We just got back yesterday from a lovely drive through Mount Rainier National Park to Yakima and back. I was thinking about how things have changed dramatically since the birth of the boss-man, K.
What happened to those all-night drives we did in college?
Why do Americans romanticize the open road at night?
What’s up with the romanticism of the open road, especially through the whole of the nighttime?
On the Road. One long typewritten draft. One long highway. Or maybe a dozen, who’s paying attention, though. I never did finish that book.
Some all-night drives I remember
Before Seattle, before the birth of my baby, way way back in the stores of my memory, I dug up these couple of nocturnal road trips.
- Raleigh-Durham to NYC with BM. Because it sounded cool.
- Raleigh-Durham to NYC the remix—and back! Solo. The time I moved myself out of Brooklyn speedily and decisively. The whole time I played Ella Fitzgerald and wore a Statue of Liberty hat I got from wandering into graduation party stuff around NYU.
- Washington, DC, to Raleigh. Because I had to process my visa for India in a day and didn’t want to stay in a hotel. Why would you do that, when you can just drive home?!?
- NYC to Baltimore with PL. Because we didn’t want to go to the XXX reunion in Boston. Plus I’d heard about the aquarium in Baltimore. It sounded good, so we went south on I-95 instead of north.
- Atlanta to Raleigh with AM. Because I wanted to go to Six Flags and just couldn’t NOT ride the Ninja about seven more times.
- Tokyo to Mount Fuji and back with AM. Because it took all day to drive there and we didn’t want to stay. It was raining.
- Virginia Beach to Raleigh with RP. Because it was my idea to go to Virginia Beach instead of, say, the much closer and easier to drive to Wilmington.
- The one I don’t want my mom to know about.
- Raleigh-Durham to Savannah with PL. Because Savannah! Who doesn’t want to go to Savannah??
- Somewhere in County Cavan to somewhere in County Kerry(?) with AM. Because our car broke down, thankfully right in front of the house of a very kind gentleman who happened to operate his own fleet of tour buses. He hooked us up with his mechanic. We gave him our last bottle of whiskey. He had already invited us in for tea, jam, scones with his wife to hang out while they sussed our car situation. Lucky us! I love Irish people!!!
Yeah!
What’s up?
Why was all that so exciting? Howcome the idea of driving through the night now seems dismal, almost like self-induced torture? What’s changed? Am I… old!??
As I was ruminating on this during our travel yesterday, there was a line in a lyric on the iPod random selection (was it alphabetical? Aimee Mann, Albumleaf, Anto’…) at the exact moment I was thinking about it that went:
….an all-night drive…
!
How totally wavular is that?!
Driving at nighttime is more thrilling. In the dark everything looks different. It’s a commmon knowledge that almost every alien abduction is at night on a lonely highway.