VIRB

My wife and I just got back to Seattle from a road trip to southern California, and I'm having a little trouble getting out of the daze that results inevitably from twenty hours on the open road, divided unevenly over two days. The drive, which seemed relatively normal--if boring--while it was happening, is shrouded in a confused haze in my memory less than 48 hours after its completion.

I think part of this haze is the result of our incredibly poor decision to make a trip through the vast stretches of California desert in July, meaning temperatures in the mid- to upper-90s, in a Jeep Grand Cherokee without air conditioning. For some reason, we failed to realize that the lack of an artificial cooling system would result in a tortuous drive. We stuck to the seats, and it was gross. Of course, it was too hot and we were driving too fast to make rolling down the windows a practical option, so we cranked as much semi-cool air through the vents as we could and barreled on down the road.

There are few things as discouraging, for those who are not attuned to a life of tripping road, as the realization that the past 400 miles (maybe six hours) means that we only have 300 more to go in order to get in a good day of driving. Breakneck freeway speeds, the likes of which make the head of a city driver like myself spin, become the norm. This has to be so: reduced speeds just mean a longer trip. But I discovered a new kind of white knuckle terror as I managed gradual curves at 75 mph, a very solid looking concrete barrier immediately on my left and a lumbering semi-truck, bearing offerings of tomatoes, drawing dangerously close to the meager dotted white line on my right. In such circumstances, I've discovered that cruise control becomes as curse as much as blessing. The last thing I want to do for some 1200 miles is to feather an accelerator pedal, but it is difficult for me to describe a sensation more terrifying than feeling more than a ton of metal fly along at just under 80, and of its own accord. As I gripped the steering wheel, I hoped against hope that the ghosts controlling the pedals would cooperate with my careful efforts to suggest the direction in which to carry the car.

Under these conditions of excessive heat and awful speed, I found a new capacity for my imagination: the ability to graphically visualize every possible accident in which we were involved. I discovered this gift early on--before making it out of Los Angeles, in fact. We had barely begun our journey when I noticed a rather large, shredded tire that had gone to its eternal rest in the lane I had chosen to occupy at that time. I was paying attention and deftly maneuvered around the carcass of rubber, but, as I watched it fall away in my rear-view mirror, I also watched--in my mind's eye--the accident as it would have happened. The tire was large enough that it caused me to lose control of the vehicle. The loss of control sent me to over the left lane, fortunately empty, before the left front corner of my Jeep stuck the concrete barrier separating me from oncoming traffic. But my speed was such that my encounter with concrete sent me back to the right, where we were met by the Lincoln who laughed in the face of safe following distances. The Lincoln managed to hit right behind my wife's door, but was itself traveling at a sufficient speed to emancipate my car from its obsession with four wheels. We skidded to a stop on the left side of the car. Luckily, all parties involved were wearing seat-belts, so life-threatening injuries were avoided.

Variants of this delightful scenario continued to play out over the next 19 hours. In the worst instances, one (or both) of us was killed. In the best, we were left without a car just outside of Los Banos, CA. It didn't matter whether I or she was the driving. These wonderfully imaginative scenes continued to play themselves out in my mind. I reasoned with myself, I asked the visions to stop, but nothing worked. I spent the last three hours of the trip in the passenger seat, holding on to the ceiling handle as tight as I could, just wanting to make it home.

Of course, none of the horrible wrecks I envisioned came to pass. We arrived home safely. I wish that I could say the same for so many brave constituents of the insect kingdom who gave their lives to our trip. Thousands of tenuous journeys across the Fifth Interstate came to an abrupt end over those two days, as can be proved by the assortment of juices that have since dried on my windshield. My heart goes out especially to one brave (and somewhat large) dragonfly, who, at some point, found her head lodged into the crack between the hood and body of the car, while her own body, though twisted, was left intact. She met the Jeep somewhere just south of Sacramento, and came to rest near the front of the hood. Over the next six hours, she gradually made her way up towards the windshield, but she stopped before completing half of her journey, and there her proud body remains. I wonder if, when she set out that warm Saturday morning, she ever dreamed that she would be an grotesque hood ornament just north of Seattle, WA. Dream or not, now I have to figure out how to get her off of my car.

I've always glamorized the idea of the road trip. There's something about it that has always sounded so daring, so adventurous, so exciting to me. And that Platonic Form of the Road Trip remains in my imagination. But it's so much nicer to be home.

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