So, Why Did You Intentionally Miss Your Flight?
It was a fair trade: airport chaos for desert sunrises, turkeys at my window, mountain air, and 1,000 miles of open road to remember who I am.
Guess what I did on Thursday? Here’s a hint: I drove to Colorado.
Yeah, that is a terrible hint. Not a hint at all, actually.
Here’s the thing: I missed my flight. Semi-intentionally. I’d had one of those weeks where my emotions ran the show, which led to blackout rage, which slid into a self-loathing, sorry-sack spiral. I tried to shake it for the people I hurt, for my family, for my friends who were going through worse (but I was too wrapped up in my own mess to see it), for myself. But it is hard when your brain fabricates a million reasons to hate yourself.
I have anger issues. I don’t write enough. That pooch on my lower tummy is getting fluffier. I can’t quit sugar. I don’t look like her. I don’t have the energy. I don’t play with the kid enough. I’m too quiet, too shy. I forgot to order matcha and now the cafe is all out. Oh, and look at that, we’re out of whip-its, too. The snake needs a new cage, new bedding, and he is probably hungry.
So I thought: maybe I need time to think. Maybe a drive would be better than the airport anxiety that eats me alive as I’ve gotten older (is that my fault or is that the airport’s fault? It used to be so fun. A thrill. Now I just want to get the whole process over with). Maybe I could spend the checked luggage money (thanks to United’s new basic economy scam) on gas instead. Maybe it would finally force me to get my oil changed (ten thousand miles overdue) and my brakes fixed (we literally screeched and ground into my brother’s driveway to swap them out).
But Leah, why were you even going to Colorado in the first place?
Oh, great question. Well, I am here to witness one of my oldest friends marry the love of his life.
I’m staying in a little Airbnb tucked into the woods of Woodland Park, Colorado. It is the downstairs apartment of an over half-million-dollar home. The owners toss sunflower seeds between the balcony slats every morning so wild turkeys climb the hillside to snack. When I threw open the drapes this morning, a dozen turkeys startled back, feathers ruffled like they had been caught in some scandal. I was meant to stay here with another old friend, but he got called to duty in the wedding party and now I have the place to myself for two nights. Given how the last week and a half has looked, I’m not as upset as I maybe could have been about this change in plans.
My plane left without me at 11 am Thursday, which meant I had more time to pack (which still wound up being at the last minute… and now I’m going braless to this wedding… oops). I hit the road around 2:45 pm, after dropping Jason at work. By 9:30 pm I was in Wells, Nevada, crashing in the back of my car. What was meant to be a two-hour nap became a four-and-a-half-hour coma. At 2 am Friday, I was back on the road under a sky so black it felt bottomless. By sunrise I was in Utah, and by late morning, napping again in Green River for an hour. The rest of the day was a blur of day-old iced coffee, Alani energy drinks, Harvest Cheddar Sun Chips, jerky, and Luna Bars.
I rolled into Woodland Park early Friday evening, showered, grabbed white wine and salmon from the grocery store, then headed back to my Airbnb to cook, sip, and sit with the birds while the weather shifted from muggy warm to crisp mountain air.
It was cathartic. Therapeutic. A moment to breathe. The kind of drive that reminds me why travel inspires my writing, seeing and interacting with nature in ways that shift your perspective: mountains shaped like elephant toes, sheets draped over forgotten furniture, clouds that look like Titian’s brushstrokes, bees swarming a highway, fireworks fracturing a July night.
The road was never silent. Even when it was just tires and wind, the songs I’d played earlier lingered, reshaping the scenery. Music has always been that for me, not just background, but something alive. The more I get to know life, the more I understand how deep music runs. How it takes root in you. It’s always been there for me.
My brother never really took to it like I did, and I remember feeling very strange about that. My mom and I blasted our music, belted out all the words, had connections to the lyrics. We expressed ourselves through it all.
He was and is the better musician by miles. Even if neither of us plays much anymore, the second we pick something up, he is still light years ahead. Something in his brain ticks a bit different than mine.
And maybe it’s that music wasn’t ever really something that felt totally tangible to me. It’s always just been something I feel. A tide swelling in my chest. A fire raging under waves but still burning, relentless. A fuel that never runs out.
Some of the worst arguments I have had in my life have been about music. Not taste. Not favorite artists. Not anything that shallow. But the way someone wields it, on purpose, with intent, to make a point or twist the knife. To share in a moment, in a feeling, in a connection. Because music gets into places words cannot. And I think as sentient creatures, we all know this.
Maybe that is why I notice the way certain artists wrap nature into their lyrics and pull metaphors out of it like they have been waiting there all along. It is the kind of thing that makes me want to write more, to watch closer.
Maybe that is also why I think I drive to drive. Why I keep circling back to this idea of Bobby’s Road Trip: part travel writing, part memory, part noticing. A ribbon of miles strung together with songs, conversations, and the quiet between them. Space for the unexpected, the strangers, the roadside fireworks. Space to remember who I am when I’m moving.
And this week, moving meant driving into Colorado instead of flying over it. It meant trading security lines for sunrise in Utah, and turbulence for wild turkeys outside my window. It meant letting the road, the weather, and the music untangle me mile by mile.
By the time I pulled into Woodland Park, I felt lighter. Not fixed, not perfect, but steadier. Ready to watch my friend say “I do” and to mean it when I said I was happy for him.
Maybe that’s the point. Not the destination, but what shakes loose on the way there.
Repetition of the maybes ❤️