Heading West, Destination Unknown

Wow! The strangest thing happened to me this morning on the way into work. About 4 miles from my turn off the interstate I had the wild and crazy idea to keep driving, all-the-way-to-Colorado-keep driving! This urge to keep going was so “lightning bolt”, so “wild hair”, so “un-Me”. Not that I’m not spontaneous, but spontaneous enough to drive 400 or 500 miles for no reason whatsoever? Seriously, if I had freedom in my job, like say I didn’t have an office or had a few days extra of vacation to burn – I truly think I would have done it!

It’s not really about running away either, though I have run away many times (according to my mom). When I was 2-ish, my mom said I would “run away” to the neighbor lady’s every day. I don’t think I hated home so much as I loved our neighbor. In fact, my mom has a number of pictures of Little Joanne walking down the sidewalk away from the camera heading to Auntie Ree’s house and she loves to tell those stories. But that’s probably only because I always came back home.

Now I keep thinking of what was running through my mind at the time when that thought hit me and the only thing I can remember is Billy Joel’s Big Shot on the radio. I’m not making a connection with that though, except that I’m an adult and an adult is kind of a big shot, maybe, maybe not so much.

Then I have run all the scenarios where I actually had to call someone (like work or my husband) saying “I’ll be back tomorrow…maybe.” I kind of think it would have been easier to pull it off with work, my husband would have required much more explaining. And exactly how do you explain, “I think I’ll drive for awhile and see where I end up.” I mean, Shit! This ain’t the 60s or 70s! I’m not a hippie (anymore). I have responsibilities. I’m the one that would be the most pissed off if a spouse or kid would have called me saying: Hey, guess what I’m doing…?

But I’ve got to tell you, the more I think about the possibilities of making a Wild Hair trip like that, the more it sounds like fun. To be truthful, I kind of think that if only I had my camera with me, I might have actually done it. What about you? Have you had any ‘totally out of character’ ideas? Have you acted on them? Leave me a comment, I want to hear about it.

Now, I said “Colorado”, but it could just as easily been the ends of the earth Kansas, or Nebraska. The urge wasn’t so much about the destination as it was the idea of just to keep going.