I felt good. A pretty girl sat across the table, and soon I would marry her. We had our whole lives to rush to work, pay bills and play house. But we had just that fleeting moment to commit to something completely nuts.
“I’m in if you are,” I said.
Photo by Jill McNamara
“What would we do with the dogs?” she asked. We have two, and they love a road trip as much as we do.
“Bring ’em,” I said.
Walking out of the café and into the Arizona sun that morning, I sort of figured our grand plan would fade nearly as fast as the inky smudge on the back of my hand. But it didn’t. It hasn’t.
Now here we sit, jobless and anxious, hoping someone will rent our house and wondering how we’ll ever fit a year’s worth of stuff and two big mutts into an aging Honda CRV.
—Scott