Having
had taken about 19 road trips between Bloemfontein and Grahamstown I can safely
say that road trips aren’t always that… metaphorical. They aren’t inherently adventurous.
They usually involve long hours staring into the distance pretending to be deep
and thoughtful. Recently
one of my best friends, Roxanne, and I drove back to Grahamstown together. Roxy
lives in Kimberly which is about a 2 hour drive away from Bloemfontein, so it
was a long day of driving. My dad dropped me off in Kimberly at 8am and we
jumped into Roxy’s adorable little Golf for the long trip.
I
was meant to be the navigator/ food passer/ DJ for the trip, but about an hour
in I passed and slept for about 2 hours; forcing Rox to naturally take
embarrassing photos of me which she then passed on to all our friends in res. After
those 2 hours we stopped in some Children-of-the-corn town to use the bathroom
and like an idiot I close my door without checking if Roxy had taken the keys
out of the car. For a moment we both panicked about being stuck in the town in
which House of Wax could have been filmed. Luckily the boot opened and Rox
clambered in over our luggage to get the keys. So we were off again!
After
that our trip was fairly uninteresting. We listened to good music, caught each
other up on our holidays and laughed at stupid radio interviews. Along the way
Rox would slow down so that I could take photos of the Eastern Cape landscape,
sky-divers and even monkeys.
A
road trip is what you make it. It becomes a little adventures if you want it to
be. Not every road trip is going to be epic, or particularly exciting, but the
little memories will be enough for me.
John
Green, the king of road trip literature (or any contemporary literature
actually) once wrote:
"As long as we don't die, this is gonna be
one hell of a story."
Maybe
the story is just a part of life. Maybe the story is just the few extra hours I
got to spend hanging out with my best friend.
Blog on, Elri!
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