A quick catch-up post

I’ve been doing a lot of traveling and am now several blog posts behind. For those of you who are texting me wondering where I am, what’s going on, and why I’m not answering my texts, it’s because my life lately has been like: drive all day, be somewhere for 3 days, drive all day, home for 3 days (laundry and clients!), drive all day, be somewhere for 3 days, drive all day…except next week I fly all day (worse!).

Tracey, after asking where I was, says, “Wow! Trying to hit every state?!!” No, just Nevada, Idaho, Utah, Arizona (of course), New Mexico, back to Arizona and then Massachusetts. I won’t count all the states I have to fly over to get to Boston next week. Maybe I’ll have time to catch up on this blog once I get to Boston. Hahaha, oh my, with 4 little ones in the house that is unlikely.

Speaking of:

There’s my motivation to get on that plane to Boston! But I’m getting ahead of myself. I haven’t told you yet about the rest of Idaho, Utah and New Mexico.

Before I post about the rest of the Idaho trip, I did want to answer some follow-up questions some of you sent about my last post about van trips and scary roads. When John and I are traveling together, we have occasionally gotten ourselves out on a road we really shouldn’t be on in that big van. By the time the road has truly degenerated enough that we don’t want to be on it, any turn-around options are generally long gone. In those rare occasions, I get out and guide John as he backs the van out. Short distances aren’t too hard, but once or twice we’ve had to back out fairly far before it’s wide enough to turn around.

It’s much easier when there is a second person to walk outside and direct. It can get tricky with twists and turns and big boulders and ruts (not to mention sheer drop offs). In order to have backed out on that road in Idaho, I would have wanted to have one of the kids walking ahead (behind me in the direction I was backing) to make sure I was staying far enough away from the cliff.

But we didn’t have any cell tower and I couldn’t signal them to stop. The kids were periodically waiting for me, but the problem was, they would start going again every time they got a glimpse in their rearview mirror that I was still back there. The road was so twisty that the moment they saw me appear around a corner, they disappeared around the next corner and could no longer could see me.

If I had stopped, I suppose they would have eventually figured out the van was no longer following them, but I did not want to put them in the position of having to turn around and look for me. I could just imagine them sitting and waiting a few curves in front of where I had stopped wondering what to do next. I guess I could have abandoned the van (on a twisty, one-lane, washed-out dirt road with nowhere to pull over and a sheer drop to the reservoir far, far below) and started walking in their direction.

But even if I did manage to get the kids to stop and help me reverse that van off that mountain, it would have taken at least a couple of hours, and it definitely would have ruined the camping trip. It didn’t sound like a fun option. So I just kept telling myself, hey, both my kids and my brother had been out there before, surely it was fine. I could ignore my fear of heights and sheer cliff edges. Irrational fears are irrational, right? But I am for damn sure not doing that road again.

Next up, some great pictures of Idaho, some fantastic pictures of Utah, and two more trips after that – stay tuned.

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Kristina’s Website: Life Coaching for Adults with Autism