There comes a point in life where you have to decide if you need gas money badly enough to invite them on your 3 hour plus journey back to wherever you are both from. Sometimes you need the money, the company or just another warm body so that you can drive in the HOV lane. Other times you just want to pack up and leave on your own time without even letting anyone know. If you aren’t familiar with this yet, maybe you’re lucky but chances are it’s coming; so here are a few pros and cons.

Pros to long drives alone:

When you take a long drive alone you are the master of the music. This is a huge part of any trip and when no one is with you, you can enjoy anything that you want to. There is no one who will complain if you play one song on repeat for 20 minutes, or care if the music is too loud. You can sing to your hearts content, belting out every word to every song that you know until your throat starts to hurt. If you can’t sing, that’s no problem because nobody cares, you’re alone.

You can drive as fast or as slow as you like, with the windows down or the ac blasting. The point is that no one will tell you that you drive like their grandmother or that you are a scary driver. If it hot out but you’re a cheapskate and you want to put the windows down, go for it. There’s no one to bother by the sound of the wind. And if you like the ac set to tundra, who’s going to beg you to turn it off? Absolutely no one at all.

You can choose to stop whenever you want or never stop at all. If you filled up on gas and snacks and you have an iron bladder, by all means keep it moving. If you don’t stop driving, you’ll get wherever you are going faster. Unless you drive slow, then it’ll still take forever. But if you have a weak bladder, like to stretch your legs or stop at touristy spots, then pump the brakes often. You get out your vehicle and live it up because there might not be a lot of long drives left.

Cons of driving alone:

When you drive alone, there is no one to be your navigator, give you gas money, be your music changer or the person that hands you that bottle of water when you are thirsty. Basically you don’t have that extra pair of hands or eyes when you are driving. There is no one who can take over the drive when you start to get tired so you have to be more cautious the longer you go. And lord help you, if you are too stubborn to make a stop, that other person would have been your excuse to finally go to the bathroom, but you’re alone so you’ll suffer.

Although you can sing all that you want, you have no one to do duets with; and the songs that have multiple parts are even harder. Have you tried singing “Wake me up” by Evanescence by yourself? No one can sing both parts by themselves but they try and fail. It's no simple task; a friend in the car would totally help you sing that song.

You have no one to talk to; after a while of singing and eating snacks, you might get lonely and the only one you can talk to is yourself. We all knows how bad a conversation with yourself can go, one minute you’re laughing at your own joke, the next minute you want to cry because you called yourself fat. And let’s not forget about all of the thinking that you do when it’s only you and the open road, bad thoughts my friend, they’ll start creeping up and then you’ll get moody.

But let’s be honest here, it’s entirely up to you what you want to do. If you like company on long drives, then invite as many people as you want. If you need to be by yourself and see the road alone, then do that. There is no wrong way to enjoy a road trip or a long drive home. Let your hair down, blast some music, stuff those fries in your mouth and struggle to follow it up with a cool refreshing drink. Just enjoy the trip and stay safe, because like anything else, you never know how long you’ll be able to.