On The Road

I'm in there somewhere, hating life.

I’ve never liked driving, most likely due to the fact that I’ve never felt the need for speed – nor, in fact, even a strong desire for it. At first I was receptive enough to the idea of learning how to move a large piece of machinery over a great amount of space, but the good folks at my high school saw fit to try and scare us into driving safely with lots of sad stories and pictures of teens who had died in their prime because they’d gone 35 in a school zone.* While most of my classmates disregarded what they’d been taught and drove recklessly anyway, I took it all to heart, to the point that I came to see driving as more dangerous than smoking and far less cool.

*Out of everything I heard over the course of two health courses, the scariest thing I remember is the trauma nurse from Salem Hospital who told us that when paramedics respond to a car accident, standard operating procedure is to give all unconscious victims a catheter, whether they need it or not. The thought of bumping my head on my steering wheel and waking up with a tube in my wang has horrified me into years of signaling before I leave the curb and stopping for yellow lights.

I don’t have my car at school, which means that nine months out of the year I’m not driving, which is fine by me. However, during the summer I’ve got to drive occasionally, and it’s usually a somewhat frantic experience because I’ve been out of practice for the entirety of the school year. Surface streets in Sellwood are bad, downtown Portland is worse, and the Interstate is like a really boring video game which only gets exciting right before you die (or so I’ve heard).

Yesterday, my parents, The Girlfriend, and myself all left off for Lummi Island, my family’s occasional vacation retreat in Northern Washington. Seeing as The Girlfriend’s presence meant more luggage which wouldn’t fit in our Prius, we opted to take two cars, which resulted in me spending the entire day driving through Washington on the Interstate. For the record, as I write this I have no tubes in my wang – at least, not to my knowledge.

My parents and I have been making the drive from Oregon to Lummi Island for a lot of my life – a couple times a year when I was in elementary and middle school, mostly during the summer. It was a lot of fun up there for a little kid – the island was close to an Indian reservation where they sold illegal fireworks at bargain basement prices all year round, so every trip brought with it the promise of the potential to set oneself on fire or at least blow off a limb. When I was in middle school, my aunt who owned the family cabin on the island died, and afterwards we didn’t go up as often.

What in some ways is more memorable than the island is the drive up. A six hour trek up the I-5 corridor through just about every backwater hillbilly town in Washington – Centralia, Maytown, Everett, Seattle – that eventually leads to the ferry that takes drivers to Lummi Island. We’ve been taking the same route for my entire life, so I’m used to seeing all the same landmarks, but this was the first time I’ve made the drive myself.

It’s strange to go back and take a spin through a childhood tradition as an adult – I learned this the hard way when I got thrown out of Discovery Zone last year. But driving to Lummi Island is unique because not only did it put me behind the wheel for longer than I’d ever driven before, but also because none of it was new. It’s like watching a movie you haven’t seen in years, only now you’re in the title role and have the ability to spin off the road and wind up in a ditch if you so choose.

Maybe it was the fact that I was in the driver’s seat or maybe it was the fact that the last time I made this trip I wasn’t as aware of my surroundings, but I picked up on a lot more of the nuances of the ride. The redneck message board outside Centralia was even more offensive than usual (“WHERE’S THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE??” was the neocon message du jour) and I was more aware of the poor condition of the Interstate highway when I was white knuckling steering wheel, feeling teeth rattle out of my head thanks to poor resurfacing.

Making it to Lummi in one piece added a sense of accomplishment to the jubilation at completing the six-hour journey. It’s like making your own ham sandwich instead of having one made for you – it’s basically the same sandwich, but you feel like you earned the one you made for yourself. It’s the same thing with driving to your vacation location as opposed to being driven there – having spent all day doing something I hated, I feel like I’ve earned my week of leisure.

Because this summer of unemployment has just been taking the piss out of me.

Truman Capps is considering asking The Girlfriend to drive home.