The ADHD Road Trip From Hell: Forgotten Meds, Missing Pants, and a Very Fake Four Seasons
A chaotic Northern California road trip spirals into backtracking, lost belongings, motel disasters, and the kind of travel mishaps only an ADHD brain could turn into an epic.
By the time I passed Vacaville for the second time that morning, I had already driven nearly two hundred miles and had made almost no progress toward the Sierra, which was impressive considering the entire purpose of the day was to travel east. I had left home feeling unusually competent because I had done everything people tell you to do before a road trip. I made a checklist, packed snacks, charged my phone, filled the tank, checked the weather, and put my medication on the kitchen counter directly beside the checklist so there was absolutely no chance I could forget it.
Naturally, about a hundred miles into the trip, somewhere beyond Sacramento, I suddenly realized the medication was still sitting on the kitchen counter. I tried to convince myself I could survive a weekend without it, but within twenty minutes I had missed an exit, changed radio stations eleven times, started wondering whether I should learn fly-fishing, and developed an intense curiosity about a roadside sign offering alpaca manure by the truckload. I turned around and drove home, watching every mile I had already traveled pass by in reverse like the world’s most irritating home movie.
When I finally got back, the medication was exactly where I had left it, sitting beside the checklist on which the word MEDICATION had been underlined twice. I put the bottle in my pocket, patted the pocket several times, and headed for the door, which is when I noticed the kitchen faucet dripping. This was not a serious leak. It was one tiny drop every few seconds, but the moment I noticed it, the trip ceased to matter because I was now apparently the superintendent of the California water system. I found a wrench, watched a five-minute plumbing video, removed three pieces of hardware I could not identify, and somehow turned a harmless drip into a steady trickle. At that point I wisely decided Future Me could handle the emergency created by Present Me, grabbed my bags, went outside, set my coffee on the roof while rearranging the back seat, and drove away. Ten miles later I heard a hollow thump over my head followed by a scraping noise, and because I saw nothing in the mirror, I decided it was probably fine. Five minutes after that, coffee began running down the rear window.
I stopped for gas near Dixon and bought another coffee, along with beef jerky, gum, bottled water, and a pair of sunglasses because I could not find mine. While pumping gas I placed my phone, the new sunglasses, and the beef jerky on top of the car, apparently having learned nothing from the coffee incident less than half an hour earlier. I pulled away from the pump and heard three separate objects strike the roof. The phone somehow survived by wedging itself beneath a windshield wiper, the sunglasses disappeared forever, and the jerky entered the Solano County food chain. About ten minutes later I remembered that my original sunglasses were clipped to the visor above my head. By the time I reached Auburn, I was hungry enough to stop for lunch, but when I reached for my wallet it was gone. I searched every pocket, emptied my backpack onto the hood, checked beneath the seats, opened the trunk, searched the glove compartment twice, called the gas station, and began mentally canceling every credit card I owned. A woman walking past finally stopped and asked if the brown object in my left hand was what I was looking for. I looked down and discovered that I had been holding my wallet the entire time. I thanked her and tried to appear like there might be some reasonable explanation, but she had already backed away.
By late afternoon I was finally climbing into the foothills and beginning to believe the trip could still be salvaged. I had found what I considered the greatest hotel deal in Northern California: a room at the Four Seasons for $49.99 a night. I had discovered it online around one in the morning and assumed I was simply better at bargain hunting than everyone else. My confidence began to weaken when the GPS directed me down a frontage road behind a tire shop, and it disappeared completely when I saw the sign reading FOUR SEASONS MOTOR LODGE, with the slogan OPEN ALL FOUR SEASONS underneath it. The swimming pool was empty except for pine needles, a traffic cone, and half a shopping cart, while the ice machine had an OUT OF ORDER sign so weathered that it looked as if it had been installed during the Reagan administration. Inside, the desk clerk found my reservation and announced that I had booked the romance package. I told him there was no possible way I had done that, and he turned the computer screen around and proved that apparently there was. The romance package consisted of two plastic champagne glasses, one miniature chocolate bar, a heart-shaped bathtub, and “mood lighting,” which turned out to be a red light bulb screwed into a desk lamp.
None of that mattered because all I wanted was a shower, clean clothes, and dinner. I opened my suitcase and found shirts, socks, underwear, three belts, a beach towel, two phone chargers that did not fit my phone, and absolutely no pants. I had somehow remembered three different devices for securing pants to my body while forgetting the actual pants. The restaurant where I had made a reservation described the dress code as “mountain elegant,” while I was dressed more in the style of a man who had been asked to leave a campground. I took the motel shuttle into town, bought a pair of pants, walked back outside, and immediately began searching for my car. I wandered the parking lot pressing the panic button on my key fob, growing increasingly furious that the car would not reveal itself, until I suddenly remembered that I had arrived in the motel shuttle and my car was six miles away. I called the front desk, and when the clerk answered, I explained that I needed the shuttle to pick me up. He reminded me that the shuttle had just dropped me off. I told him I had forgotten that part. There was a long silence on the phone that conveyed more judgment than any spoken language could manage. By the time I got back to the motel, the restaurant was closed, so dinner consisted of vending-machine crackers and a protein bar I found in the bottom of my bag. Shortly before midnight I remembered that I had left my brand-new pants on the shuttle.
What are some of your road trip disasters?
The next morning I decided I was going to restore order to my life. I took my medication, retrieved the pants from the front desk, packed everything slowly, checked every drawer, looked beneath the bed, examined every electrical outlet for forgotten chargers, and went through a mental inventory before leaving. Wallet, phone, keys, medication, pants, suitcase. I loaded the car and drove away feeling as though I had finally defeated the forces that had been working against me all weekend. Thirty miles later my phone rang. It was the motel clerk calling to tell me I had left my suitcase in the parking lot. I looked in the back seat, checked the trunk, and then remembered exactly what had happened. I had carried the suitcase outside and placed it behind the car, noticed a Steller’s jay hopping around near a dumpster, wondered whether Steller’s jays could recognize individual human faces, looked it up on my phone, climbed into the car, and drove away without the suitcase. So I turned around again. By the time I finally reached my destination, I had driven nearly twice the necessary distance, lost one coffee, one pair of sunglasses, one bag of beef jerky, several hours, and most of my remaining confidence in the idea of planning ahead. The weekend itself was wonderful, though. The mountains were quiet, the air smelled like pine, and for two days I managed to relax. On Sunday evening I decided to be responsible and prepare carefully for the drive home, so I made a detailed checklist and put it somewhere safe. I still have no idea where.
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