Since returning from my road trip from California back to Chicago, two things have happened that warrant their own blogs. But I wanted to write about the road trip before writing about anything else. But now enough time has passed since everything happened that I feel comfortable squashing it all into one post. But heads up — it will be long and probably inconsistent.

I’ve been charged with thinking of (and writing down) five of my personal attributes that I consider strengths. First of all, thinking of strengths of character is hard, because that requires me to consider the whole of my personality, which is something that I know I should do on a regular basis but I don’t. The fact that I don’t is not, in my opinion, a strength. But whatever.

Zen patience.

I flew out to California to help Trevor move to Chicago. My flight was delayed. It didn’t bother me. We had packing and loading to do. It didn’t bother me. We had to pick up a piano from an elderly Pagan lesbian in Orange County. It didn’t bother me. The truck I had to drive all by myself didn’t have any way of attaching my iPod so that I could choose my own playlist during the long and lonely hours. It didn’t bother me.

Because I know that sometimes you just have to wait and there’s nothing you can do to speed things up. So you do what you can in the meantime and handle your business as it comes. I stay busy or entertained when I can, and when it’s just me and my thoughts…well, daydreaming is something that I do very well and I can do it all day long.

Expanded, transcendental tolerance, respect, and curiosity of the ways of others.

As I had mentioned, there was no way to hook up my iPod to the truck’s speakers. It was just me and the radio through the western half. So I decided to take the radio for what it was worth. And I knew we would be driving through some of the longest stretches of open highway in the nation — literally hundreds of miles between actual cities, with a few outposts of civilization along the way. I would be at the mercy of every two-bit, fly by night radio station that put out enough signal for the truck’s antenna to taste.

But I accepted my fate and decided to make the most of it. I would do America on America’s terms, not mine. I figured rather than do my best to ignore it all, I’d try to listen very closely. Maybe I’d discover a country song that I liked. Anything could happen.

As it turns out, in all the country music that I heard, there was in fact one country song that I discovered that I liked. I think it’s called “I’m So Much Cooler Online” – I don’t know who sings it or if that’s even the real title, but the lyrics made me chuckle, so the song must be all right.

I listened to a lot of country music. I also listened to a lot of Christian talk radio. I can’t say I enjoyed it, but I must admit I spent hours listening to it. It’s fascinating, in the same way that a monkey singing showtunes is fascinating: it’s almost amusing at first, then you feel a certain amount of pity for it because it’s just so indignant about its idiocy, and then you get scared because you realize that it affects so many people.

I hope that didn’t come across as a slight on all Christians. I’m not putting down Christians. I’m just sayin’…Christian talk radio is kind of full of stereotypically zealous nutbags who contradict themselves every five minutes but never stop talking. And in between nutbags talking there is eerily soothing music played on harps and acoustic nylon-string guitars.

I tried to get into it all – all the Christian talk, the country pop, the mainstream schlock, all that the airwaves of America had to offer – and I found it was actually really easy to listen to as long as I was really listening. Because people that I might want to meet listen to these radio stations. And that’s really neat.

Always observing, always learning.

(Devon would say rarely observing…that’s not true. I always am observing something, even if it’s not what I ought to observe.)

We stayed one night on the trip with Trevor’s sister in Colorado. She and her husband have three kids. I spent most of the night watching how they interacted with the kids versus how they interacted with Trevor and me. I figured they might know a thing or two. Eventually, I will have kids, so I might want to have an edge on the situation when it gets here.

I try to always be learning new things, because when you’re as bad at planning for the future as I am, it helps to be really goddamn smart.

(Soon I hope to learn how to plan for the future.)

Ability to run great distances (physically speaking).

This compliments the patience thing. I can run kind of a long way. I ran a marathon last winter. I run every now and then these days – mostly on weekends – and not as much as when training for a marathon, obviously, but I do like to get out in the air and run for miles. I don’t like listening to music while I do it, too, I like to just go.

Part of it is the endorphins…man, I love the endorphins…but part of it is the motion. I appreciate a constantly changing landscape. (This is why I like road trips so much.)

With patience and determination, I can train to run a marathon and then do it. And if I can do that, I can train for and do anything.

I have had plenty of practice driving, and I’m good enough at it that I can drive great distances in a large and heavy truck even when sick with some kind of flu (which happened this time around, I drove from California to Chicago with a fever and a sore throat). You give me enough time and I can do anything, physical or mental.

Calculated, eternal loyalty.

Once you win me over, it’s really hard to get me to not like you. Devon has won me over. Converse All-Stars have won me over. Pizza has won me over.

I’m a Taurus. Part of being a Taurus includes being loyal. Somebody told me this when I was in college, and it occurred to me at the time that it was pretty true. When you’re my friend, anybody can talk shit about you all they want, but no third party will convince me that you are not my friend. You have to prove it yourself that you’re not my friend. The number of people I can think of who have actually proven they are not my friend I can count on one hand. Everyone else is still cool.

Trevor has won me over time and time again, and I was only too glad to help the guy move out to my city. For one thing, I love road trips. But mainly, I know that he would do anything for me, so I felt like I could reciprocate at least some of that by helping out as much as I could. So I flew out to California, used up all my vacation time for the rest of the year, plugged his recital to half of the Southern California region, picked up a piano from Huntington Beach, helped him pack, helped him load up, went to his recital in Pomona, and drove the truck for three and a half days while sick. And I’d do it again.

I’m a big believer in Karma, and I certainly believe that you can make your own. A friend from college let us stay in her apartment on the third night in Iowa City, and thus she gets to stay in my apartment in Chicago as long as she wants and as often as she wants anytime she comes to the city. Helen has won me over.

That’s about it for the five-strengths meme. If I had Steinbeck’s preternatural abilities of description, I would give great, flowing descriptions of the landscapes as we passed through them. But I don’t. Instead, I’ll give each state three words that describe it (in my opinion) and I’ll try to make them as all-encompassing as I possibly can.

California: varied, mountainous, easy.
Nevada: speckled, barren, generous.
Arizona: red, rocky, tilted.
Utah: desolate, fertile, secretive.
Colorado: watery, forested, epic.
Nebraska: corn, corn, corn.
Iowa: rolling, clear, charming.
Illinois: grounded, driving, detailed.

The other thing that happened is Per Diem’s blast-off act-a-thon, where random people read random scripts at random times without a chance to prepare. But that’s a whole other post.

I want to conclude this one by urging you and all people everywhere to explore your surroundings every chance you get. See as much of the country as you can, and try to see as much of wherever you are as you can. Soak it up. Get to know it all. We live in a big country with a lot of small pieces. Enjoy it.

Filed by Bil at 9:43 pm under General, Religion, Pop Culture