Shi:
Alright. Unpack your bags. We are back on the Kay & Shi Show talking about unlikely inspirational sources and today we are on a road trip. We want to talk about the way we get inspired when we drive through different parts of the country.
Kay:
Big time, have you ever been on a road trip, and you see something beautiful, or you come across something that just strikes you in a certain way in your journey that you just aren’t the same after you encounter that particular thing? Well, we feel so blessed here in the United States to have a gorgeous landscape that actually we hold–I think, what Shi?–all of the ecological systems here in our one country.
Shi:
That’s right. All five climate zones are represented here in the US which is fine. So, there’s so much climate diversity that you can experience. But anytime we’re on a road trip there’s the reverence for nature and getting to see it from the road and kind of faster than if you were walking, allows you to see some of those climate changes and see the different environmental zones change. That’s always, I know for both of us, very reflective. You see your own life cycles reflected. You see how things in your life, emotionally, physically, health-wise change gradually in the same way that nature changes gradually. And when you’re on the road, you can observe that because you get a little bit of that again, faster perspective. Then you pass through towns in different places. You can literally feel the vibe. You can understand the scene of a town when you drive through it, and you reflect on all of the different stories that are present for people. Every ranch house and little, tiny community. I know, Kay both of us, we get into reflective mode of thinking about all of just the different stories and the perspectives and the angles and the experiences and the circumstances and the onslaught of just regular life happening and when you start to see it town after town after town, house after house after house, neighborhood, neighborhood, neighborhood you realize how small we are and yet how incredible and unique and powerful we are too. It’s always, I know, kind of just reverent for both of us.
Kay:
Well, back in 2017 a hurricane pummeled down on the state of Florida, the hurricane known as Irma. Danny and I lived in Florida at that time, and I was 24 weeks, 22 weeks pregnant with my first child Violet and we decided to take the drive up to Atlanta to evacuate. Well, when we got to Atlanta, the hurricane decided to wobble, wobble and go toward Atlanta and so we decided to just drive home. We were planning on moving home in about three weeks’ time, anyway, home to Reno, Nevada. But if you know anything about the US then you know that the West Coast of the United States is on the complete opposite side of the East Coast and Florida is on the East Coast and Reno, Nevada is on the West Coast. So, we took the drive across the country, and right at about Tennessee, I started experiencing some pretty severe contractions.
Now at 22 weeks pregnant, this is a pretty dangerous thing. You do not want to have your baby before 24 weeks because a hospital will not try to save a baby that gets born prior to that time. They will just call it a tragedy and let it go and so we stopped at a hospital in the middle of Oklahoma, and it was a rural hospital, and the hospital was a fully functioning hospital with an ER and everything, but they did not have an ultrasound machine to check in on the baby. We were able to listen to her. We were able to do all of my vitals, but there was no ultrasound machine in this rural hospital in Oklahoma. They said, if you want to keep driving 45 minutes to Oklahoma City, we can get you to a hospital that has an ultrasound machine. But the perspective that was brought forward between rural communities having access to advanced healthcare was so interesting and an inspirational thing that would not have happened had we not been on a road trip.
Shi:
Man, you can learn so much on the road and it’s beautiful to see and we encourage you next time, even just on your next short drive to see what you can soak in. Even the cityscapes have something to teach us as the rural places do, nature and human-made nature too. It’s really neat to see that contrast and it’s one place where after any sizeable amount of time in the car, we both are always reflecting on some of the lessons that we were chewing on and thinking on as we were driving if we’re not in the car together. If we’re in the car together we’re just blissing out together and talking about all of the inspiration and perspective that we’re gaining. But next up, I think you will be rather surprised as we share an unlikely inspirational source from our restaurant days.
