A Road Worth Taking
By: Derek Gahman
Tags: Travel Writing, California, San Francisco, Travel, Pacific

Turns out, it was a bad year to book a spontaneous trip. By March everyone’s dreams were endangered, and as the months wore on, they folded and slipped away, debris in the unrelenting current. My parents and my brother never made it home from South Africa. Our biannual family vacation to the Outer Banks was canceled. A week at Aunt Pearl’s cottage in Maine became another hope deferred.

We waited until the last possible minute, but finally we were forced to cancel our trip to California. “This is hardly a tragedy,” I wrote, ashamed I could harbor such self-pity while hundreds of thousands of people around the world lay dying. “But trying to keep it in perspective hasn’t brought me any comfort.”

The worst part was not that I might never see the Golden Gate Bridge or the California coastline. It was the loss of a designated weekend to spend with some of my closest friends, a rare gift in a busy world. And the fear that I might never escape the prison of routine — that my days would unfold in an endless strain of keystrokes and windowless rooms.

It’s ironic that in a year of unprecedented events, I was most terrified of the mundane. Maybe I have an unhealthy lust for the extraordinary. Or maybe, when reduced to its most basic structure, the life I’ve chosen is not the life I want. Either way, I’d staked quite a lot on this trip, and the thought that it might never happen was sickening.

We might have spared ourselves a lot of heartache if we’d just resigned ourselves to the initial disappointment. But we remained determined to go and were met with no shortage of adversity.

A Brief Timeline

May: Fortunately, the airlines gave us flight credits, and we are able to rebook the trip. We decide to forgo LA and spend all our time in San Francisco. We gamble on the weekend of September 18–21, hoping travel restrictions will be lifted by then. The trip is on again!

July 20: Our return flight from San Francisco to Atlanta is canceled by the airline due to financial strain brought on by Covid. We scramble to book another flight home. The closest flight is out of LA. We book it. Trip salvaged.

July 28: Our flights to San Francisco are rescheduled by the airline, costing us an entire day on the ground. There should be a better alternative, but there isn’t. The best we can do is a 10-hour layover in Vegas and a late flight to San Fran. Guess we’re going to explore Sin City.

August 18: An unexpected work obligation arises. Seriously, it’s non-negotiable. Our flight from Atlanta to Vegas is too early. It won’t work. We cancel the entire trip and rebook it for the following weekend: September 25–28.

September 9, two weeks out: Apocalyptic images of San Francisco emerge online. The sky is bright orange. The CA wildfires have gotten close. The Air Quality Index is over 200. People are encouraged to stay inside. We purchase N-95 respirators and hope they won’t start canceling flights.

September 19, one week out: I find out that I’ve been directly exposed to Covid. The chances of testing positive are high. If I do, I can’t go, and neither can Joseph since we’re now roommates. The others won’t go without us. By now the air quality is healthy again and all other obstacles have been overcome. But the entire trip is in jeopardy.

I got tested as soon as possible and waited two agonizing days for the results to come back. I checked the health portal compulsively, wanting desperately to know one way or the other. When the results finally arrived, I was terrified to open the link. Up until that moment, I’d been convinced I was negative. Now I was sure the opposite was true. How would I tell the other guys I’d ruined their trip?

I was negative.

It was the kind of relief and happiness that cannot be channeled into deliberate action. I had so many people to tell, and I didn’t know who to text first. I said a guilty but sincere prayer of thanks, knowing that had I been positive, in the absence of anyone else to blame I probably would have blamed God.

And so, after seven months of planning and hoping, we were finally taking our “spontaneous” trip to Cali.