I like to start off any road trip I take with yelling “ROAD TRIIIIIIIP” in the car. Or in my head if there are others around. That’s how you know it’s a real road trip. What is the minimum distance or time for a road trip? 100 miles? 2 hours? Whatever, road trips mean Monster Energy drinks (Lo-Carb) and beef jerky. It was my cousin’s birthday so we went down to San Marcos to do some tubing. So I went out of town and I didn’t do a GORUCK or other event. Shocking, I know.

Friday after work I headed south on I35 and thought I could get there in 3.5 hours. No problem. There was some traffic but after Waco it got bad. Three lanes merged down to two and Waze said “17 minutes in traffic” and then an hour later “10 more minutes” yeah OK dude. This is why we have trust issues in 2016.

I wasn’t too worried about the delay though. That meant I was able to listen to another episode of the 10% Happier podcast. I have this ongoing, internal dialogue about whether me changing is a result of maturation and getting older or my new-found appreciation of meditation. Regardless, result is I just hang out in my car and doing my wing tsun chain punches at the windshield because I’m getting antsy idling forward for an hour.

I eventually made to Austin in a blistering 4.5 hours (in college I once made that same trip in 2.5 hours; also dumb) and head over to this Mexican restaurant, Amaya’s Taco Village to meet up with some friends and just hang out. The food was really good and the salsa was pretty bad ass. But even better was being able to hang out with my peeps.

Listening to Ed talk about his Death Race adventure and his running of all the races was pretty inspiring. Probably for someone else if he bottled it up and sold it. Or made one of those voice over videos and post it up on YouTube. Not for me though – I ain’t trying to run that much, all the time ’cause nope. There’s so much that he left out of his Death Race report that was fun to hear about in person. Great story Ed! Evan had cool adventures in New Zealand, Australia and Thailand and then he came back and moved down to Austin. Just as cool as Ed’s Excellent Edventure.

So we did the tubing thing and that was fun. Tubing technology hasn’t changed much if at all since I last went years ago. Get a tube, a river and some beers and fun time will be had by all. It’s not a real trip until someone almost dies in a rip current though.

Someone whose name rhymes with Yee Bang decided to go around the safety chain and we got stuck in a rip current for a bit. Someone may have freaked out. Someone may have fallen out of his inner tube, banged his knee on a rock and lost some skin on his hand but saved his sunglasses. Someone may have lost her sunglasses. Whatever, it makes for a better story.

It was a fun trip but dude one of my favorite things to do on a road trip is to wake up early and get on the road and head home. I woke up at 0530 but didn’t want to wake up my roommate Loy so I went back to bed and left just before 0800 and crushed Monster Lo-Carbs, kolaches and BLOOD BROS all the way home.

I need more road tripping in my life.

ROAD TRIIIIIIIP