10. Drink, Responsibly

ONE PROMISE I MADE to myself at the beginning of this road trip was that under no circumstances would I do any sort of driving under the influence of alcohol.

It's too much of a slippery slope to say to myself, hey, I just had a beer, I'll drive for another hour--and then, I just had two beers, I can make it four hours to West Branch, Iowa, in the dead of night.

Better not to try it all than find myself upside down in a ditch on the lower peninsula of Michigan.

But what I discovered is--much to my surprise, but I guess you learn things about yourself on trips like these --that even if I don't drink alcohol, under these circumstances, I still like bars.

I never thought I would like bars without the context of either alcohol--or, while we're on the topic of celibacy, sex, as I am traveling sans the Panda, and dutifully, and again, kind of surprisingly if you knew me in my younger years, monogamous--but it turns out that I am a creature of habit or maybe I just like dark places with loud music full of lonely people.

Bars, it seems, are my natural habitat.

And when I enter these watering holes now, I stroll right in, take my seat at the bar, and signal for one refreshingly delicious Pink Lemonade. Generous with the ice.

The bartenders tend to look at me a bit cross.

"Pink lemonade?"

Yes, you heard me.

The bartenders may accept that fact that I enjoy pink lemonade. That it's my thing. That I wake up in the morning sweating bullets from pink lemonade withdrawal. But what they can't piece together is why I came to a bar to drink pink lemonade.

They almost want to serve it to me for free.

"Is that all?"

"I don't know, you got wings?"

And invariably they'll think that I'm a recovering alcoholic. (I assure you, there is no recovering aspect to my alcoholism.)

They will accept the fact that, for the sake of my physical and mental health, I have forsaken alcohol. They can respect that.

They just can't understand why I'm abstaining from alcohol by going to a bar to drink pink lemonade.

Be sober at home. Buy a pink lemonade at the deli. But don't sit at my bar to drink that powdered sugar nonsense.

But what choice do they have? They bring it to me. I ask for a straw. And I sit at the bar, sipping my drink, checking the baseball scores, and charting my next stop.

Grand Rapids to Minneapolis. That's like nine and a half hours. Minneapolis to West Branch. Hmmm, I'll need four hours for that. West Branch to Moline? That's a two hour cakewalk.

It's what you do on a road trip.