I drive two hours three days a week to get to college. I knew early on this would be a drain on me but I hadn’t realized just how frustrating unexploded road rage can be. I had a friend who told me the reason his priest lived so long was because he never learned to drive. I have to wonder how many years I’ve aged in the last three semesters; people on the road drive me crazy! Some days I think there’s a trend. There must have been a memo sent out to all tan SUVs the other day, because they all drove in the left lane on the highway. Every one I passed. It has to be a conspiracy, designed to make us all choose public transportation. The summers in Pittsburgh are the worst. Nothing makes me crazier than when the construction barrels come out, which have now wisely become concrete barriers to protect PennDot from angry drivers such as myself. Does it really take 5 months to fix a [bleep!] exit ramp?
In a strange sort of dichotomy, this weekend I took a long drive to get away and relax. I picked a spot on the map that was straight highway, pointed my car in that direction and drove. My friend told me I was crazy. Five hours in a car relaxes me? When I come close to homicide on a daily basis for school? Let me explain.
When I take a long drive, I know I have hours to myself in that car. There isn’t much in this world I can control, but for a short amount of time, I know I have me, myself and the music I choose to listen to at my command. With my little red Matrix and my brain set to cruise control, my mind can wander where it will. I’ve worked out many issues on long car rides. I can let myself think and think until I’ve either exhausted my brain or worked the problem out in my head. I can cry, I can yell, I can sit in silence and marvel at the scenery. I can put on angry music, sing at the top of my lungs, pretend I’m on the movie set of Thelma and Louise with the wind in my scarf or stop at any billboard-advertised store that catches my interest along the way. On long road trips in my car, I am free.
This weekend was a gorgeous time to travel. The leaves must have been at their peak because the colors I saw while driving across the countryside melted every tension I had taken with me. I got to see the sunset and travel for a time with the sweet memories twilight brings with it. I can smell Kennywood at any given twilight, when the lights are just being turned on and that’s when I know it’s time for funnel cakes. Or when lightening bugs used to come out at my Gram’s place so thick they would light up the field with their blinking lights. I would dance around the yard trying to catch them while she watched on from her lawn chair, crocheting in the fading light.
Driving at night is my least favorite time to drive because the passing scene is blanketed, bedding down for the night, a place I should have been had I left two hours earlier. The cars in front and behind me become my only world and I grow easily agitated with trucks and their painfully bright headlights. The drive is saved, however, because there is something soothing to me about the dash lights, a soft reminder of drives past when I would wake up in the van my father piled us in for road trips. The glow would throw a vaguely green cast to the gray in his beard and the sheen of his skin as he accepted a cup of coffee my mother poured for him from his army green thermos.
What can I say? My car is my happy place.
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