I'm not a road warrior

When my wife wanted to squeeze in a drive to Tennessee and then Missouri to our vacation I reverted back to being a two-year-old.

To me there was nothing appealing about spending 60 hours of precious vacation time on the road. To make matters worse, before the vacation I had to give myself an early deadline for our Fall Sports Preview and knew that I would be exhausted before we would head to Chicago.

I’m not a road warrior. I get antsy and bored when I have to drive anywhere over an hour away.

The night before our family getaway, I had experienced anxiety like I never had before. I was so tired and while I was relieved that I was finished with the work part of going on vacation, but I also knew that the drive would be treacherous.

After about eight to ten hours on the road, we stopped and got a hotel. It was a move that we typically hadn’t done in previous years because finding a decent hotel costs over $100 a night.

I have no idea how we had survived driving overnight in previous years, given that it gets hard to stay completely alert at 4 a.m., but I am now a fan of getting rest on the road, regardless of the cost.

While in Chicago, we had a great time and I didn’t want to leave. I certainly did not want to drive to Tenn. and then Missouri with a pregnant wife and three-year-old.

Luckily, my wife Susan agreed to have her cousin and her husband from Murfreesboro meet us in Saint Louis, which cut out about eight hours of driving.

While in Saint Louis we hit up a calzone restaurant named Sauce on the Side, a spot that Susan’s cousin had seen on TV. After that we went to the Saint Louis Zoom where admission is free.

We then stayed with Susan’s brother and sister-in-law in Springfield, Mo., and then headed north.

I saw that we would be going around Kansas City, when it hit me that my half-sister, who I had only met once in my life, lived there. I called her and our families met for the first time. The only other time I had seen her was 15 years ago, when she was training for the Navy.

Though I was super sour about adding stops to our trip, my wife getting to meet my sister, and our children meeting each other was totally worth the time and effort.

I hated the idea at first but it was totally worth it.