travel
Fake News (Drive Day 1 minus 14 years, 24 days)
My parents say having two little girls along on the 1973 road trip down the Pan-American was like having two extra passports. I am not nearly as cute anymore and my research at the Library of Congress is making me more nervous by the day. None of our relatives could bail us out of a Latin American jail if we get arrested and I am no longer employed by any company willing to pay a ransom if we are held hostage. But I was once a reporter. And I’ve played one in a mock terrorism training exercise so realistic I kept the press pass. Which Gary cheerfully re-shoots and alters in Photoshop. Lanyards are easy to find in DC and add an official provenance, don’t you think?
Just in case VNN seems too “virtual” south of the border, Gary makes me a CBS News business card for good measure. Never let the truth get in the way of a backup plan.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale in seven days! Pre order through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa.
Canine visas (Drive Day 1 minus 14 years, 26 days)
I smuggled puppy Wipeout into California across the Tijuana border: an undocumented alien canine. Eighty pounds later she’s a little too obvious and getting her back into Mexico requires something called a canine visa. It’s more expensive and complicated than it sounds: almost as many vaccines as I’m required to get, plus an official certificate of health signed by our vet. Who kindly doesn’t mention her cancerous lumps, leaky bladder, worsening arthritis and intense separation anxiety.
It’s the same maddening, bureaucratic drill at the consulate for every country further south along our projected route: Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Brazil. I’ll never get them all signed off in time. This is insane. And now Guatemala wants to know our exact dates of entry and exit. It’s a road trip, comprende? I have no earthly idea…
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale June 13th. Pre order through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa.
A shot-in-the-arm (Drive Day 1 minus 14 years, 29 days)
The traveler’s medical clinic on K street in Washington DC is a building I never hope to see again. A grown woman shouldn’t have to hold her husband’s hand to get her shots, but driving the Pan-American Highway in a camper sounds more bad-ass than I really am.
In my defense, I had epileptic seizures as a child triggered by the fear of vaccines. My mom found a pediatrician who faked my immunization records just to avoid the drama. Gary cuts me no such slack. This is step one of a two-person prophylactic medical binge – EKGs, stress tests and anything else still covered before my company insurance runs out. Including Lasik surgery for Gary. Did I mention he makes his living as a cinematographer? One microscopically wrong zap and his career would be over. I’m going to stop whining about shots now.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale June 13th. Pre order through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa.
Tango tease (Day 1 minus 14 years, 30 days)
My knees are clicking. My back feels rod stiffened. Gary thinks his hips have swiveled inward and stuck. And it’s just sixty minutes into our first couples tango lesson. It will probably be our last, given that we’re driving away from DC in eleven days. But my co-workers figure a private milonga is the one thing I haven’t pre-planned so they pitched in on this coordination-testing farewell gesture. Each step breaks my heart a little. To leave such good friends with no plan B if we don’t reach Argentina.
My parents only made it down the Pan-American Highway as far as Bolivia. I will force that unlovely ending out of my mind and picture this couple instead.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale June 13th. Pre order through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa.
One burner gourmet (Drive Day 1 minus 14 years, 31 days)
There won’t be room for Julia, Martha or Betty in the camper. So I’m taking Sirena. She’s the Mexican Loteria mermaid gracing the cover of a notebook that will serve as our portable defense against truck stop food.
My mom kept a journal of our family’s first trip down the Pan-American Highway in 1973. Her notes about what we ate each day terrify Gary. Up ‘til now his idea of camping was a bad Holiday Inn. So I write to his mother Angie for recipes I can adapt to one burner and a cooler instead of a fridge.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale June 13th. Pre order through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa.
The paranoia files (Drive Day 1 minus 14 years and 33 days)
I’m nerdly proud of my official researcher’s card at the Library of Congress. It’s where I go after work to look up everything ever written about each country along the route of my upcoming road trip down the Pan-American highway. Why? Because my parents did the same trip with no preparation and I became a seven-year-old stowaway through revolutions, coups and civil wars.
I’m dividing my findings into scary shit that happened 1973 and just-as-scary files for 2003. I won’t be caught off guard again.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale June 13th. Pre order through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa.
Care to cat-sit for a year? (Drive Day 1 minus 14 years and 35 days)
Cats and year-long road trips through Latin America don’t mix. I know this. I’ve tried taking Rosie to the vet in a soft, comfy cat carrier and still can’t get the smell of kitty terror out of the seat. You’d think she’d be braver, born as she was under our Capitol Hill rose tree on the morning of 9/11. Her whole litter got snapped up by kitten-comforted friends but Rosie claimed ownership of Wipeout and our hearts. Now we’re two weeks away from leaving and she can’t come along.
Time for the hardest email I’ve ever had to write. It’s one thing to ask friends to drop by and clean the litterbox. But keep a resentful, abandoned cat for a year while we take the trip of a lifetime? Better add family members to the address line and hope this video lands an offer.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale June 13th. Pre order through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa.
Will of iron, or steel/aluminum in my case (Drive Day 1 minus 14 years, 38 days)
Most people bequeath their kids the family home, heirloom jewels, maybe an antique gun collection. But I don’t have kids, jewels or guns and I’m trading in my Capitol Hill home for a vintage aluminum truck camper. So that’s what I’m leaving to my sister and step-son if I don’t make it through this impending road trip through 13 Latin American countries.
It’s not so far-fetched, I tell the lawyer who stares at me like I’ve got three eyes. My family barely survived the same trip in 1973. Coups, revolutions, stints in jail, earthquakes and 61 separate roadside breakdowns ended in scrapping the camper for cash in Bolivia. Dad doesn’t even remember exactly where. I’m just covering my bases.
“Vehicles aren’t normally considered permanent assets,” the lawyer says. “It’s not just a vehicle,” I tell him. “It’s a brand new Ford F350 with four-wheel drive.”
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale June 13th. Pre order through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa.
Day Planner Zombie (Drive Day 1 minus 14 years and 40 days)
That point when planning for a restful vacation (or a one-year detour from corporate life) gives you heart palpitations? I’m there. I’ve given notice: kissing my 6-figure, A-list agency producer job goodbye with no backup plan. Gary and I will retrace the road trip I barely survived as a 7-year old, down the Pan-American Highway to Tierra Del Fuego. I’ll miss my colleagues, jazz at HR 57, dance class at Joy of Motion, the smell of fries at Ben’s Chili Bowl, regular paychecks – but not being an undead slave to this crazed schedule.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale June 13th. Pre order through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa.
Cómo se dice terrified? (Drive Day 1 minus 14 years and 43 days)
I’ve convinced my boss at Ogilvy PR Worldwide that Berlitz Spanish classes during my lunch hour are an appropriate way to spend down my “professional development” benefits. I do produce health care videos for Spanish audiences, sometimes, kinda, sorta.
In reality I’m trying to recapture the fluency of my youth. At seven I was a backseat driver in my father’s camper on a year-long road trip down the Pan-American Highway. I spoke Spanish so well I negotiated my dad’s release from jail a few times, or so the family stories go. Thirty years later and I butcher verb tenses. No problema, except that my husband and I are about to retrace that journey in our own camper. Reza por mí.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale June 13th. Pre order through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa.
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