How We Roll

This photo was taken shortly after dawn this morning as we headed east through central South Dakota, the sun a tiny orange disk burning through the weight of distant wildfire smoke still hanging heavy in the sky.

But wait.

How is it that a delayed sleep phaser such as myself is on the road bright and early, when every ounce of my biology should be demanding that I sleep?

The answer to that question is perhaps the most amazing key to success for the Streicher Family Road Trip:

While I am an extreme night owl, my husband is a total lark.

Long ago, we perfected a system in which he gets up at the crack of some unholy predawn hour. He finalizes our route, arranges our maps, fills water jugs, and takes the dog out for a top o’ the mornin’ stroll. Twenty minutes before he wants to leave, he calls me and my owl-leaning daughters out of our slumbers.

Just barely.

We don’t actually wake up. With eyes mostly closed, we toss on our clothes, do a bare minimum of personal grooming, zip our suitcases, and then sleepwalk out through the brisk Western morning air to the car. A pleasing array of pillows and blankets are waiting for us, and we snuggle in and drift back off to sleep.

My husband always, always drives the first shift.

Once I’ve properly napped and tucked into a mid-morning breakfast, I’m ready to actually wake up. I take over the wheel around 10:30 or 11 a.m., a much more manageable time for me, and we roll on.

By mid-afternoon, the situation reverses. My husband finishes his post-lunch shift, slides to the passenger seat and zones out. I’m usually responsible for bringing us into the barn, and on the occasions when our schedule pushes us into driving after dark, there’s a 100% chance I’ll be driving.

Thus from our two extreme sleeping preferences comes an ideal and mile-maximizing road-tripping dream team.

And that, quite literally, is how we roll.