Enjoy Yourself. It's Later than You Think.

It may seem like a weird time to think about road-tripping, given that the weather is still unpredictable, the roads are in wintery disrepair, and most of us are still months away from anything resembling a vacation. And yet, what better conditions for fantasizing of a get-away? Before I built the Nap Castle, I owned (moment of silent remembrance) the Vanbulance, a fully-equipped Volkswagen camper van; a dream-on-wheels that was going to take me across the country during the summer of 2007. I had a map in my office stick-pinned with destinations, a book about natural hot springs I planned to visit, and a list of people I hoped to see and books I wanted to read along the way. Very little of it came to fruition--I lived in the van for a week during construction and spent a night at a campground where my next door neighbor and his buddy peed on their campfire to put it out. I now must live vicariously through the road-trips of others.

In Michael Zadoorian's new novel, The Leisure Seeker, John and Ella Robina, a long-married couple, take off in their aging motor home to travel Route 66 from Detroit to Disneyland. But this trip, unlike many others they've endeavored is unique: it is positively the last one they will take together. In their 80's, the Robinas are both suffering the cruel effects of old age. John is in the middle stages of Alzheimers, experiencing fewer lucid moments each day, and Ella is stricken with rapidly progressing cancer.

Against the wishes of their children and their doctors, Ella and John kidnap themselves from their hospital beds, forgo further treatment for their ailments, and traverse onward to live out their last days together on the road.

What follows is more than the travelogue of a trip--it's a scrapbook of marriage and family, and a very funny one at that. As they journey westward, the Robinas encounter typical vacation woes: mechanical problems, criminals, bad road conditions, and crummy food (John has a penchant for McDonalds). But their trip is far from usual; in addition to the usual discomforts, both are increasingly ill abnd forgetful.

But the hazards of the road, their illnesses, and their children's worry don't stop the Robinas from continuing their journey and they definitely don't stop them from maintaining the status quo of their marriage: some bickering, a lot of humor, and a deep affection for each other and their shared history.

While I don't necessarily want to travel the country in a 1970's camper van with a crabby old man who wets the bed, I do want to grow old like the Robinas do: with a sense of independence and adventure, and a goal to make the most of the last of my life.