I was driving home from a friend’s country home late Sunday night. The road was dark and there was a fog hanging about, invisible unless I turned on my brights which would throw up a blank wall a short distance before me.
The roadway was like many country roads in Wisconsin. Layers of blacktop slathered irregularly across one another, periodically trimmed with tar poured over a crack. The blacktop fades into the gravel on the side of the road, transitioning from hard to soft surface with no clear delineation between them.
As the sounds of my tire treads grabbing and slipping, grabbing and slipping and slapping down again on the intermittently damp roadway, droned in my ears I noticed how my focus shifted several times. One moment I’d be looking into the distance, considering the road ahead and its hazards. The next moment I’d have dragged my focus much closer, looking at the varying degrees of wet road, from barely misted to a raging washout.
It occurred to me that my world view was changing as well. Sometimes I would be thinking about which road I should take and where the next opportunity to turn would be— should I stick with 78 and climb immediately to the high ground to get away from the foggy mist forming in the lowland or shall I shave 15 minutes off the trip and avoid the windy, wet and windy roadway that 78 became as it snaked along the ridgeline?
The next moment I’d not be thinking of anything so grand, focusing instead on my immediate situation. Will my tired, less than a year old, be able to maintain their grip as they slash into the river of runoff that is cuts across the road. The patch of snow that just appeared before me, should I avoid it or ride through it?
As I pulled onto the interstate, I noticed that a thought had snuck up on me as I drove through the countryside and I turned my attention to that thought as I coursed down the onramp to the bland nothingness of interstate concrete.
Life is like that country driving in many ways. Sometimes you have the time to take a look ahead and chose your path carefully, considering the road ahead and the ways to get where you are going. Other times, things get a little more hairy and this drives your eyes down to the road just before you, forcing you to concentrate on the here and now, that which is right before you, and nothing more.
As you drive you can pick and chose the path to your destination, choosing harder or easier ways to get where you are headed. Choosing a new destination as you drive would not be unheard of. Other times you might elect to drive without a destination in mind, seeking instead the pleasure of the road chosen, instead of the destination.
All the while you’re affected by the world around you. Sometimes roads will be closed to you for a while, other times the roads will be torn asunder and moved entirely. Driving over familiar ground you might find yourself lost as the landscape changes. Weather can grab you and toss you about. Traffic can snarl before you and throw your travels into a shambles. Accidents can rip your plans and leave them strewn by the side of the road.
Shortcuts can present themselves, with a road opening suddenly just as you ride up to it. Holes in the traffic can widen and accept your passage. The sun can emerge and light your way.
There are no passengers in life. You can elect to ride only during rush hour in the comfort of that anonymity –just one more light blue sport sedan or white minivan or dark colored SUV among the dozens of them out there. Or you can wander Frost’s Road Less Traveled (albeit at a much higher rate of speed than he ever considered, I am certain) in your Car Less Popular hoping to capture something in your travels not found by the masses on their freeways.
You can spend hours pouring over maps or order up custom trip direction from the internet or AAA to ensure, as much as anything is sure in this era, that you arrive at your destination on time. You can pack in the best protective gear known to man: side impact airbags, ILIR cameras, headlights on gimbals, dash mounted GPS units with human voices and cellular connections to the world.
Or you can take to the roads with wild abandon choosing your way based on what looks interesting at the moment, riding a motorcycle wearing sunglasses, sandals and shorts in order to experience every gust of wind and bump in the road.
So turn up the radio, lean back in your seat and take a look at the road you’ve chosen. In the end it’s your road trip. Enjoy it.