We recently attended our RV manufacturer’s annual owner’s festival in Willoughby, Ohio where we found ourselves frequently swapping stories with other van owners about current and upcoming travels. Invariably we seemed to visit with people who were traveling in a way that made us yearn to take a different path home.

One couple came to the festival from their home state of Michigan. The husband said they got to Willoughby by the way of “blue roads.” If you are unfamiliar with this term, it comes from the book titled Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon where he recounts his tour of America on out-of-the-way roads. In the spirit of full disclosure, somehow neither one of us have yet to read this book in spite of the fact that one of Bob’s friends and former colleagues recommended it to him when we first hit the road several years ago. This glaring oversight will soon be rectified.

Someone else also mentioned taking blue roads. One person who lives in her van full-time took weeks to get from Arizona to Ohio. Our yearning grew stronger. Others simply talked about how they would leave the festival and go meanderingly slow on their way to Canada. Or out west. Or the northeast. Or simply back home, wherever home is. If you are wondering, many attendees are retired, but not all. Others simply work from the road. To be sure, some attendees had jobs where they had to show up for work in a few days. We doubt they meandered much going home.

But then there we sat, a retired couple silently craving some aimless wandering. Our trip back home, save for a short detour to see family in Missouri, would be on the fastest, straightest, most direct course possible. Most of the 500 miles back would occur on the same three interstate highways we drove to get to Willoughby: 44, 70 and 71. We can and have made this trip in around 14 hours when pushed due to work calling. And yet, here we were, retired and in self-push mode.

In Need of a Doctor

Why were we not having any of that aimless wandering we so craved? Because of the most dreaded affliction a road adventurer can have: schedulitus. Ugh! We had scheduled appointments up until the time we needed to leave on our trip as well as right after the trip, leaving little or no time for detours or meandering. This wasn’t the first time we had succumbed either. While on the road, we are quite good at avoiding this affliction, but sometimes the start and finish bookends of a trip get infected. Henceforth, we pledge to strike schedulitus from our lexicon.

Sadly, schedulitus is an all-too common malady when squeezing in a vacation around work and school life. And this type of organizing almost seems optimal, right? If you were one of our bosses, you would probably give us pats on the back for minimizing needless time away. If you are in logistics, you would approve of our “just-in-time” traveling as a terrific way to be efficient on the road. But we aren’t in logistics, and we no longer have bosses. We are retired! We don’t need to be efficient. We want to be… well, here are a few synonyms for aimless: random, any which way, undirected, unguided, unplanned, unpredictable. All those words sound quite appealing.

Plus, things aren’t always as they seem. The conversations also lit a lightbulb over Bob’s head. These fellow travelers were taking the most scientifically logical routes in their vans. Or at least that’s what Bob convinced himself of. The interstate may at first seem optimal but scientifically, we took the sub-optimal route up and back to Willoughby. Fast and straight is not the way to go. If it takes X days to get somewhere, X plus 2 or 3 or even 4 days is often superior. We have no less an authority on this matter than Albert Einstein. While Dr. Einstein couldn’t drive a car, he was a pretty good thinker. And he thought up his Special Theory of Relativity which states that the faster you go, the slower time passes.   

Yes, we know, time slowing down measurably needs to take place with extremely fast-moving objects where the speed of light is the relevant comparison, not the speed limit on the highways. And even if you could go at the speed of light, you would not feel like time is standing still because time seems like it is still passing normally for you in your own body. Besides, who doesn’t want time to slow down while traveling.

Things You Won’t Experience on an Interstate