On the road again (#1353)

Topics/tags: Autobiographical, end-notable

Since young adulthood, long drives [1] have been part of my life, perhaps even part of my identity. In college, I drove back to Boston [2] for each break [3]. Sometimes, I drove alone. Sometimes, I drove with friends. Once in a while, I’d stop for a quick nap, but I almost never stopped in a hotel. The one exception I can recall is when I had an accident driving back from Boston. I’m pretty sure that’s the last accident I had, nearly forty years ago [4].

I love long drives, at least if I have a destination. I can listen to music or news, think, reflect, enjoy quiet. For me, the road serves as a liminal space. When there are other people in the car, I can also have conversations. The people who ride with me also like quiet, so I can also drive quietly. As I said, these drives are part of who I am.

Once Michelle became part of my life [5], she accompanied me on these drives. We’d head east to visit Mom at least once a year. I’d do most of the driving, but she’d spell me when I got tired. Some of those drives became part of our shared family history, such as the night Michelle, Flicker [6], and I drove through Cleveland at 3 a.m. at about 10 mph because the snow was so heavy.

Driving also permits me to haul things back and forth. I can bring extra supplies (e.g., extra clothes). I can buy or acquire things at my destination and bring them home. I didn’t mention this in the earlier paragraph on the reasons to drive because the best story about it involves her. Here’s how she described a trip east with the two of us and her brother.

We’d stopped at bookstores in New York and bought books. In Newton, they bought more books [7]. So, on the way home, they put me into the back seat and then packed all the books in around me.

Moving ahead a bit, I recall driving east for the one quarter job at Dartmouth [9]. We’d decided that I was old enough that I should stop when I got tired. However, I never got tired enough to stop. Being at Dartmouth while Michelle was in medical school in Chicago meant that I also started making the trips in the other direction (west for the start of break, east for the end).

When Michelle moved to Maine for residency, we continued making trips west, this time to see her parent. One of those trips is forever embedded in Rebelsky lore and involved a diaper blowout and an escaped cat at the rest area [10].

If I recall correctly, Michelle and I drove to Gallup, New Mexico, for her residency there. We certainly had a car there, so it’s likely. I recall very little about that drive. But I have fond memories of hiking through parks with Youngest on my back [11].

Once we moved to Grinnell, we returned to car trips east for major holidays or vacations. Of course, those trips included the three boys (or just two, depending on the year). At some point, we purchased a small travel TV and VCR so that they could watch shows along the way. We also played car games, such as trying to find all the letters of the alphabet in order, one by one, on signs or license plates. Middle claims that the I’m going on a picnic game [12] was designed to make them computational thinkers; I just thought it was fun [14].

We even added a car trip to the West Coast somewhere along the way: a multi-week family vacation in which we drove each day, stopping at interesting sites [16] along the way and giving up for the night when we were tired. If I recall correctly, we only had one bad hotel experience. However, the trip home did not go as expected. We left Yellowstone from the north entrance in late afternoon. We got tired around South Dakota. All the hotels at the first three stops were full, so we gave up and drove straight home. It was definitely not the best strategy.

We also drove east for Middle to look at colleges. That was a great trip, although I regret having Middle drive as we went through Chicagoland. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with his driving; it’s that it was his first experience having to deal with merging into the chaotic stop-and-go traffic that comes with such drives. Not the best experience for a young driver.

Near the start of the pandemic, the boys and I drove east to pack up Eldest’s apartment and move him back to Grinnell. One day east. One short night of sleep. One day west. It was an adventure! It was even more of an adventure because we ran over a blown tire on the highway and lost the power steering in the mini-van. I drove it the rest of the way [17].

All of this comes to mind because Eldest and I took another driving trip this past week. One of my best friends from college [18] was getting married in Massachusetts, and I wanted to be there. I drove so that I could have the freedom to see other friends. Middle and Youngest flew out to meet us. Why didn’t I fly and rent a car, something I’d done with Michelle from time to time? It’s not a cost thing; I can afford the planes and the rentals. Mostly, I like to drive. We’ve discussed that already. These days, I don’t like to fly. It’s not that I feel unsafe. It’s not even that I dislike the lines and such. Rather, I dislike that my weight causes me to encroach upon my seatmates’ personal space. When Michelle was my seatmate, that was fine. These days? No. And, in any case, I like to drive.

On the drive east, we decided to be sensible and planned to stop for the night [19]. However, when we stopped in Batavia, New York, which had something like a dozen hotels, we discovered that all of them were full. I hoped we weren’t going to have a repeat of the Yellowstone trip. Fortunately, we found a place on the outskirts of Rochester, only about thirty minutes further. I would have liked to have time to visit friends [20] in Rochester. Unfortunately, we were on a timetable driving east.

We didn’t have a timetable for driving back home to Grinnell. We started at Logan, having dropped off Youngest and Middle for their flights home. We made it through the dreaded only one lane on The Pike in Newton construction with little trouble. We visited a friend in upstate New York. And then … we decided that we’d prefer to sleep in our own beds, so we drove the rest of the way home. And when I say we drove, I mean I drove, and Eldest kept me company. Eldest offered to drive. But he doesn’t particularly enjoy driving, and I do [21]. After 1300 or so miles [22], we made it back to Grinnell at about 4:00 a.m. I started the laundry [23] and made it to bed by 5:00 a.m. I woke up about 4:00 p.m.

Good times.

Postscript: While I’ve relayed some of the driving anecdotes, there are more. I wonder if the Boys would like a list. I wonder if I would like a list.

Postscript: I look forward to my next trip east. Hopefully, I’ll find time next summer. Mom may not be there anymore, but lots of friends (and chosen family) are.

[1] Road trips?

[2] Newton.

[3] I also returned to Chicago at the end of each break.

[4] More precisely, it’s the last accident for which I was responsible. About fifteen years ago, someone blew a light at the corner of 6th and Broad and broadsided us. Since they took off afterward, I was lucky to have no-fault insurance.

[5] Or vice versa.

[6] Our cat.

[7] Mostly at the legendary New England Mobile Book Fair [8].

[8] It is legendary. It even has a book chapter about it. I’ll need to track that down.

[9] That job expanded into about four years as a visitor.

[10] Flicker always traveled with us. He was a great cat.

[11] I was much healthier then.

[12] In case you’ve never played that game, it goes like this. One person picks a hidden category of things and saysm I’m going on a picnic, and I’m bringing thing. The next person asks, Can I bring thing? Depending on whether ore not the proposed item is in the category, the answer is either Yes, you can bring thing or No, but you can bring other thing. Repeat ad infinitum until someone decides to guess the category.

[14] I recall playing the game while driving a group of students to Denver. I’d chosen the pattern of the thing you bring must start with the first letter of your first name. One person figured it out. After ten minutes or so, everyone else in the death van [15] was ready to kill us. But we were laughing uproariously.

[15] In preparation for driving one of the College vans, I had to take some training. The training included a film that described how susceptible the vans were to flip-overs. Then, on our way to Colorado, we heard that a group of firefighters there had flipped their van. At that point, I started calling it a death van. I’m not morbid.

[16] Sights?

[17] I didn’t say we always made good decisions. Nonetheless, I have no accidents on these trips over the last forty years.

[18] Also, Michelle’s best friend from college.

[19] Cue lyrics of Hotel California?

[20] Colleagues? Alums?

[21] Construction driving is an exception, particularly at night, in the rain, especially both. Fortunately, although I encountered lots of nighttime construction on this trip, we had no rain while in construction areas.

[22] From Logan, not from New York.

[23] Thanks for training me, Michelle.

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