“Killing Time” In Road Trip Style

“ I deny the fact that when I kill time, time is actually killing me.” (Eric Gamalinda )

I often find that “killing time” productively combined with some timely, “small talk” effort provides a nice combination for experiencing new places in road trip travel. For while I tend to stoically dawdle and thus prefer to slowly feel my way around, my wife Ruth normally takes up the slack by becoming the bold social conversationalist with strangers during these uncertain location times. But in spite of our contradictory styles of travel behavior, we both seem to live our lives in the present in doing what we do best for our travels.

Let’s imagine, for example, how we might typically allot our time during a brief morning walk along a lesser visited hiking route we’ve chosen to explore along the Grand Canyon of Arizona. For as we trek perilously close to the South Rim chasm, I might be stopping frequently to study my trail map or take photos of these unfolding cliffs. However, my wife might be finding it more satisfying at the same time to embrace friendly chats with a passing hiker to lessen current tensions about any uncertain conditions on the trail we might face ahead. To further illustrate, while I need to allot hours at night to write my blog in privacy when we stay with out- of – state friends, Ruth’s friendly chit chats with our hosts after dinner usually reduces the pressure for me to make an appearance to socially perform.

Am I totally satisfied then with my existing ways of “killing time” slowly in travel? Probably not I would say from an emotional health perspective. For I might give a greater effort to “lighten up” and embrace the value of certain social situations. “Shoot the breeze” with strangers more around common interests and I might take some some pressure off myself to obsess on my perfectionist ways. Spend more quality time in addition with our travel hosts during those daily rituals of social eating situations, and I might further reduce my self imposed stress of slow paced road trip travel.

So let’s consider the travel photo set below that showcase some of our latest American settings for killing time” slowly in travel. What subjects might I bring up in idle chatter in each of these situations to experiment with “opening up” more with people? Furthermore, in doing so, will I be able to retain that high level of “now” sensory awareness that I so desire? Perhaps I will experience ample time to change my self- dawdling ways on our next road trip as we head out to Colorado on a one month journey soon. I invite you to take a look at our upcoming itinerary in the title photo of this blog.