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Driving me crazy!
I drove to Boston for the holiday. I find myself driving to Boston a lot lately, once or twice a month, as a big piece of my social life seems to have migrated that direction over the last year. It takes about three and a half hours, if I go 65 the whole way and there's not any traffic, which only happens when I go early on Saturday morning. It certainly didn't happen on Friday. I got on to the Merritt Parkway about 1:00, only to realize once it was too late that there had been a truck fire on Interstate 95 early that morning which had spewed hazardous materials all over the place, and traffic had been being rerouted to the Merritt all day. It took me two hours to go ten miles. Frustrating.
I hate driving. I've gone over the years from being quite terrified of driving a few blocks, to mostly finding it annoying and boring. I'm even brave enough to use cruise control now and again. I was actually considering doing a cross-country road trip once my job ended, at one point, but this was much more out of the desire to experience one of the great American dreams than even the vaguest understanding of the appeal of the open road.
I'm a dreadful driver, really. I've been in quite a few accidents, almost all my own fault. My depth perception's not very good, and I don't seem to have quite figured out how big my car is. You can usually find my car in the parking lot easily; it's the one that's not parallel between the lines. I'll walk a mile to avoid having to parallel park. I've backed up into landscaping trucks parked next to my house. Soon after I bought my Camry, I sheared off the passenger side rear-view mirror against the edge of my garage. I'm very familiar with the squeak-scratch sound of the needles of the spruce in my yard scraping along the side of my car, when I'm driving too close to the edge of the driveway. I still get teased for the time I plowed the company SUV into someone else's car, thinking that I was driving through a snowbank. Last year, I quite nearly killed myself by driving into ongoing traffic while making a turn, misjudging the distance to the car coming toward me. I do indeed thank the gods for the fraction of a second that meant that the only things hurt in that collision were the vehicles, and my self-esteem.
I was born without a sense of direction, and I'm easily distracted. About once a month I drive right by the exit to my house on the way home from work, and sometimes I make a wrong turn after turning around to come back. Sometimes I forget how to make my windshield defog when it's raining out. I'll often realize I have no idea what's been said on the radio the last twenty minutes I've been on the road. Forget books on tape. Once or twice I've forgotten to pay attention to my dashboard warning lights, and I've run out of gas.
When I lived in Ithaca, I rarely drove more than about 10 miles at a time, and that not every day. I only put about 30,000 miles on my car between 1991 and 1995. But now I live in a piece of suburbia where public transportation is almost nonexistent. I commute to work about 30 miles each way every day, and most of that again in the evenings when I go back down county for other activities. I've just hit 90K on the car I bought in '98. I don't live in a local community. I live on the Internet, and on highways.
My inner environmentalist keeps chiding me. She wants me to stay home, to move somewhere where it's plausible to use public transportation more, to learn to love Greyhound. At the very least, she wants me to buy a Toyota Prius. But I'd really hate to spend that much money on a spiffy new car, just to crash it...
I hate driving. I've gone over the years from being quite terrified of driving a few blocks, to mostly finding it annoying and boring. I'm even brave enough to use cruise control now and again. I was actually considering doing a cross-country road trip once my job ended, at one point, but this was much more out of the desire to experience one of the great American dreams than even the vaguest understanding of the appeal of the open road.
I'm a dreadful driver, really. I've been in quite a few accidents, almost all my own fault. My depth perception's not very good, and I don't seem to have quite figured out how big my car is. You can usually find my car in the parking lot easily; it's the one that's not parallel between the lines. I'll walk a mile to avoid having to parallel park. I've backed up into landscaping trucks parked next to my house. Soon after I bought my Camry, I sheared off the passenger side rear-view mirror against the edge of my garage. I'm very familiar with the squeak-scratch sound of the needles of the spruce in my yard scraping along the side of my car, when I'm driving too close to the edge of the driveway. I still get teased for the time I plowed the company SUV into someone else's car, thinking that I was driving through a snowbank. Last year, I quite nearly killed myself by driving into ongoing traffic while making a turn, misjudging the distance to the car coming toward me. I do indeed thank the gods for the fraction of a second that meant that the only things hurt in that collision were the vehicles, and my self-esteem.
I was born without a sense of direction, and I'm easily distracted. About once a month I drive right by the exit to my house on the way home from work, and sometimes I make a wrong turn after turning around to come back. Sometimes I forget how to make my windshield defog when it's raining out. I'll often realize I have no idea what's been said on the radio the last twenty minutes I've been on the road. Forget books on tape. Once or twice I've forgotten to pay attention to my dashboard warning lights, and I've run out of gas.
When I lived in Ithaca, I rarely drove more than about 10 miles at a time, and that not every day. I only put about 30,000 miles on my car between 1991 and 1995. But now I live in a piece of suburbia where public transportation is almost nonexistent. I commute to work about 30 miles each way every day, and most of that again in the evenings when I go back down county for other activities. I've just hit 90K on the car I bought in '98. I don't live in a local community. I live on the Internet, and on highways.
My inner environmentalist keeps chiding me. She wants me to stay home, to move somewhere where it's plausible to use public transportation more, to learn to love Greyhound. At the very least, she wants me to buy a Toyota Prius. But I'd really hate to spend that much money on a spiffy new car, just to crash it...