One of the things I liked best about the yearly trips to Florida that I mentioned some time last week was night driving. My mother would fall asleep and Daddy had to stay awake so I'd talk to him and ask all kinds of questions about things I wanted to learn. He always had an answer, even if it was an, "I think, but I don't know for sure..." Since we were doing highway driving there wasn't a lot of scenery to look at. It was fairly dark anyway, but the lights from the other cars made it hard to look at the stars. So I'd sit in the middle of the back seat and watch the red rear lights of the cars in front of us and the white headlights of the cars going the other direction. Sometimes I'd screw up my eyes so it went all fuzzy and they were just lines blurred lights as far as I could see.
That sounds sweet. It must have been nice not only to be talking with your dad like that but to be doing it when the other passengers were asleep. Like it was sort of a magical time.
You've reminded me -- the epitome of nighttime driving when I was a kid was coming back on the parkway from our grandparents' house, lying back and closing my eyes but still being able to see the orange flashes of the streetlamps and listening to the rhythm of the pavement seams. Like Robert Redford in Sneakers, if you've seen that, only without the being-tied-up-in-a-trunk part.
Hmm...night driving isn't jogging any memories for me. However, the most nerve-wracking childhood drive that I remember took place in Virginia, on the Skyline Drive. Our entire family was heading to a lodge there for a few days of vacation in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Unfortunately, Hurricane Agnes was bearing down on the area at the same time. The weather was horrendous: pouring rain and thick fog. Not the greatest conditions for a narrow, winding road with steep drop-offs! We were lucky enough to make it to our lodge before the road was closed due to the bad weather.
Needless to say, we didn't get a chance to do any of the nifty outdoors stuff that the lodge offered, like horseback riding. You couldn't even see any scenic woods from the huge picture windows in the lodge's restaurant: all that was visible was a wall of white fog.
Gah. Scary. The most terrified I've been in a car was going down switchbacks in the southwest in a 28-foot (I think) motorhome with my dad driving, and he's never been known for his moderate speed. I wasn't sure whether it was worse to look out the window at the drop or to screw my eyes shut and leave it up to fate. Heh
( ... )
The night driving really didn't prompt anything for me either, but the talk of switchbacks reminds me of one road in NSW which was just one switchback after another, on and on and on. I think it went on for an hour or so, and by the time we emerged from them all I was literally dizzy. I wasn't driving, but I still refused to go back the same way, as I wasn't convinced that it didn't have some impact on co-ordination - if not his, then other people's.
I was going to ask whether it was the dizziness or the drop that got to you, but then it occurred to me that the dizziness would be worrisome because of the drop, so really they're inseparable.
...Glad we settled that, then.
Switchbacks are not my friends. A good percentage of the dreams I've had about being in cars have involved malfunctioning brakes and big drops.
One summer I went to stay with my family in Crete. Half the holiday was spent in the small village where my uncle grew up. One night, my aunt was driving us through the village towards a cafe in the town. All of a sudden she just stopped the car, turned it off so that we were in complete darkness and screamed blue murder. My cousins and I all screamed too, of course. And then my aunt was roaring with laughter. She just did it to frighten us. And then we sat there in the dark for a while and listened to a farmer herding about 50 sheep down the road.
I remember once driving home from somewhere - my grandmother's I think, and my family had to drive a mini-van back then - 7 people, 7 seats. Although, there might have only been 6 then. I can't remember if my brother had been born. But at one point, one ore more of my sisters used a hairbrush as a microphone to lipsync to the radio, and we all got kidn of into it and laughed a lot. And then it got dark and I rested my head on one of my sister's shoulders, and she rested her head on top of mine, and we said that we were like the two-headed monster on Sesame Street. Pretty sure we both fell asleep.
Heh, yeah there were some big fights. Most of the time it was either between me and my brother, or between my older sisters (who were all close in age, whereas I was 5-7 years younger than all of them (and 5 years older than my brother). For a little while I had constant fights with one of my older sisters, but actually she's the sister I've always been closest to (and the one whose shoulder I was reading on in that memory). Shrug. I liked having a big family though. It's weird now that everyone but my mom and brother has moved out.
As a child, I used to lean back on my seat and tip my head back or to the side so I was leaning and could look out the window. Then I'd let my eyes relax and unfocus and watch the lights slide by in the dark. It looked so pretty. It made the time pass as I entered an almost trance-like state.
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That sounds sweet. It must have been nice not only to be talking with your dad like that but to be doing it when the other passengers were asleep. Like it was sort of a magical time.
You've reminded me -- the epitome of nighttime driving when I was a kid was coming back on the parkway from our grandparents' house, lying back and closing my eyes but still being able to see the orange flashes of the streetlamps and listening to the rhythm of the pavement seams. Like Robert Redford in Sneakers, if you've seen that, only without the being-tied-up-in-a-trunk part.
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Needless to say, we didn't get a chance to do any of the nifty outdoors stuff that the lodge offered, like horseback riding. You couldn't even see any scenic woods from the huge picture windows in the lodge's restaurant: all that was visible was a wall of white fog.
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...Glad we settled that, then.
Switchbacks are not my friends. A good percentage of the dreams I've had about being in cars have involved malfunctioning brakes and big drops.
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