Back to blogging!

I’ve decided to continue my blog. Why you ask? While I’d like to say that this is due to popular demand, I’m fairly certain that my only true ‘follower’ the last time around was my mom, so that’s not really a valid excuse. So I’ll just go with wanting to document anything and everything mildly amusing in my life. I’m not sure that it’ll be nearly as interesting and captivating as my commentary on all things French and Parisian, but life in the suburbs has got to be somewhat amusing, right?

For those of you not in the know, I recently moved to the DC area (Rockville, MD to be exact) to stay with my parents until I figure out what my next endeavor will be. I decided that given the amount of “crap” I’ve managed to accumulate in 2 short years and my desire to see the countryside, I would drive from Chicago to Rockville: a 12 hour 11 minute trip that I broke up in 2 days. I looked up the car prices and given the amount of stuff I would have to pack up, realized that I would need either an SUV or a minivan to be able to transport it all. However, who in their right mind really wants to drive a minivan? So I quickly settled on an SUV.

However, when I showed up at the Thrifty counter at Midway, the clerk looked at me, looked at his cars and I could immediately tell that my trip would not start off well. He didn’t have an SUV for me, but upon learning that I was moving my stuff 680 miles, he offered me “the perfect solution”… a Dodge Caravan a.k.a. my nightmare: a minivan. No, I don’t think that nightmare is the right way to describe it. In fact, a nightmare seems light and fluffy compared to this. This was more like my own personal version of hell, or hell freezing over? No, more like an ice age hitting hell. Now, maybe this was the perfect solution, because in reality I actually would have needed to accumulate twice as much stuff to have filled the car up, but it was a minivan, and in my world, minivans are horrific inventions full of loud children that are driven by soccer moms at 50 mph on the freeway (in a 65mph zone).

I took a deep breath and got behind the wheel of this animal and decided that really it couldn’t be so bad. In fact, I have to say that the car itself was not so bad and drove quite nicely with me often catching myself nearing 90 mph. However, the one thing that I was quite amused by was the camaraderie that Caravan drivers seem to feel for one-another and the hatred that other people feel for this car (me included).

Now, maybe it was the fact that at my speed it’s really hard to compete, but even when I did slow down, other Caravans would not pass me. They would get behind me and ride my happy speeding wave. The creepiest moment though, was when, another Caravan driver actually waved to me. Yeah, seriously, he waved. I think if ever there was a case for Caravan drivers being weird, that would be the cherry on top.
However, I will say that other people are quite mean to Caravan drivers. Even when I was going 80 + mph, people would still give me dirty looks. Now, maybe soccer moms in the left lane going 50 mph might deserve a dirty look or five, but me, in the right lane, cruising along at 80… I think not! Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m still going to pass Caravan drivers and have no interest in ever owning one of these things no matter how decently it happens to drive, but it does make for amusing observations.