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Category: driving

Over the River …

Over the River …

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And through the woods … traveling to the Thanksgiving feast has never been easy. But here in the megalopolis it’s taken on a new degree of craziness.

A nor’easter is expected to dump anywhere from two to four inches of rain in the next 24 hours. Snow and ice have not been ruled out. Flooding is a possibility. Traffic jams are guaranteed.

To gather at grandma’s all you needed was a sleigh and a team of willing horses. To reach family and friends at the modern table requires strategic thinking (should I leave at 2 or 1:30?), nerves of steel (which route through the mountains promises the least chance of snow accumulation?) and a go-for-it attitude.

But go-for-it we will. People are important. Whether they’re over the river and through the woods — or up I-95.

The Places In Between

The Places In Between

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It’s a pit stop, a place to get gas on I-64, a hilltop station with rocking chairs on a little front porch that provides this view as respite for white-line fever.

Well, almost this view. To snap this shot I walked down the road a few feet while filling up the van. But still, this is more or less what you would see if you had a few minutes to while away.

I paused only long enough to take this picture. An impatient driver, I allow myself no more than 10 minutes at a stop — and I don’t spend them sitting!

This photo reminds me of the journey not the destination. It reminds me of all the places in between.

Trucks Behaving Badly

Trucks Behaving Badly

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Today millions of Americans are driving home from their Labor Day vacations. They are cruising up on ramps, merging cautiously, leaving a safe following distance and otherwise obeying the rules of the road.

OK, maybe they are speeding a little. But basically, they’re out there trying.

At the same time, hundreds of thousands of trucks are also on the road. I don’t mean to pick on trucks unnecessarily. They can’t help it that they are large and heavy and block the view of signs. I don’t expect them to be quiet or dainty. 

They can, however, behave better than they do. After just driving 17 hours this weekend, seven of them on the nightmare that is I-81, I think I’ve figured out why trucks behave badly. They think they’re cars! They whisk in and out of lanes at 75 miles an hour. They merge with gleeful abandon. They give way reluctantly and with a great screech of downshifting gears. Sometimes they travel in tandem, tying up both the travel and the passing lanes while dozens of cars fume behind them.

Trucks should act like trucks. They should plod along at a speed that befits their tonnage. They should give way more generously than they do. And they should let cars … be cars.

Same Route, New Light

Same Route, New Light

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I drove to Kentucky yesterday — but left Virginia about six hours later than I usually do. The Blue Ridge were not the morning smudge on the horizon they usually are; they were full-bodied mountains rising in the west.

The little trail at the White Sulphur Springs rest stop had no trace of morning mist. It was shimmering in the midday sun.

And that last hour to Lexington was strangely peaceful, with darkness closing in fast.

All along the way I marveled at the road. I knew it was the same one, the map told me so. But the light said something different.

Smooth Ride

Smooth Ride

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Road so rough it broke the car wheel. Road that had to get worse before it would get better.

Most of the summer they’ve been stripping years off Fox Mill Road, layer upon layer of pockmarked macadam. Until finally they got to that ripply layer at the bottom, the one you wonder if you should actually drive on but always do because for a few weeks it’s the only road there is.

For years I’ve pondered when this hilly, winding relic would be repaved. Even to the point of thinking the non-repair was strategic, a way to lessen the traffic. (And I’m not so sure that it wasn’t.)

But finally, this summer, the trucks appeared, the orange cones. For once I didn’t sigh at the sight of them. And then, a few days ago, I turned right, braced myself for the bumps and found … brand-new pavement, white and yellow lines fresh from the paint truck.

A smooth ride!

Tunnel of Trees

Tunnel of Trees

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In the great cycle of seasons, topics announce themselves with some regularity. Every year at this time (if not earlier), I notice the steady progression of leaf and bough, how the trees on one side of the road lean in, reach over and touch the trees on the other side.

The result of this mutual growth and attraction is a tunnel of trees, surely one of nature’s most subtly beautiful offerings.

Why is it so magical? I think about this when I’m driving down Fox Mill or Vale or (when in Kentucky) Pisgah Pike outside Lexington.

Do the lofty boughs remind me of a cathedral? Or is the appeal from the coziness, the impenetrability, of a cavern built of leaf and shade?

There’s no explanation, of course. It’s beauty plain and simple.
 

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by tom8yours

A Mother, Driving

A Mother, Driving

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A woman who can have breakfast with her mother and dinner with her children is lucky indeed. But for me to pull this off required a 525-mile drive.

It’s not as odd as it seems to spend Mother’s Day driving. In fact, I’ve done much of my mothering from behind the wheel. I’ve soothed tempers, given pep talks, supervised fights, hammered out college choices and discussed everything from God to boys to algebra (though not necessarily in that order).

Like talking and walking, talking and driving offers great freedom of conversation. You are both looking forward, not at each other (at least for the child riding shotgun), and that frees people to say what’s really on their minds.

I was recalling some of those conversations yesterday — not just the ones where I was the mother, but the ones where I was the daughter, too. My mother and I have solved most of the world’s problems on long drives. And in the recollection of all those words flying lies great peace and strength.

So on Mother’s Day I celebrated not just the bonds between generations, the mother I have and the mother I hope I am, but I also honored that unsung vehicle of mothering, the vehicle itself.

The Resort

The Resort

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I can make it in eight hours pedal-to-the-metal. Eight hours from my house to my parents’ two states away. Eight hours from one role to another, eight hours from one set of duties to another. Eight hours of driving, thinking, listening to music, fiddling with the radio, eating pretzels, chewing gum and sipping tea (those last three to stay awake).

Yesterday I pulled off at one of my favorite rest stops, in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, and took a trail I’d never noticed before. It circled back behind the visitor’s center, up a little rise, along a path of soft, springy pine needles. At the end of the trail there was a panoramic view of the Greenbrier Resort, one of those fabled old-time places known for discrete luxury.

I looked at the white building and manicured lawn and wondered what I would do if I was there. Read? Swim? Bike? Have a massage or manicure? Pamper myself? Eat too much rich food?

I’m sure it would be nice, but not high on my list. On the other hand, I was delighted to have found this trail, to stretch my legs and take this tiny hike. So I stood for a while and savored the view. The drive is my Greenbrier, I said to myself, my one-day respite. During the eight hours I’m neither mother, nor wife, nor daughter. I am just me, out for a spin, exploring the person I used to be.

The Valley

The Valley

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On the way to Kentucky it’s the prelude; on the way home, it’s the coda. But whether coming or going it’s never a destination of its own, only a blurred backdrop at 70 miles an hour.

Still, it’s a pleasant one: broad fields, middling mountains, the eye drawn to that combination of height and breadth; to the purples, blues and browns; to the cattle grazing black against the green.

The Shenandoah Valley slices down the western side of the state, 200 miles of in betweenness. If it weren’t for the pulse-pounding traffic of I-81 it would be a meditation. Some day, I’ll pause and make it one.

Flow

Flow

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This morning a choice: Turn left or right out of the park-and-ride lot on my way home to write.

Turn left and I wait twice. Turn right and I drive farther —but without stopping.

I turned right.

It’s about movement. Flow.

It’s about that in so many ways.