Rythms of the Road: I'm bored, let's go driving.

Thursday, April 26, 2012

I'm bored, let's go driving.

For various reasons we found ourselves unexpectedly living in Seattle over the winter of 2012. I have never been much of a city dweller, despite having grown up in downtown Los Angeles, but I am adaptable. If this phase of my life includes living in a tiny one bedroom apartment on the third floor with no elevators, well then let's embrace the experience and be Seattle-ites!

Seattle as seen from Alki Beach

The area has much to offer, and in previous trips I was usually on a mission of one sort or another and really did not take the time to immerse myself in the Seattleness and explore much at all. Now I had six whole months to figure out Seattle. I bought sweaters, a raincoat and umbrella and set out to see what I could see.

First thing I see is traffic. Lots and lots of traffic.

The Seattle area is actually pretty diverse and we took our explorations in bites. It usually would go like this: "What are we doing today?" was met with "I dunno, what do you want to do?" inevitably leading to "I'm bored, let's go drive around." Driving around in our big old Ford F250 is our favorite way of killing time and no $4.20 a gallon gas or dirty looks from Prius owners is going to stop us.

See those curvy buildings? That is where the Mariners and the Seahawks play.

Canada Geese enjoying the view


A cool boat thing at some random park

Rhodies in the rain

The exploration trips were somewhat haphazard and not without mishap. There was the memorable day we drove south out of Seattle along old U.S. 99, decided to follow the coast down to Des Moines and cut across to Auburn. A quick glance at the old map says this is possible. So we drive and keep the water to our right the whole time. Stopping to check out little beaches, marvel at the million dollar homes smaller than our apartment along Alki Point and listening to harbor seals barking out on the buoys.

The Argosy plying the waters around Seattle

After driving for 3 hours we hit a point where we must turn inland. No problem, if we just follow this road up over this hill we should come out in Des Moines, right? Right. Up the hill, crest the top and there it is. The Space Needle.

The Space Needle. Again. It should not be there.

"What the %$#@& is THAT doing over there?!" Sure enough. It's the Space Needle, off to our right in the distance. Amazing view of it, really. It should be sort of off to the left and about 30 miles behind us, totally un-see-able from where we thought we were. What we had done was drive all the way down Alki Beach, to the Vashon Ferry, then turned and instead of going south we went straight back north up the ridge and came out almost where we started. We really need to get a GPS, apparently. Oh well, it was a cool drive and we really had nowhere else to be today.

Port of Seattle

The Alki Point Light

Mt. Rainier, the volcano in our backyard

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What this is not:

This is not a travelogue in the normal sense. It is a record of what I see as I travel. You won't find specific directions to any of these places. Sometimes you won't even know what Country they are in. I usually don't want anyone to know where my good places are. You may feel lost because it skips around quite a bit. That is how I am - focus is not one of my stronger traits. You also will not see any reviews or detailed descriptions of routes. I put links to other stuff I think is cool and think others might want to see. The links are for you, since I have it all bookmarked anyway.

Lots of people write about roads. I am by far not alone in my fascination. But if you are looking for detailed help planning your next road trip you are in the wrong place. My planning usually only goes as far as "I'm bored, lets hit the road."

This, I suppose, is my way of preserving my own road trip history and sharing it with others. One note of warning: I tend to take windshield shots, because when writing about roads those prettily staged still photos just seem wrong to me. I saw it out the windows of my old Ford truck; and so shall you! With all the bugs, glare, rain and blurry "What did that sign say?" as we go along.

Enjoy the ride.

The Driving Force

All of my life seems to have been defined by roads. I remember most of them. Some fondly, some with aversion, all with a familiarity rarely afforded to other human beings. I don't really get people who are not appreciative of roads and the infinite potential they represent.

People seem to love to ask one question above all others. "Where are you from?" Not "Where have you been?" or "Where are you going?" Always it is "Where are you from?"

Such a simple question on it's face. Some people have a ready answer; "I'm from Nebraska." They will say with assurance. This is where their parents lived. Where they were born, went to school, set out on their lives from. It is their starting point, for some their ending point and they know the answer to the question. They do not even need to think about it.

I have no such ready answer. I have thought about it all my life. I have no clue where I am "from." Not where I was born, in Chinon, France. I was only there for a few weeks and it seems affectatious to say "I'm from France" under the circumstances. I spent much of my formative years in Southern California, so I usually just go with that. My siblings have adopted Alaska as their stock answer and that is fine for them. It works and I would never argue the point. They do live there and our parents did indeed spend many years there.

The problem for me is that I have just as many - if not more - memories of other homes, other places. Los Angeles; oh my yes, very many L.A. moments run through my mind. San Diego. Saugus. Eastern Washington and Northern California, Oregon, Louisiana, Eagle River, Shingle Springs, Sacramento, Phoenix. So many others. They blend like good whiskey.

But mostly I remember - and here is the strange thing - it is not the places. Most strong are my memories of the roads inter-linking all of those places. I can recall with perfect clarity the exact hue of black and the bas-relief cracked yellow stripes on that roller-coaster of a highway between Bakersfield and Bullhead City. The dips into each flash flood arroyo, the floating sensation as that big old Buick of Dads leaped out the other side. The monotony of Joshua trees ticking by like strange scarecrows and the shimmer of heat off the pavement.

I can smell the strange wet aroma of that causeway in Louisiana and see the creepy moss dripping off the trees in the early morning light. I can feel the quick surge of terror as we took a curve a mite too fast coming down a mountain. And that ride - that wild and exhilarating ride up I-5 through California in the wee hours in a '69 Olds Cutlass that Mom proved really could do 120 with nary a shimmy. Man, what a car, and what a driver.

The cars are bit players. I can perfectly recall lying across the back seat of a Pontiac Bonneville on our way home from somewhere and gazing up at the serpentine concrete of the Los Angeles freeway system, thinking to myself it looked just like those Escher drawings in my brothers book. I can still see the silhouettes of the redwoods and the stars peeking through as we wound along the river road in that old Corvair. I can hear the hum of conversation and the bumps and smell the oil and cigarettes and fresh air through the wing vents of Grandma's old Beetle. That red Ford pick-up doing a perfect headstand in the creek and that homely little Pinto chugging up Grapevine.

My life is filled with roads. Roads going nowhere, and everywhere and I have to see, to feel, to know where they are going. Perhaps one day I will reach the end of one of those roads and know in my heart of hearts that this is where I am from. I will have found my answer to that perplexing question.

I think today is not that day.