RT66 Day 5: Is this what having an affair is like?
Exhilarating new experiences, hotels galore, and carefree kid-free fun? Feelings of fleeting emptiness and guilt? Am I having an affair? With myself? You know, I'm not going to overthink happiness.
Until I became a mother, I never would have understood the seductive allure of sleeping in a hotel room alone.
Day 5: Moriarty, NM to Albuquerque, NM; 60 miles, 2,733 feet elevation gain (Part 1) | (Part 2)
Day 5: Planned on Ride with GPS (Part 1) | (Part 2)
Intraday Stops: Sedillo Hill Travel Center (14.5 miles), Smith’s @ Tramway (14 miles), Love’s Travel Stop (23 miles), Rio Puerco Bridge (banking miles - 9 miles)
It’s an exhilarating rush.
I wake up feeling refreshed and excited for the new day. It’s early, and I don’t have to get up yet, so I lazily stretch my legs across the soft cotton sheets enveloping my naked body. The fabric feels cool wherever my legs wander across the bed. There’s something deeply sensual about being alone and completely unencumbered in a warm hotel room. The air is set to 78°F — ten degrees warmer than my husband would ever tolerate — and yet he isn’t here. I can’t help but smile mischievously.
No one is in this room with me. It’s my private sanctuary.
That thought alone delights me so much that my excitement for the day intensifies. I can feel the beginnings of an adrenaline rush. Today, I can do whatever I want with no responsibility to anyone but myself. Today, all my meals will be prepared by someone else. There are no vegetables to chop, no dishes to wash, no cacophony of barking dogs, crying children, or requests to help locate refrigerated items sitting in plain sight. My pulse quickens, and I know immediately that I won’t be falling back asleep.
Then, just as quickly, the guilt arrives.
As I get out of bed and begin dressing, I wonder: Why am I so excited to be alone? Does this somehow betray the people I love? Why does love sometimes feel so oppressive and needy? Why can’t my husband ever find the milk?
A twinge of anxiety spreads across my chest. I log into the Nest camera in my children’s room and rewind eight hours to watch my husband putting them to bed the night before. For a moment, it feels cathartic. Afterwards, though, I’m left feeling confused.
Who am I? What do I actually want?
I feel torn between the limitless possibilities of being alone on this trip and the comfort of being a reliable source of love and support as a wife and mother. Which do I want more — excitement and escape, or love and validation?
As much as I love the exhilaration of gallivanting across the country alone on an adventure, it can also feel fleeting and strangely empty when I watch life continuing at home without me. So why leave in the first place?
This is probably the closest I’ve come to understanding why I needed this trip at all.
Lately, I’ve felt emotionally ambivalent — likely fueled in part by chronic exhaustion and lack of sleep. I swing between contentment and dissatisfaction, gratitude and resentment. I find myself questioning who I am beyond my roles as wife and mother.
I wanted to feel inspired again — to step outside the routines of daily life and see the world through a different lens. Maybe it’s aging, motherhood, boredom, or some combination of all three, but lately the world and its possibilities have begun to feel smaller, dimmer, and more constrained.
I wanted to, in the immortal words of Ted Lasso, “believe” again.
Not just in myself, though that’s part of it, but in the idea that there’s still something more than the repetitive grind of everyday life: the endless commute, viral videos, grocery lists, school pickups, and the constant hum of unfinished tasks. What is all of this building toward anymore?
When I rode the first half of this journey, I felt strong and powerful. The focus was entirely on me and overcoming obstacles. This time, I still feel good, but even biking 85 miles doesn’t feel as remarkable as the relentless trivialities and tedium of everyday life with children. Maybe that’s because caring for others is so relentlessly difficult that spending all day biking actually is an indulgence.
Or maybe I simply need more time — perhaps once Sara arrives — before I can fully settle into the present moment.
Maybe that’s what this trip is really about.
The tractor-trailers, flat tires, french fries and Oreo shakes, peeing in the middle of the night without worrying whether someone left the toilet seat up or down — maybe the visceral nature of this adventure is teaching me to focus on the present. To appreciate fleeting moments while they exist, whether they’re beautiful or difficult.
Parenthood is probably the same way: learning to appreciate the crying, the 3 a.m. wakeups, and the chaos while the snuggling still lasts.
Maybe that’s the answer.
Be present. Be grateful. For all of it. All of life is fleeting.
So I’ll take a moment to say that I am grateful — grateful for this life, for the adventure, and for the people who have made it possible. Right now, I’m going to savor the excitement and thrill of the chase and hope it sustains me during the more chaotic and demanding moments of my life, the ones where I play a supporting role instead of the lead.
Did I mention I love Carl’s Junior?