the latest road misadventure, for your entertainment
i like being alone. sometimes more than i should. i could easily stop
shaving my legs, take up playing dulcimer, move into a little cabin
in the appalachian mountains and become a hermit. people always ask
me about being alone so much on tour and no one seems to believe me
but i never really minded it so much. until this one day recently…
i was in the midwest and i had mexican food. i should have known
better, don’t ever trust a “burritoh” (imagine Francis McDormand’s
character in Fargo pronouncing it with a round-mouthed midwestern
“oh”…bur-eee- toh)
i spent the entire night tossing and turning with stomach pains and
finally at 8am the source of my misery made itself known. i barely
got to the bathroom in time and let me tell you, there’s nothing more
depressing than puking alone in a strange toilet…
…UNLESS afterwards you have to drive 6 and a half hours to your
next destination AND you’re desperately tired because you didn’t
sleep thanks to the tummyache BUT you’re still too nauseous to drink
coffee or soda or even think about eating anything that might revive
your wilted self OR, even worse, when you start falling asleep at the
wheel you go through your phone book and call all the friends and
family you can think of to get sympathy and a little help staying
awake and not a SINGLE person picks up their #$%&-ing phone! by
10:30am i found myself smack in the middle of an existential crisis
(existentialism- a philosophy that emphasizes the uniqueness and
isolation of the individual experience in a hostile or indifferent
universe…yup, that about captures where i was). if only i had a
friend or tour manager on the road with me i coulda slept in the
backseat and been in much better shape. instead i’m driving in the
middle of nowhere Wisconsin blinded by tears and all i can think is
“i want my mom” at which point i start crying harder because my mom
passed away 5 years ago and i can’t pick up the phone and call her.
so i did the only sane thing i could think of and pulled off the road
and slept for half an hour. i couldn’t sleep any longer cause it got
too cold in the car and i think if you leave the heat on and fall
asleep you can suffocate from carbon monoxide poisoning. as bad as i
was feeling, i wasn’t that bad off.
later on when i was back on the road i got ahold of my 89 year old
grammy (my mom’s mom) and she said you never stop wanting your mom in
moments like that, no matter how old you get. i got some much needed
sympathy and encouragement and somehow i made it to the next town in
one piece. short of something devastating happening that was about
the worst day i could imagine on the road. hopefully i can check
“food poisoning” off my list of road disasters and never have to
relive that one again. or at least maybe next time i’ll have someone
with me to hold my hair back…