Why I Must Be The Worst Travel Companion In The World

I have a huge amount of sympathy for Grant, and so should you. Over the last weekend, he had to spend more than 24 hours in a car with me, and no one should have to do that. And so, here are the reasons why I must be the worst person to travel (in a car) with.

As a side note, I like to think that I am not that bad to travel with outside of the car – ie. On plane rides, trips where I meet up with people at the destination, etc. However, I cannot vouch for myself. This would require someone vouching for me.

1. “It’s So PRETTY!” I love traveling by car as a passenger, mostly because I am the kind of person who finds most scenery pretty. Aside from, say, the trip to PE which I must have done at least 50 times over the last seven years, I will always find new and wonderful things that I think are gorgeous. Even if it is something that I have seen before, chances are that I haven’t seen it in that light, that season or at that angle before. And I get ridiculously excited about it. To the extent that I was forbidden from uttering those words on the return trip from Durban. “Instead,” Grant advised, “how about you tell me when you don’t find something pretty.” Needless to say, those words were not uttered.
   
   
2. Photographer on Board. I restrained myself this trip, and Grant understood that I was restraining myself. Because of the whole “It’s So PRETTY” problem described above and the fact that I tend to like to take photographs of pretty things, car trips with me could very easily end up being long experiences. I swear, if Grant had been willing to pull over every time I wanted to take a photo, we would never have arrived in Durban on time to attend the wedding. And sadly, taking photos from a moving car that has windows and a windscreen that are less than crystal clear just does not work. This means that I didn’t actually end up taking very many photos of the trip to and from Durban. Which is a real shame. I totally want to head out in that direction (maybe just an hour from Grahamstown) at 7am again just to get the picture of the mist flowing over the hills and mountains. I cannot remember seeing anything more gorgeous in my lifetime.
   
   
3. Sleeping Beauty. There is nothing quite like a car trip to make me want to fall asleep. Especially when the trips involve getting up well before my usual waking hour – like getting up at 6am or 04:45. There is little that can be done then to keep me awake – coffee, Red Bull and Monster have no effect. Somehow I did manage to stay awake during both trips with Grant, but there were long moments of considering just giving in to the sleep that was threatening, and blinking lasted a lot longer than it usually does, since it was such an effort to keep my eyes open.
   
   
4. Bathroom Breaks. Another thing that I am terrible at, though to be fair I don’t have much of a choice in how my body handles itself. I tend to be terrible at needing to take bathroom breaks. Often at the most inconvenient of times, like just as we pass the last petrol station that we will see for the next hundred k’s or so. I can remember a number of trips where this has wreaked havoc – my trip to Yosemite with my parents and tagging along on a drive to Cape Town in my fourth year being only a few. While this is fine when I am on my own, it is absolutely awful when driving with someone else, particularly when you have somewhere to be and are trying to get there as quickly as possible.
   
   
5. Navigation. I have discovered that I suck at navigation. Apparently I cannot blame this on my HTC (though I am determined that it does not help matters) but only on myself and my lack of navigational skills. I am useless at judging distance (turn in 130m could be the next road or could be the one down there… I don’t know) and I am terrible at reading maps. The number of times that we took a wrong turn because I couldn’t tell what the GPS wanted me to do was embarrassing and I think I have been taken off navigational duties for future trips.

But, despite my terrible travel companion skills, we managed to make it to Durban and back in two pieces (one for me and one for him) and had a weekend that we can both look back on fondly. More on our Durban weekend later in the week (or month)!