We went on a road trip yesterday.

Road trips, man. I thought I’d have a road trip story for you, but I do not. There’s really nothing to tell.

We all know what a road trip really is, right? It’s an extended niche in time where healthy eating habits go to die, along with insects who meet your vehicle to commit suicide on the highway. By the time you arrive at your destination, you’ve consumed an entire bag of jalapeño potato chips while sitting on your ass for almost twelve hours, and your windshield looks like a murder scene.

You walk into your house feeling immense and sullied. You swear you’ll never sit down again, but the first thing you do is sit down, and then you don’t want to move. You pep-talk yourself into getting up to unload the car, and you succeed.

After the car’s unloaded, you, who’d also sworn to never eat again, start thinking about what’s for dinner. All you know is that you want something with chlorophyll. You’re craving chlorophyll like it’s a fix you’ll die without. Your favorite chlorophyll-rich food is brussels sprouts. You open the freezer, find a steam-in-the bag package of brussels sprouts, throw it into the microwave, and devour the whole thing by yourself. Plain. Without salt. Because you never want to see salt again.

The next morning is Thursday. You go to Body Pump and wonder why there are 20 sets in the chest track instead of the usual three or four. The chest track doesn’t end, but it’s your fault because that morning, the morning after the road trip, you decided that you’re going to do all of the push-ups on your toes on account of a YouTube video you saw. The guy in the video provided compelling evidence that push-ups on your knees are mechanically different than real push-ups, so the push-ups you’ve been doing in Body Pump all this time were fake, and you can’t get this information out of your mind, and you’re never doing push-ups on your knees ever again, even though in Body Pump you have to do them at 50 miles per hour, which was why you started doing them on your knees. You do the proper push-ups in a modified position and still only make it halfway down on each rep. You imagine your drill sergeant screaming at you to keep your head up and lower yourself all the way down or it doesn’t count. You inwardly shake your fist at the Les Mills D.J.

Then you go to the car wash to deal with the insect blood and guts plastered onto your windshield. The car wash guy asks you if you came to Arizona to go to school. You’re confused at first, then you remember that you’re in a university town and you now have out-of-state plates, and the guy must have figured you’re a student because you don’t strike him as a snowbird, which leaves you feeling slightly flattered.

The car is clean and you head next door to Target, where you paw at the salad mixes because you’re thinking about dinner again. You carry out your bag of butter lettuce, spinach, and grape tomatoes feeling like you’ve recovered the holy grail.

You get home in your clean car with the out-of-state plates.

Road trips, man.

Plain, steamed frozen brussels sprouts are delicious.