Drive on.

“What if I just kept driving?”

I hit the end call button as the thought floated into clarity.

Our annual Mother’s Day call was filled with catching-up on our socially isolated happenings, a welcome opportunity for the daughter not known for her attention to relationships. 

Corn Weekend rapidly approached in two months, our annual gathering of the scattered nuclear family. We met each summer in our hometown to prepare corn for the year, peaches ‘n cream variety of the finest Iowa sweet corn harvested that morning. Shucked, blanched, cooled, and packed into freezers to enjoy during bleary Midwestern winter months. 

Charlotte to Iowa was a long drive; certainly it made sense to stick around a few weeks. Could I leave the Mustang in Iowa? Were flights truly safe? Will eastern hours conflict with central, even mountain, while working? I grappled with the COVID-safe logistics. 

“I’ve got an idea to run by you”, I tossed casually as we walked our red labs around an already-sweltering Charlotte block. 

Always thoughtful, my roommate is a no-nonsense type of gal. I cannot sneak anything by her. I tend towards the opportunity and always-on shenanigans; she pulls me back to reality. But this time, the idea hit pay dirt.

“What if we got an RV and traveled this year during COVID?”

What a grand adventure! Safely, while working remote, and seeing the sights.  She had considered buying a trailer for her Grand Cherokee for weekend trips…what if we pursued more?

Cue two months of furious hypothesis testing – trips to local RV dealerships, RV rentals on Outdoorsy, hours of YouTube tutorials, hiking the sites in North Carolina, and daily questioning if we had gone much too far off the deep end.

And then we saw it. 

The RV purchase market is up 300% this summer. I’m hardly the only one interested in getting out of town, safely, during COVID. Dealers can barely keep inventory on the lots.

Time to jump. Go now.

Be ready for when opportunity arises – finances, career, dreams…be ready to strike. This is the single most important lesson I’ve learned of the last few years. Fortune truly does favor the prepared. 

On July 11, I sealed the deal. With a BofA RV loan no less, I drove all 24,000 lbs of my newly acquired rig off the lot in Orlando, FL and headed to my new hometown of North Carolina. Cruising up I-95, I belted off-tune Disney sing-a-longs, beyond thrilled as we weaved up the coast.

Grandma C says we have truckers in our family tree. If this corporate gig doesn’t work out and Elon Musk doesn’t automate away the industry, I’ll be ready to hit the road with my long lost kin. It’s in our blood, after all. 

Safely delivering the new-to-us Tin Can to North Carolina, we loaded up with approximately 93 Amazon shipments and slowly, ever so slowly, created some semblance of a functioning coach.  Most importantly, we had the right sewer hoses!  More YouTube tutorials…

We left the East coast and headed west, across the Appalachian Mountains and had our first ‘lessons learned’ with trip planning.  No matter your travel plans, they will change.  Whether rain or construction or multi-hour stopped traffic (or all three in one day…), the travel day gets longer and different from how you imagined.  Exhausted, but safe, we wound our way to Kentucky (no bourbon stops, maybe on the return) and then Missouri for quick overnights before heading north to my home town in Iowa.

We made it.  My word, we made it.

The constant learning, questioning, calling, trying, re-trying, fixing, starting, stopping, going.  We had done it.  We would be cruising in the RV up to Iowa for Corn Weekend, the milestone holiday, just two months after the original idea.  An epic life change in the middle of a turbulent world, let’s go.

I snuggled my pup a bit closer that night, scooped up a big bowl of Chocolate Therapy by Ben & Jerry’s, and reviewed the next day’s drive on RV TripWizard.  The new evening ritual was already emerging.