In roughly 24 hours I will be picking up one of my bestest friends from the airport. From there we'll be hitting the Venice/Santa Monica area before scooting down to Anaheim, where we will spend the night in anticipation of a full day of Disneylanding on Sunday (believe it or not, it was her request that we go. And I fought her! But mainly because of insaneo summer crowds.) From there we spend the night in Beverly Hills, where we'll do the Hills/Hollywood trek before checking in with Century City. And then it's just the two of us on the open road going all the way up the coast. And I have to admit although I'm totally excited about this, I'm also super nervous.
See, I didn't learn how to drive until I was 25. Most people learn when they're 16, but I was focused on things like paying rent and whatnot at the time. I figured I'd never be able to afford a car, so why bother learning how to drive? Plus, I lived in cities where I was able to walk the vast majority of the area, and when I couldn't do that there was always awesome transit to work with. But that all changed when I moved to Los Angeles. I remember sitting in my ex-mother in law's living room with my then-husband, who said to me, "You're going to learn how to drive."
Having built it up in my head as something that would now be impossible to do at my advanced age, I responded, "Yeah... no."
"You have to," he pressed.
"For what?"
"Because we're moving to L.A?"
I shrugged. "So? I'll take transit."
He laughed for roughly a half-hour before telling me, "Get dressed, you're going to have your first lesson today."
So initially I was completely unimpressed with the idea of driving. I've always loved cars, and always swore that if I ever learned how to drive, I'd have to learn how to drive a standard because everything I always wanted to own was some kinds of sports car with a stick shift. But that was all talk. In reality I worried that I'd suck at driving and didn't want to take the chance that I would suck bad enough to, you know, kill myself or something the first time out on the road.
But naturally, I took to driving like a duck to water. Save for my three-hour daily commute from when I first moved to the L.A. area, I loved driving - as I've documented on this site many times. But I've never driven so far away from home to so many places that I've never been. I'm not worried about Monterey or San Francisco, because I've lived both those places before and am pretty sure I'll be comfortable enough with the lay of the land. But Portland? Seattle? Save for the day and a half I spent in Seattle earlier this summer, I've not spent any time in either place, really.
That said, there's something about having Dayna along for the ride with me that's making it easier to stomach. I actually wrote about her in the book - for those of you following along at home, she's "Diana," the girl with whom I discovered boys had "bumsticks" with when we raided her dad's Playboy and Penthouse collection. When we were growing up, Dayna was the kind of best friend that I shared a brain with. I feel badly that toward the end of our childhood friendship we weren't hanging out as much, but we were both going through our own collective bullshit at the time. The last time I saw her we were 12 going on 13. Her mother moved her to Vancouver and I wound up in Calgary. As her mom put it, "It was tragic when we had to break you two up!"
So roughly 20 years went by before we reconnected on Facebook, and it was like not a day had gone past. I mean, yeah, we were both drinking and swearing in ways we never did as kids, but she's still stubborn and bossy, and I'm still the over-achieving perfectionist control freak. To wit: she called me earlier this week to talk about plans and whatnot, and I said, "Okay, so I've put together five solid playlists on my iPod that should carry us through the entire trip. Can I tell you what's on them in case you don't like any of the music?"
She started laughing. "You haven't changed a bit!"
Luckily, neither has she. I think what's made our friendship pick up where it left off is that even though we got into stupid fights that young girls tend to get into (for example, over Barbies or cute boys), we still had a great amount of respect for one another, and we cared about each other the way we would've if we were family. And in a way, we were. I think Dayna and I were able to create the kind of friendship that you create when you're looking to fill a hole in your family, and with both of us coming from divorced parents, it seemed to be common ground for us to bond over.
I think that's part of what's going to make the article assignment part of this trip so fun. It's been a long time since we've spent this kind of time together - I mean, come on... it's been decades since the YMCA summer camp - and we've also never road tripped together. This will either be utterly comical and hilarious, or disastrous. Personally I'm betting on the former. Either way, I expect there will be daily updates on GoGirlfriend.com (in addition to anything I post here.)
That said, anyone who has any road trip tips is so encouraged to share them! I need all the help I can get.
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