We were backing out of the Dowling Catholic High School parking lot recently after my 15-year-old sister’s varsity swim meet to start the 30-minute drive back to Colfax.
I asked my partner what she wanted for dinner, and her response was our routine playful banter. “Cabbage Key,” she smiled back. For those of you who have experienced Jimmy Buffet’s “Cheeseburger in Paradise,” the small Florida gulf-side key is, according to local folklore, the place where the laid back songwriter wrote the iconic homage to island living. And the cheeseburger on the menu at the island’s restaurant inspired the lyrics.
But from the look in her eyes, I could tell she was serious. She opened her wallet and showed me the spendables from her last paycheck. We had the gas money, we had fare for the boat ride — “let’s just drive,” she said.
She wanted our dinner 24 hours later, sitting on the enclosed porch of the little secluded restaurant overlooking the bay and Pine Island. I felt my gut drop. Her eyes were tired. I knew she would have gone had I just passed Newton on I-80 and headed for the Highway 218 southern route to our tropical destination.
But I couldn’t. I could help but think of my responsibilities — deadlines, city council meetings, my co-workers’ reactions if I just took off to the ocean.
Driving at night can be a cathartic experience, but I knew this one would be in silence. It wasn’t anger at our inevitable inaction and our destined Casey’s Pizza night in, but her message was about our lack of adventure. The monotony of life has recently begun to bare down, and our weekend day trips to Des Moines are getting a bit repetitive.
I’ve always envied the people who drop everything on a Friday afternoon, pack up their tents and kayaks and just drive until they find a shady spot on a secluded river for the weekend — letting go of every care at home, no thoughts of stress. The folks who decide a weekend trip to Chicago is not too daunting are tenacious. They write no itinerary, no plan, only exploration.
This is my new goal — and for any coworker reading this, I’m not going to drop everything mid-week and leave you hanging — to be spontaneous. I’m not going to be afraid to find a new spot in Iowa or beyond when life becomes too much a bear. I will trade in Google Maps for a road atlas, I will put down the lists for line-of-sight planning and I’ll go where I’ve never gone before — unchecked.
Contact Mike Mendenhall at
515-674-3591 or
mmendenhall@jaspercountytribune.com