It's All About The Squeeze

I love driving, always have. I don’t know what it is about it that gives me such a thrill but it does. Actually, I don’t know if thrill is the right word for it. I just enjoy it. It’s a relaxor, if there is such a word, running spell check tells me that it’s not but it’s the word that comes to mind.

I used to watch my Dad drive when I was very young and he’d hum his little out of tune song and just be lost in his thoughts. Sad to say but I kind of aspired to that. I find that I can get lost in my thoughts so easily in the car whether I’m driving or even as a passenger. Pretty sad when I’m the passenger and all I can think is that I wish the driver would be quiet so I can just do my own thing. I guess I shouldn’t say that but it’s the way I feel sometimes.

When I first started driving I would make sure I had a couple cassettes to listen to and I’d just drive around town listening to whatever I had chosen. As I gained confidence I started going out on the freeway and exploring more and more of the metro Detroit area. All the while I’d be listening to either the local rock station or a tape that I’d made. There would be many times that a friend or two would come along for the ride and, looking back on it, I have to believe that they would be incredibly bored but I was completely content.

As a child our family would travel to Pennsylvania or Virginia for summer vacations and the highlight of the entire trip, for me, would be the ride. The anticipation of the drive would get me so excited about the trip I’d barely be able to sleep. On the day of the trip Mom would wake us at 4:00 in the morning and the six of us would pack ourselves into the car and off we’d go.

We’d hit the turnpikes along the way and I don’t know why but I just loved it. Stopping at these little toll booths and getting our little ticket out of the booth either by hand or machine was something that, I don’t know, just seemed so cool. We’d have to go through tunnels when going through the mountains and, again, I just loved it.

After I started driving I would try to drive to Chicago on as many weekends as I could. The stated reason would be to see Dad but I truly just wanted to drive. I would start to feel a little bummed whenever I’d get close to whatever the destination was that I was getting to. I could literally turn right around and drive back right away. Actually I’ve done that a few times while living out west. When I lived in Las Vegas I would sometimes drive to Mom’s just to pick up something that I thought I needed and grab it, put it in the car and head home all in the same afternoon. It’d be a total of about nine hours of driving for a 20-minute stop over. I don’t know, nothing to it.

Nowadays I listen to either talk radio or a book on tape during my drives. Just this past weekend, when I went to Chicago, I stopped at the local audio book rental place and picked up the latest book by David Sedaris. After picking it out I went home, grabbed my bag and the dog and off we went. Lucky slept on the floor of the back seat and I listened to David Sedaris for four hours. A perfect trip. Lucky only bothered me once and that was to open the window when we got to the toll booth when we entered Indiana.

The problem I have with these trips is that there’s always a destination. I don’t really care if I ever stop when I’m driving. I’d really like to just drive around the country and stay in hotels. I’d listen to whatever book I felt like “reading” and life would be just about as perfect as I can imagine. Of course that’s how I feel today. Hell, tomorrow I may wake up and just hate the whole idea. But right now it sounds wonderful.

I’ve always felt let down whenever I would get close to whatever destination I would be heading to. It happens in cars, planes and even cruise ships. I always just want to keep going. I really think I could get on a train and not get off for a month. Just let me watch the world go by from the old Amtrak and I’d be happy as a clam. I do need decent weather but that’s pretty much my only requirement. Bad weather doesn’t give me the sights I enjoy. When it’s grey and ugly I just get bummed out.

Of course nowadays it’s not too easy to drive all over the place. With gas prices going through the roof I can’t go nearly as far as I would like. With my current job giving me weekends off though I constantly feel the need to hit the road every Friday night. It really doesn’t matter where I go. That’s probably why I have gone down to Trenton and Oak Park over the last couple months. I do enjoy seeing the old haunts but the true highlight for me is the drive. There’s an old line about whether something is worth the effort. It goes: is the juice worth the squeeze? To me the squeeze is what it’s all about. The juice is just an afterthought.