An Interview With Someone I Just Took a Road Trip With

I’m not sure if you know this or not, but I am now a resident of Olympia, Washington. I drove here, via a rental car, from New York and it only took three days because my travel partner and I decided that it would be a great idea to never sleep and just drive until we started hallucinating characters from Where The Wild Things Are in the middle of the road. I just lied to you, we actually did stop at a hotel in Nebraska one night and paid $34 to sleep on a bare mattress that was glued to the floor. Even though I’ve had a day to recover since the road trip, I still feel literally insane and it took me like 89 years just to get dressed this morning. All I’ve been able to accomplish in life so far this 2k11 is eating pizza rolls, buying tampons, and folding a few washcloths and putting them in a drawer.

At this point I think it would be a good idea to interview my travel companion to see if she can piece things together any better than I can. Her name is Erica and she spent the majority of her morning researching how to distinguish which local spiders were poisonous because she saw one in the bathroom and is now convinced that Olympia is just filled with spiders.

What was your favorite part about the trip?

Definitely finding that weird burrito place in the middle of Iowa.

What weird burrito place?

Bandit Burrito. They had vegan chorizo and “vegan” rice crispy treats. It was pretty funny to be told that it was surprising that I was getting a flower tortilla because I was dressed so colorfully.

Tell me about when you got a speeding ticket.

Why do we have to keep talking about this? I was driving in what I believed to be a 75 mile per hour zone. This really fat guy who smelled like whiskey proceeded to write me a ticket for going 25 miles over the speeding limit. And then I killed myself.

Tell me about the hotel we stayed at.

Well, I was pretty sure that when you came out of the office, there was the potential that you had signed a lease and we were gonna be living there forever. The highlights were the towels that no one could tell if they were cold or wet, and the stove that was on top of the fridge, and the “bed” that was some sort of carpeted platform that came out of the floor, with a mattress that had a fitted sheet that was a size too small. We both definitely have bed bugs, HIV, anything that could be transmitted by a mattress.

Wait, are you just making stuff up? What are you doing?

How many public restrooms would you say you pooped in during the trip?

I definitely pooped that one time in front of the woman who was cleaning the bathroom. We talked about how she was getting off soon, and she had been there since 11am. We pooped while we were eating in Middle America; not while we were eating. I tried to poop when we stopped at the world’s largest truck stop, but only a little came out. Some girl came in with her grandmother, and I got a little shy. I think I pooped a couple other times, but I can’t remember them. Maybe three more times.

What sort of deep thoughts did you think about while you were driving?

I don’t think I was really thinking deep thoughts while I was driving. The important thing was that once I figured out how the cruise control worked, I could really focus on singing.

How would you describe me as a travel companion?

Overall, pretty good, but I have a couple complaints. The first one is that you denied me, really us, the opportunity to travel down historic route 30 while we were going through Oregon; It was frustrating. Also, you’re very particular about parking. I’m not even talking about that time you asked me to not park in front of  “that shady bush.” You also denied all of my cappuccino suggestions. You also kept touching the rims of all the beverages I was drinking. You also dipped your fingers in my water glass once. But other than that, you did pretty good.

What advice would you give to people taking road trips?

Clearly you should have an atlas, because you can literally calculate your arrival time almost exactly, even when you don’t understand time zones. Don’t drive your cat through the mountains, because it’s just gonna start puking. If you need to know about a winter storm that you’re driving through, don’t call people who are currently at cake parties. Call your Dad because he’s probably just gonna offer to pay to put you at a hotel.

[Editor’s note: All things in quotations indicate times when the interview subject believed something to not be factual or accurate.]