Unstoppable

It’s nearly the end of August and we’ve almost made it through a long, hot summer, still living on the road. Fortunately for us, we were in the Eastern U.S., not the West, where extreme heat prevailed. Since the campervan does not have a plug-in AC system, we have to camp where it’s cool enough to sleep at night. The only viable option was to head up into the mountains in western Virginia and North Carolina.

Life on the road is not bad once you get used to it. You’re not stuck in one place like people living in a home. I have nothing against homes. I lived in one all of my life, but I have to admit it can get boring.

Life on the road can be exhilarating but also exhausting, and occasionally, yes, also a little bit boring.

In the van, we have learned to live in cramped quarters. We spend very little time in the campervan other than when driving or sleeping at night. Some people like tent camping, but for me it’s easier and quicker to sleep in the van. Also, if you travel all the time, the tent gets wet and then it gets moldy.

I find that being outdoors all the time is conducive to my writing. I don’t have to stare at four walls all the time like most writers do. I can look up at the sky or stare at the trees or feel the breeze caress me. I have started working on my next book, Home Free, which I hope to finish by this time next summer.

While driving, we listen to the radio a lot. Of necessity, we have to listen to whatever station signal we can get. Sometimes it’s country music, or classic rock, or chart-toppers. This week I heard “Unstoppable.” It was a hit for the Australian diva, Sia, in 2016. It’s one of those inspiring anthems that pumps you up.

“I'm unstoppable, I'm a Porsche with no brakes/I'm invincible,

Yeah, I win every single game

I'm so powerful, I don't need batteries to play/I'm so confident, I'm

unstoppable today. Unstoppable today, I'm unstoppable today”

While most people focus on the chorus, in which Sia chants “unstoppable” over and over, the lyrics reveal that being invincible is just an act, a face she puts on when she has to confront the real world. Inside, she is just as vulnerable as the rest, dealing with the sadness and hurt that she hides from us.

That is an apt metaphor for my 48-state book tour. Officially, I was unstoppable, both literally and figuratively. I gave myself six months to complete the tour and averaged eight states per month. That is one state every 3.5 days for six months. If you don’t think that’s hard to do, I invite you to try it.

I had to set a few rules for myself in order to complete the tour on time. One, I was not allowed to get sick. Ever. I could not have a car accident, as it would slow us down. And we could not run out of gas. I always filled up the tank before we left town. Out West, a full tank of gas can be a real life-saver.

People did not get to see the hardships involved in writing a book or conducting a national book tour. They just saw the pictures I posted of the fabulous national parks and the periodic gorgeous sunsets. They did not see the cramped space we slept in at night or hear me groan when I woke up every day. True, I whined about the difficulty of succeeding as a writer in Facebook posts and in my weekly blogs. To be honest, I probably groan just as much after sleeping in a normal bed. It’s age, not discomfort.

People saw us at the national parks but not all the stops we made a gas stations and convenience stores, where we often saw the dregs of society. We would see mean-looking guys who looked like they escaped from the nearest penitentiary and killed a farm family and stole their car and clothes so they could go on a crime spree until the police finally caught them. The appropriate thing to say is, “Hello!”

It is not appropriate to say that they look like escaped convicted killers on the run from the police. Because if you do, they will probably kill you.

As for dregs, who are they, exactly? I began to wonder if I had become a dreg. I suppose the only way to know for sure is to take a dreg test. We ate convenience store food and drank their bad coffee. In the South, they had fry counters at these places where you could buy a wide variety of fried foods. To be honest, once food is fried, it’s hard to identify what it is. I would ask and the staff would argue about what was what. “That’s a fried tater tot.” “No, it’s a fried slice of a carrot or a hot dog.” And so on.

The number of fried foods for sale at gas stations these days is astonishing

It doesn’t matter. I only mention these unseen realities of road life so that you will realize that it’s not all romance and adventure. Speaking of romance, telling a woman you live in a campervan with your dog is the fastest way I know to get a woman to lose all interest in you. Women suddenly remember they have to go get their nails done or their hair styled or pick up their kids at school (forgetting that they are 65).

So, don’t mind about the harsh realities of road life. Just keep right on thinking that it is all fun and games. Occasionally I will have a near-death experience with a person who might decide to kill me. Somehow I have come through those unscathed so far, but I don’t want to keep tempting my fate.

Just like I am not allowed to get sick, I am also not allowed to die, because I have to write the next book, which would be hard to do posthumously. My plan is to complete Home Free by this time next summer. There will probably be a rewrite, which is the process by which an editor forces you to amputate your own limbs. Then, you have to thank him or her kindly for performing the life-saving surgery on you.

So, without any other viable options for the moment, we will probably be on the road for at least another year, till the end of 2024. By that time, I may have to replace the tires and the brakes again. I hope to God that the engine holds out and that none of the morons in the mountains up here tries to kill us by driving across the double yellow line around a blind curve, which they do to save tire wear by colliding head-on with an oncoming vehicle. Very smart.

Driving on narrow, hairpin mountain roads is harrowing

But officially, I’m still unstoppable and you’ll never see me cry in public. When I was growing up, men did not cry. Not when anyone was looking, anyway. If you cried at a sad movie, you had dust in your eye.

I gotta go now, I have dust in my eye. See you next week. Until then, I’m still unstoppable.

Drivin’ My Life Away

FAME!