Road Trips Cure Heartbreak.

'This is not going to work'

'Oh no, this is definitely not going to work'

(insert expletives)

'Seriously, stop. I don't want to do this with you anymore'

'Fine, then leave'

'I am. Oh God yes I am. Drop me off here'

And he did. He left me standing in a Motel 6 carpark somewhere in Phoenix. A pile of luggage at my feet. His car drew away in an adolescent burn of rubber and I stood there, silently. Watching him retreat into the distance. Then I looked around me at all the bags I'd accumulated on our trip. Then up at the four flights of stairs to the motel reception.

The next day I got a car to get me back to LA.

And then the music kicked in. Oh yeah, the music kicked in.

I jammed everything into the car. Then prepared to move out as the hot sun blared down.

Shades – check.

Ciggies – check.

Snarl – check.

I was ready for it. I tried to drive with a cigarette jutting out of my mouth but the damn thing kept ashing hot ambers onto my face from the open window so I gave that one up. But I was able to find ‘bad to the bone’ on the radio which seemed to suggest my life was complete.

I felt like all those young hopefuls setting off from their tiny towns to become a star in LA. Some making it or not. And even though I wasn’t going to LA to become a star – I felt like one right then. A star in my own head, but a star nonetheless.

I drove through the desert and past big mountain ranges, huge, glowering, folding in over themselves and each other. Cactus spread out and huge lorries trundling along, I passed a lot of camper vans with stickers on the back reading ‘this is the life’.

I felt good. I felt really good.

Me, my bad singing and a couple of packs of cigarettes, that’s all I need in the world right then.

When you hit the peak of a crest going 110 miles per hour, right there on top as you ride over it – you feel like nothing else on earth. Staring down at the valley below you, with mountains protecting you from either side – the sunset blasting at you – the straight open road ahead of you – bare of cars – God it’s a good feeling. You feel like you're the only person on earth. You feel insignificant in the face of such grandness, such beauty, such freedom.

I got to yell out ‘whooo hooo’ whenever I liked and nobody got to look at me like the crazy person I was. Damn yeah. And I also get to doff my imaginary cowboy hat whenever I liked too. I was in heaven.

Heading past the exit for Joshua Tree there is a massive field of electricity generating robots. As far as the eye can see. There’s thousands of them and they are perched like mad sentinels on top of the hilltops to catch the blasts of wind.

The wind is so strong there, it rocks and buffets the cars and you see lighter vehicles struggling to stay on the road. It's the most incredible apocalyptic feeling; these huge robotic arms spinning with all their might in their strange patterns with the massive ragged mountains in the background.

I loved it.

I think I’ve watched too many B grade end-of-the-world the-machines-take-over films. Because I felt like I was smack bang inside my very own movie. It felt like at the end of Terminator when the woman is in her Jeep and she’s heading out into the unknown.

I was on the open road. A family sized ham and pineapple pizza next to me for sustenance, a tank full of gas and a loud stereo. The sun sank as I drove and great swaths of colour zoomed across my windshield. I wasn’t bored, I was on the phone for 2.5 hours to an Indian call centre to cancel a cell phone account that I wasn’t using.

That sort of thing usually sends me into conniptions but out there, the wind in my hair, the vistas zooming past, I actually even enjoyed that. Tell me Ishmael about your sister’s knee operation. Nothing gets you down on the road. Nothing at all. Except for traffic jams. And slow drivers. And trucks who run you off the road.

The thing about a road trip – is that your mind wanders. You think about everything and anything.

Then puff something will bring you back to the drive - catching glimpses of people as you drive past them – singing to lame songs at the top of their voices, banging the steering wheel and grinning. Mmm, my kind of people.

I made up songs as I drove. Until self-censorship kicked in and I'd look around me and gulp a couple of times, forcing a smile to absolutely nobody in particular. Then I'd remember, out here on the road it’s my rules goddamit. I can sing really, (really) badly and nobody could tell me off. It was bliss.

If some bastardo was tailgating me, and he was driving some kind of suv that looks great on the outside but I knew only housed a Chevy engine with no guts. Then my grin slipped into James Dean mode and I'd be like ‘game on bytch. Game on.’

I didn't want to arrive in LA, I wanted my road trip to go on forever and ever.

But when I at last crunched into my friends driveway in Malibu, I felt so refreshed, so excited, so filled with the possibilities of life that I couldn’t keep the grin off my face.

So, next time you find yourself with no place to go - take a roadtrip - Roadtrips really are the perfect cure to find yourself where you last left yourself.  xx