The road trip movie is a standard Hollywood movie right of passage. Besides a couple of exceptions, (Vacation, Tommy Boy, Dumb and Dumber) they are pretty formulaic and kind of an excuse for terrible and absurd things to happen. Then at the end of the horrific trip, the participants are supposed to have learned something and they are all better for it.

Well, I recently experienced a road trip of the work variety. We drove from Utah to Vegas to LA to Vegas to Utah over a five day period with a trailer hitched on the back of our SUV. The plan was provide a famous weight lifter guy to sign autographs, take pictures with and sell some supplements, and T-shirts, and then come back 10X richer.

You want to know what the problem was? Try as I might, we couldn’t muster one bad accident, no awkward bathroom trips, not even a stepping in cow dung on the side of the road kind of opportunity. The trip went exactly as we planned it. We stopped for gas every time we needed it. The music was exactly as expected. When we got tired we rested in the back and when we wanted to talk about something we did.

There was no horrible miscommunication. There was no horrific memories of a nagging mother, no roof being torn off of the car, not even an accidental heart attack by someone that was trying to kill me for my briefcase filled with money. No bee swarms on the side of the road. Not even a tiny gas station explosion. I don’t know when I’ve been more disappointed.

So, who do we blame this on? We can’t blame the lack of unmitigated disasters on me. I came into this trip blindly and armed with a lack of preparation that could only be described as irresponsible as Michael Scott declaring bankruptcy.

I blame the rest of the team that came prepared with everything from a credit card to pay for things, to an inventory of stuff to sell, to reservations of hotels. Heck, they even wore shoes AND socks. Me, on the other hand, prepared for the trip wearing by bringing long pants and sweatshirts for those blistery cold 95 degree California summer days. Why did they have to work so hard on being prepared? If they didn’t then we could have had so many more potential disasters. The planning just ruined the trip. Luckily, I didn’t prepare anything for this post, so it should go way more badly. Here are the Bitter Friday Gifs…

This was the attitude…

My attitude was…

As soon as I got in the car…

Our first mistake…

Also…

Because of the careful planning…

Gas station disasters…

Side trips…

And run ins…

Instead it was just stuck with a smooth driving trip…

Instead, I was left dreaming of a road trip disaster…

Well, there is always the next road trip. If we plan better to plan poorly, we might get lucky enough to have a big disaster, where we are worthy of a bad Hollywood movie. Perhaps we can even get in an epic argument that ends up getting someone fired or worse, expelled.

ARRRGGGGHHHHHHH

Bitter Road Trippin Ben