{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"Road Trip Reawakening","description":"Road trip reawakening I\u2019m a firm believer in low expectations as a key element of a happy life. When you go into anything fully expecting to have the best time of your life, you\u2019re inevitably disappointed. How often can the stars really align? Examples abound in all parts of life. All the best concerts I\u2019ve seen were in part a product of not expecting much going in. And no victory is sweeter than the upset. One of the best parts of a road is that the unknown makes it impossible to have well-defined, high expectations. There\u2019s such a huge variance for what could happen that as long as your car doesn\u2019t break down and you have something to report back, you\u2019re ahead of the game.  Partly for this reason, I\u2019ve never taken a road trip where I did start with a fair bit of excitement and anticipation. Even when you know your traveling company well and the route is set, you never know what conversations and experiences are waiting. \u201cWho knows what could happen?\u201d is a big part of it.  But what if the prevailing attitude is \u201cWho gives a shit?\u201d There are low expectations, and then there\u2019s the total absence of expectations.  In this episode, the total lack of expectations was so completely liberating that the result was a life-altering experience. It also features one of the best articulations of why the road trip is so alluring:  \u201cOnce you give into the notion of a road trip, you're suspending time that you knew in the conventional sense. You're suspending deadlines. You're suspending paying bills. All the other shit that makes life a drag is in suspension because you have a new relationship with time. And that relationship is, \u2018What are we going to do with it?\u2019 Not, \u2018What do I have to do?\u2019 That choice, being able to explore those options and that new sense of time, is extremely liberating.\u201d This is the story of Rob and Toodles, the ocean and oranges, Widespread and underwear, and plugging back into this whole surreal journey called life. ","author_name":"True Road Trip Tales","author_url":"https:\/\/www.trueroadtriptales.com","html":"