Our Many Hours of Driving

As I was picked up from the airport on the very first day of our trip, I chose to sit in a silver van filled with the people I knew least. I crammed myself into the middle seat of the back row, completely entrapped by other peoples' legs and luggage, and honestly it was pretty uncomfortable both physically and mentally. It's always tough surrounding yourself with people that you don't know so well, but, hey, I was determined to make some new friends.

So, being the introverted person I am, I avoided conversation at first, and scrolled through my phone, glancing over the ~200 songs on our "whats for desert?" class Spotify playlist, searching for possible topics of conversation to fill the silence. And that was a great start--we all talked about music festivals, favorite genres, and plans for the upcoming 10 days. But as we became more comfortable with each other, that quickly changed.

As our Spotify playlist slowly grew to well over 400 songs, our conversations slowly became much more personal. Instead of relying on conversation to fill the silence, we opened up and shared our favorite memories, shared pictures of our pets, and of course talked about the diverse flora and fauna of the Mojave and Sonoran deserts in extreme depth.

We left our 10 day excursion a silver van full of classmates and returned "silver foxes," sharing plenty really amazing experiences. Oh yeah, and our class playlist is now 649 songs, which happens to be 41 hours and 16 minutes worth of music.

Posted on March 24, 2018 05:48 AM by kylescheller