Motion Sickness.

mo.tion sick.ness

noun

nausea caused by motion, esp. by traveling in a vehicle(ref: Apple Dictionary).

It caught me by surprise again.
I arrived in the US on Sunday afternoon, but it was Philadelphia, so we used public transportation: train, subway, feet. My first car ride came on Monday morning, when an MCC volunteer met me at the train station to drive me to the Akron office. I was suffering from severe jet lag; I chalked my ill feelings up to the exhaustion - and to the slightly nervous feelings I got when he turned the wrong way down a one way street in Lancaster City.. Later, on the way to and from lunch, I thought, "too much coffee on an empty stomach." And, the jet lag that made me feel like I had just pulled an all-nighter - or two. No wonder my system felt a little out of sync.
It was later that same evening, riding in my sister's car, headed to her house where I would spend the week, that I realized what was happening. Maybe because it was a longer car ride. And I had been feeling perfectly fine until we started moving (I regulated my caffeine to water ratio better after lunch). The symptoms were more pronounced: my body just felt off-kilter. Headache, nausea, clamminess. The air felt too hot, too artificial.
My body was reacting as it used to the few times I made the mistake of riding a roller coaster - but the roads we were driving were perfectly smooth, mostly straight. The car barely swayed. Certainly a more pleasant experience than riding on Ugandan roads, where I always came away counting my bruises.
But therein lies the problem. For whatever reason, my body adjusts quite quickly to Ugandan transport. After hours on a bus, I usually felt stiff, bruised, and parched, but never once do I recall suffering from motion sickness. That's a problem my body saves for straight, smooth roads and vehicles with well-maintained shocks. When riding on "good" roads recalls the off-roading some of my guy friends loved in high school, I feel perfectly healthy - afraid for my life at moments, but never nauseated. But bring me back to the developed world, to such subtle swaying, and it can be torture to ride for just a few minutes.
At least there's this hope to hang on to: when I came back in the summer, I eventually adapted again, and the motion sickness reserved itself for more dramatic twists and curves. Assumedly, the same will happen this time. Fresh cold air also helps - and Virginia seems to have plenty of that these days.