East bound and down, loaded up and truckin'

Ever on the hunt for adventure - and with blissful ignorance - I signed on to help drive a 26-foot rental truck from Texas to New Jersey this month, a journey of 1,800-plus miles through eight states.

Much to my surprise, anyone with a driver's license can waltz into a rental agency and pick up one of these boat-sized vehicles and drive it away with absolutely no instruction whatsoever.

Our truck – a gigantic mustard-yellow creation – was theoretically designed for three: the driver plus two passengers.

The only person who could have been comfortable in the middle would have been a baby in a car seat and may I say THANK GOODNESS we didn't have one of those on the trip.

The passenger bench was designed for utility, not comfort.

I suspect it might have been purposely designed that way to make the relief driver (in this case, me) so grateful to have a turn to sit in the spring-loaded driver's seat that they'd not have time to consider how inexperienced they were at driving vehicles this large on interstates.

As the relief driver, I spent most of the first day fervently watching my brother behind the wheel as I peppered him with questions:

"They didn't even make you drive around the parking lot first?" "There's no how-to pamphlet?" "What does THAT switch do?" (There were way too many of those.)

My first turn as driver came when we got far enough down the road that we were in a more rural area and there were less ways I could potentially harm the truck, myself, or others.

The driver's seat felt 10 feet tall, which was appropriate since the steering wheel was 6 feet wide. (I might be exaggerating, but I don't think so.)

We soon learned that our truck was equipped with an air horn when we (and by "we," I mean "I") managed to activate it in an attempt to move the large and unwieldly visor to the side to block out the blinding rays of late afternoon sun as I was driving.

While I never succeeded in wrenching the visor all the way to the door, I did manage to entangle it into a cord, which I had not seen until that moment ... and which set off a deafening wail. (Air horns are not for the faint of heart.)

Happily, I don't think I was in range of any other drivers, but I suspect that any wildlife may only now be starting to tentatively creep back to that area.

When we (and in this case, I mean my very clever brother) discovered on day two that the truck was equipped with adaptive cruise control and had the ability to follow other vehicles at a safe distance with only minimal input from us, our quality of life ratcheted up several notches.

Forbes magazine says somewhere between 12% and 13% of Americans will likely relocate this year ... or just shy of 30 million of us.

I came home (via airplane, thank goodness) with new empathy for every single one of those folks, as well as with a deepened appreciation for every trucker past, present, and future.

If you are in the driver's seat this summer, I tip my hat to you ... but not while I'm in motion. I'm keeping both of my hands on that wheel.

Betty Williamson secretly wants an air horn for her car. Reach her at:

[email protected]