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just dreaming

I've always wanted a 15-passenger van. I'd call it the adventure van or something like that. Me and a bunch of my friends will load into it with all our personal climbing gear and we'll strap an inflatable boat up top and take off. Maybe it's an oft-repeated dream, but really? I just want to go road trippin' with people I love. We'll all sing loud and really off-key, we'll stink, we'll all lay on top of each other when we get tired, we'll draw on each others' hands and arms and faces. Maybe we'll have deep discussions about life and the Gospel and what happiness really is, and how we get it. Maybe we'll end up with 43 inside jokes at the end of the day--say one word and we dissolve into peals of laughter. One or two rows of seats will be taken out and we'll have a cooler full of food for munching on--healthy stuff, like hummus and crackers and carrots and stuff. Lots of apples. Berries. Juice. Dried fruit, nuts and cheese. Plus some of the less-healthy classic traveling foods, like tortilla chips and candy. Maybe some Dibs.

Camping, climbing, hiking, embarrassing photos, epic photos, boating and music-making will be mandatory. As will awkward moments, especially as they relate to people ending up with their heads and/or legs in other people's laps. We'll be the noisy crowd of kids that troops into a slow little restaurant and freaks out the employees with our weird behavior, but ends up surprising them because we didn't make a mess and actually left it cleaner than we found it. Dirty hands and faces will be normal. Complaining about how ugly we look will also be normal. Makeup will be strictly forbidden because we want to see who our friends really are, not who they pretend to be. There's something magic about raw faces, and we're going to pretty much bathe in that magic.

The van will be piled full of travel essentials like blankets, pillows, and sweatshirts. We'll all get sandal tans and we'll make bracelets for each other and we'll end up with many weird pictures of each other doing things that nobody else will understand. We'll leave a mark on this world and the world will leave its mark on our retinas. We'll be in love with life and we'll love each other and we'll be in love with the world and with adventure and authenticity and abundance of life.

You in?


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