How to Make Driving Feel Like an Adventure

I am enamored by the Post Officers who strut the downtown in my arrears. Their shorts that reveal their ever-shaven legs. I love the smile they offer the receptionists at every business. Did you know that they call them by their names too? They ask about yesterday’s game, whether business was alive, and how the dogs are doing. Their cream hard hats are kind of nice too. I ought to ask the next one I see where I may obtain one.

On my last drive down to Texas, I met a Post Officer at a car dealership. We didn’t exchange many words. Yet he came to mind as I wrote this. Bless him and his distribution today.

Back to the driving. It takes eleven-and-a-half hours to drive from my town in Kansas to Houston, Texas. Eleven hours if you do a one-stopper and wring 400 miles from each full-tank. Twelve hours if you strictly observe the speed-limits on the 350+ mile stretch through Oklahoma. Maybe Thirteen hours if you allow yourself a snack and nap at one of the mall-sized gas-stations that surround Texas’ borders.

This is a very beautiful drive to make, my dear reader. You drive through the flats and hills of Western Kansas. You befriend truck drivers, admire their thunder as you slip past, and reconnect with them while you exit your pitstop some 100 miles later.

“Oh there’s the triple Target hauler from Manhattan!” A light hoot and wave will never be frowned on.

There are many joys present on the road. Some are harder to find or sustain, but they exist regardless. Acquiring the tacit knowledge necessary to access these joys might be difficult, but, on the Interstates I now call home, they sure are worth musing on.

I will attempt to free-write a short list of them, the tacit knowledge of the roads. If my pre-writing intuitions are right, we’ll find some terribly straightforward; others, seemingly absurd; many, crude.

• Do you ever spare gazes with the driver behind or ahead of you through the rear-view mirror above your head? Surely, when the car-makers designed those mirrors, they knew that we would spare a glance, exchange guidance, and make fictional characters of the drivers.
• Don’t be on the fast lane if you aren’t the fastest vehicle on the road. And how do you know if you’re the fastest vehicle on the road? Use the rear-view mirror above your head to determine the pace of oncoming vehicles. If you see another car gaining on you, and its driver bears a stern gaze, it wants to get by.
• Should you follow (2) religiously, you’ll likely never be the fastest vehicle on the road, and if you aren’t the fastest vehicle on the road, you’ll likely not be pulled over.
• Once you have the dramatically diffused the possibility of getting pulled over, you can start to explore other internal comforts. Do you need to raise or lower your seat slightly? How’s your back feeling? Any tensions in your chest, legs, or fingers?
• Then the external comforts. What kinds of plains and hills are you driving by? Are any of the city names, spelled in white and green, interesting? Are you surrounded by trucks or other similarly sized vehicles? What’s the most common license plate around you?
• Then relational comforts. How does it feel when you notice a truck inching closer? How does it feel to see an older couple or family in the car beside you? Do you find yourself drawn to certain kinds of hauls (trailers, boats, motorcycles, bicycles, skis, kayaks)?
• Be light on the brakes and preserve momentum. When you observe a car slowing down ahead of you, determine whether it requires an outright brake-slam or whether easing off the throttle and coasting could preserve the distance.
• Look, indicate before you switch lanes. Bless the heavens for a safe exit. Look, indicate before you return. Bless the earth for a sound arrival.
• When you notice a stationary vehicle on the shoulder ahead, spare them the discomfort of a your vicious machine and its wake by moving across.
• Experiment with being the slowest vehicle on the road. On the ‘slow’ lane, of course. And observe how it feels to not compete, to let others beat you, to not contemplate vengeance.
• Spot your nearest Tesla and, before you pull up beside it, deduce whether it is on AutoPilot or manually operated. If it’s on AutoPilot, what is the driver doing? Do they have their hands on the steering? Are they tapping a phone?
• How does it feel to float banked bends on the highway? Can you deduce why these sections are banked?
• Think about home. The one you’re coming from or the one you’re driving to.
• Drive in silence.
• Drive with your classics in the background.
• Find the local jazz station and be blessed by the ever-charming hosts, with their deep, soothing voices, as they introduce the next song.
• Drink water. Have a light snack. If you didn’t begin the drive with a snack box, stop at the next gas station and afford yourself this privilege.