So, I think this title will be the first of a series. I have been many, many places by car, since I was very young, up until even now. Cars, for me, will always be about freedom, about the ability to travel anywhere. Also, parking tickets and expensive parking and filling up gas tanks. But mostly, freedom.
In my almost 22 years, I have traveled a lot by car, both driving myself and being driven by my parents. I have been from LA to Phoenix and back in my very old, sometimes unreliable car. I went up to San Francisco and back in a friend’s car. Both of these trips are 6 hours each way. When I was younger, my parents took my brother and I down to Disney World, in Florida, and drove us there from our home in Northern NJ. Without air conditioning. In the spring. Which on the east coast, can be anywhere from freezing to humidity thick enough that you feel like you are drowning. I don’t remember much about it, except that I was in middle school, among other little things. At various points throughout my lifetime, my mom, brother and I (and sometimes my dad) have made the trip from NJ to Indiana by car. My parents drove my best friends, my brother, and I to Boston and back when I was in high school. My dad and I have driven down to DC on multiple occasions, and the last one, I did the 4 hour trip there and back on my own, with an overnight “pit-stop” of sorts in Baltimore. I think we even drove to Michigan once, although that memory is vague. I have taken the two hour drive from LA to San Diego and back multiple times, each time, quite stupidly, trying to beat my previous time. I have also done the 2 hour drive and back from Northern NJ to “the Shore” and back.
I’m going to be honest here: as much as I love driving, when I am on my own, I much prefer the train. The more people involved, the more willing I am to take the road trip. Alone, it can be amazing, wonderful, and freeing… for the first few hours. Then it just gets boring and annoying, at least to me. Or, it can be fun if you play games with yourself, or if your radio actually attaches to your iPod or you know the right stations that play the music that you like.
In college, I had a job for over two and a half years, where all I did was drive in circles around campus and pick people up and drop them off. A glorified taxi service, my friend once called my job. It was fun, depending on the night, depending on the music, depending on how much sleep I got the night before and how late I would be staying up. But even these small car travels (it was only a 1 mile radius from the center of campus to where we could drop off around campus) have stories all of their own. And having somebody ride along with me honestly made the time go by that much more quickly. It was four, five, six, seven, or eight hours of mindless driving in circles, the same journey over and over again, and yet each one, slightly different.
I think I have lost the point of this particular entry, but I guess I can just use it as an introduction to what may be a small series on the many car travels I have seen in my short 21 (almost 22) years. Stay tuned, and have a great Memorial Day weekend.
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