Driving driving driving 2020

We’re on day seven of our trip from Tacoma to New Orleans.  Yesterday I took the wheel for four of our ten hours from Layton, Utah to Albuquerque, New Mexico.   Today I drove just two of the six hours from Albuquerque to Wichita Falls, Texas.   My mind drifted with the scenery to the act of driving, with scenes and roads of the past visiting my memories.  We followed from southern Utah into New Mexico with the worst winter weather thankfully behind us.  The clouds parted on a hazy day making the best of the pinnacle rocks not worth stopping to photograph yesterday.  Gradually as the Rocky Mountains gave way to the high desert vistas, the roads straightened out and dropped in
elevation.

Steve snored gently beside me as I contemplated the problems of a perfectly straight, dry, unimpeded freeway.   Much can be said in its favor, coming as I am from the colossally congested Puget Sound wherein a 30 mile I-5 freeway drive routinely takes more than an hour.   And after being stuck behind dozens of lumbering trucks up the I-84 turnpike in snow between Ontario and La Grande, Oregon, a deserted stretch is an undeniable luxury.   One might consider such a stretch to be ideal circumstances for travel.   And how exhausting can it be to sit in one spot doing nothing but staring straight ahead with hands and feet barely moving, one might ask?   Then the words of one of my late friends come to mind,   Jimmy Monteith-Towler, half of the duo JIVA.  He and his wife Val, two folk-song-writer pals from Blyth, U.K., drove to visit us a number of years ago.  Jimmy had bitter words to share about our American highway engineers.   He saw no good reason for them not to put curves and bends in every road.  From his perspective the opportunity was lost to try to keep drivers awake in so doing.   He emphatically thought that driving a perfectly straight road for any long distance is an invitation to disaster, and he hated our freeways.  Jimmy was a fine man and we dearly miss him.  But as I drive, I relish the memories of our American versus their British roads, curving endlessly into many days of lost confusion for us as we made our way to folk club performances.   Then I can truly appreciate this long and straight road as boring as it may get.  I can safely go 85 miles an hour in good weather with not a soul in sight.

And on this January day the years seem to peel back to times in my past when my family seemed to have the roads entirely to ourselves in our adventures out West.  I know if I return on this route in July I’ll be in company of heavy traffic, so these thoughts comfort me.  And I consider the roads of the far north I’ve traveled this time of year, encrusted with ice and swirling, packed snow.   Then I’m wide awake, surrounded by beauty and all is well in the great white West.