"If it's not working for you-the company is bad or the people are bad-get out of there. Move. Every day is a wasted day after that. Life's just too short."
-Pat O'Donnell, CEO of Aspen Skiing Company

During our roadtrips, we had a few extremely late night drives that tested our ability to stay awake at the wheel. Sometimes no matter how much coffee we had or how loud we turned the music up, our heads kept nodding toward the floor. We had to pull over, find a place to sleep, and be ready to start the next day fresh. On those nights, we didn't cover as much ground as we had wanted, but we got some much-needed rest and woke up the next morning with new eyes.

We began to realize that prior to our trip, we had been going through our lives asleep at the wheel-stuck in a groove that provided no passion or meaning. Wasting valuable years of our lives that could have been spent being aware of new possibilities.

Many of the people we met on our roadtrip fell asleep at the wheel at one point in their lives, but they knew when to wake up and make a move. Pat O'Donnell, CEO of Aspen Skiing Company, majored in engineering so he could go to work at his father's company when he graduated. "I hated every living minute of it. After doing engineering for a couple of years I thought to myself that life's too short, I gotta make a move. At the time, my real interest and passion was rock climbing, so I moved to Yosemite and took a job as a bellman. The pay was 90 cents an hour, but it included a tent and free meals. I worked from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., but it stays light until 9 p.m., so you could climb six hours a day."

This was the first of many moves throughout Pat's life, but each change allowed him to satisfy his passion for the outdoors. He built ski resorts, directed nonprofits to help conserve the environment, lived on a boat for a year, and at one point became the CEO of Patagonia.

"Every time a made a change I was petrified. When I moved to Yosemite I was petrified. When I did the sailboat thing I was petrified. When I walked into the CEO position at Patagonia, I knew nothing about making clothing. But you survive these changes, and they're never as scary as they seem. I used to have a quote posted up on the wall of my tent in Yosemite. It was by Thoreau- 'Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.' Then it's gone. You wake up one day, you're sick and old, and you go what if, what if, what if. I never wanted to be on my deathbed thinking  'What if?'"

How do you know when it's time to wake up and make a move? Mike Lazzo, the senior vice president of programming at the Cartoon Network, has a system in place to make sure he doesn't fall asleep at the wheel. "I have two litmus tests for my work. If I drive by a construction site and want to start digging because manual labor seems better than my current job, then that's a sign it's time to switch jobs. The other test I do is this: Every single day I ask myself if I'm happy. The day I say no is the day I leave."

In your life as at the wheel, it's easy not to notice when you fall asleep. You become sedated by the goal of reaching a destination and fade out during the process. Luckily, waking up is within all of our means. Some people may need an experience like a roadtrip to snap out of it and revive consciousness. Others might be able to wake themselves up through less dramatic means. Either way, if you've nodded off, be honest with yourself and do something about it. Wake up! Life is to short to go through it asleep at the wheel.

The Associated Press

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Several concerts on the Dixie Chicks' "Accidents & Accusations" tour have been canceled after slow ticket sales, but the group says it has replaced them with other dates.

Kansas City, Houston, St. Louis, Memphis and Knoxville are among 14 cities no longer on the original schedule released in May, according to a revised itinerary posted Thursday on the Dixie Chick's Web site.

Other shows, including Nashville, Los Angeles, Denver and Phoenix, have been pushed back to later dates.

The North American leg of the tour kicked off July 21 in Detroit. Billboard magazine and other trade publications have reported lackluster sales in some markets, particularly in the South and Midwest.

Group spokeswoman Kathy Allmand said Monday that the total number of North American dates remains the same, with several Canadian cities added in place of the U.S. shows.

The trio released a statement last week attributing the changes to attempts to "accommodate demand" and said more dates might be added next year.

The group also said the adjustments will allow them to promote the documentary "Dixie Chicks: Shut up and Sing," for the Toronto International Film Festival in September.

"We hope that our fans who were looking forward to a stop that is no longer on the tour will be able to join us at a nearby arena this fall, and we are sorry for any confusion or inconvenience these changes have caused," the Dixie Chicks said.

Many country fans criticized the band after lead singer Natalie Maines told a London audience in 2003 on the eve of war in Iraq that the trio was "ashamed" President Bush was from their home state of Texas.

County radio stations dropped them from their playlists and have been slow to welcome them back, despite strong sales of their latest album, "Taking the Long Way."