A New Tradition

Hour 1: I’ve started a journal to mark the progress of our First Ever Hopefully Annual Summer Solstice Road Trip. Meg thinks I’m a control freak when it comes to recording things, but I just want to remember what good times we had. So there. 

Hour 2: Sleepy.

Hour 3: Janis has already broken into our snacks. This is going to be a long trip.

Hour 4: Everyone is starving. Seriously, each and every person in this van. Meg is getting really cranky, like she always does when some magazine makes her think it’s sexy to starve herself. I worry about that girl sometimes. She’s yelling at Janis right now for eating so many of our snacks before we’ve even stopped for breakfast. Esther just looks sleepy, and Fin can’t concentrate on his game, since my stomach is warning him loudly that I might eat him alive if we don’t make a food stop soon. I hope Esther doesn’t fall asleep, or our little road trip might end up as an off-road trip.

Hour 5: We FINALLY stopped for breakfast. Everyone was too hungry to argue over where to eat, so Ester just pulled over at her favorite waffle house. It was goooood. Esther’s tired, so Fin is driving now.

Hour 6: Fin is letting us pass around his phone, since he’s the only one who’s downloaded Cheese Chase. No clue how he’s managed to get to level 16 already, I can barely scrape by level 4. Esther’s pretty smart, so I thought she would already have finished the game, but apparently she’s never even played before. Janis is bored half to death (no surprise there), since Cheese Chase is too intellectual for him (no surprise there, either). 

Hour 7: Meg got bored of chasing cheese and is taking selfies with every filter ever made. As if she needs any more pictures of herself. 

Hour 8: Fin and Meg switched, so now Meg’s driving and she can’t do anything about the fact that I started blasting my “For Megan” playlist, which includes the theme songs of every “baby show” she’s ever complained about. Janis, being Janis, decided to sing along, and now we’re both screaming the Word World intro song at the top of our lungs. Fin never watched Word World, but I have a feeling he’ll join in when we get to Mickey Mouse. Esther just rolled her eyes, but I’d bet anything she’s going to solo the roof off this place if anything Disney pops up. 

Hour 9: We had lunch at a sandwich joint, and now the van smells like deli ham. Fin keeps licking his fingers, and it’s making me sick. Heck, even Esther’s doing it. Am I the only one who doesn’t suck soggy chip dust off my hands? Meg switched with Janis, so he’s driving with one hand and chowing down on a sandwich with the other. Meg is reading Twilight, which she’s already read twice. I don’t get how anyone can read a book three times within a year and not get sick of it.

Hour 10: Fin finished uploading a new game while we were on the sandwich shop wifi. Now he’s playing it for all he’s worth. Esther is wearing headphones and humming. Meg is pouting, because whenever she hums along to her music, everyone tells her to knock it off. She always asks me why, which I don’t get. Girl, if you don’t know the reason already, I don’t think you want to. 

Hour 11: We’ve started going up, down, up, down. Meg is whining about elevation sickness. I’ve never had too much trouble with elevation sickness, but I admit the country’s way more hilly here than it is back home, where the steepest slope in a sixty-mile radius is the pitcher’s mound. 

Hour 12: We’ve spent the last half-hour playing hangman. This is getting desperate. Now, Esther and Meg are arguing over whether it was fair for Esther to use a word that nobody else in the van knew. 

This whole day just feels impossibly long. Like it’s been daylight forever. Like it will never be night again. Is the summer solstice always like that? I can’t remember another time when anything felt so dragged out. I’m probably just tired, like everyone else in this stinking van. We’re in a quiet stretch. Fin and Esther are playing silent games of tic-tac-toe, one after another. 

Man, I hate travel games.

Ever notice how a long trip has quiet spots and loud spots? How you’ll somehow go from deathly silence to laughing, singing, joking, having fun -- only to revert back to the sleepy quiet that seems impossible to break. 

I refuse to play tic-tac-toe. I feel like screaming.

Hour 13, 14: I nearly got us killed. I switched over to drive for Janis, and for a while it was fine, but then Ester told someone to look back, which I stupidly did. I looked back at the road just in time to swerve around a deer. The deer looked pretty alarmed, but given the state of this van, I think we were in more danger than it was. 

After that episode, we finally reached the city. We took a vote to see where we would eat, but ended up just looking for the cheapest place around. It was this little greaseball Chinese place that the owners probably should’ve laid to rest while they had the chance. Well, it was food, and we were starving. 

Hour 15: Now Meg’s driving again, because she only drove for… was it two hours? I forget. But we’re almost there. I can see our plane, waiting for us. I can’t believe we’re gonna do this. I can’t believe we’re gonna do this. I can’t belie

Five young adults climbed out of a trashy old van, nervous anticipation etched into their faces. They boarded their plane, some growing more eager with every step, some more anxious. But it didn't matter. Each one knew that they would not back out. It was a new chapter, a new tradition. As the last rays of the solstice disappeared over the distant horizon, they jumped, one by one, and with each parachute that spread it’s silhouette over the red-painted sunset, the same toast rang out through the vast sky: 

“SUMMER!”