it's 200 miles to drive
It all comes down to experience.
Over in his journal, rdkeir talks about getting routed around a rather nasty interstate pile-up to a state highway that he'd never driven before. Nothing in his post to make anyone go anything but "Man, I'm glad you made it home OK!"
Except...
There's one bit--I'll quote, "It turns out that 51 North was a long, unlit, middle-of-nowhere country road..."
You know, everything in there is absolutely, 100% correct. Except...my brain refuses to admit that 51 is anything at all like a country road.
Experience. I learned to drive on county roads and back lanes in more southern parts of the Midwest where there are rolling hills and where the construction crew didn't always just snap a nice straight line, crank up the heavy equipment and build them some roads. No, sometimes they followed along wherever the cows had been wandering. I was home visiting my parents not too long ago and asked, "Were the roads really this narrow before?" They assured me that, yes, they were.*
I can find roads that make me go, "Ah, yes, a real country road" around here, although they're usually still too straight. 51 isn't one of them. Its got wide shoulders, nice clear, white lines marking the edges, room for double-yellows in the middle and even cat's eye reflectors in some places.
More experience. You see, I live where 51, driving south, is a regular thing--so's going north on 51. It's one of two reasonable ways I can go to get from work to home or from home to work. So, even though the road is long, and unlit, and pretty much middle-of-nowhere, I'm used to it.
*There's a couple of reasons that this isn't precisely correct: 1) in the decade or so since I was learning to drive, most passenger vehicles in America have gotten bigger. That pickup looming behind you in most of both lanes? Really is taking up most of both lanes and didn't used to. 2) in the cycle of snow removal and road repair, the gravel shoulder that, when I was learning to drive was mostly flush with the road and offered a foot-and-a-half or there abouts of extra wiggle room, is now mostly gone.
Over in his journal, rdkeir talks about getting routed around a rather nasty interstate pile-up to a state highway that he'd never driven before. Nothing in his post to make anyone go anything but "Man, I'm glad you made it home OK!"
Except...
There's one bit--I'll quote, "It turns out that 51 North was a long, unlit, middle-of-nowhere country road..."
You know, everything in there is absolutely, 100% correct. Except...my brain refuses to admit that 51 is anything at all like a country road.
Experience. I learned to drive on county roads and back lanes in more southern parts of the Midwest where there are rolling hills and where the construction crew didn't always just snap a nice straight line, crank up the heavy equipment and build them some roads. No, sometimes they followed along wherever the cows had been wandering. I was home visiting my parents not too long ago and asked, "Were the roads really this narrow before?" They assured me that, yes, they were.*
I can find roads that make me go, "Ah, yes, a real country road" around here, although they're usually still too straight. 51 isn't one of them. Its got wide shoulders, nice clear, white lines marking the edges, room for double-yellows in the middle and even cat's eye reflectors in some places.
More experience. You see, I live where 51, driving south, is a regular thing--so's going north on 51. It's one of two reasonable ways I can go to get from work to home or from home to work. So, even though the road is long, and unlit, and pretty much middle-of-nowhere, I'm used to it.
*There's a couple of reasons that this isn't precisely correct: 1) in the decade or so since I was learning to drive, most passenger vehicles in America have gotten bigger. That pickup looming behind you in most of both lanes? Really is taking up most of both lanes and didn't used to. 2) in the cycle of snow removal and road repair, the gravel shoulder that, when I was learning to drive was mostly flush with the road and offered a foot-and-a-half or there abouts of extra wiggle room, is now mostly gone.