It was a Friday, and I was out of class at 1:30 (and I must thank Dr. King for making this particular weekend three days long). So because I had this extra day of freedom and more time on Friday afternoon, I figured it was the perfect time to head on home (and by “home” I mean “place-where-I-grew-up” home…not “school” home). And believe me, once you’ve experienced a year in the dorms, where the food is good but not very creative, and then a year in an apartment, where you can make whatever you want but you have to clean up, going home-home, where you have your parents’ cooking and a functional dishwasher, is a pretty appealing idea. So I planned to head on home as fast as I could to beat the traffic and make it in time for my Dad’s barbequed tri-tip sandwiches.
Now the drive from my college apartment to my home-sweet-home takes about an hour and forty minutes (two hours if you’re going the speed limit). It’s long enough to go through most of my “Recently Played” playlist, but not too long as to make my legs go numb from lack of movement.
Anyway, I had everything packed: clothes in the duffle bag, laptop stuffed neatly into it’s carrying case, wallet, keys and snacks easily accessible on top of my purse. My car whistled at me as I unlocked it. I plugged in the GPS, made sure the iPod was playing a catchy tune, and turned the key in the ignition.
Right away I could tell there was a problem. Being about thirteen years old with over 110,000 miles on it, my car has seen it’s fair share of road trips. For the most part, it’s hung in there pretty well. However, despite its loyal history of not breaking down, it decides that today is the perfect day for it to start crapping out. The moment I turn the key in the ignition, the car starts shaking. Back and forth and all sorts of up and downs. This isn’t the normal jerkiness of a stick shift. And it isn’t something that goes away after driving down the street for a few minutes.
Before you get all excited for a “my-car-broke-down-in-the-middle-of-nowhere” story, let me tell you it’s not how this story is going to end (thank God). I was smart enough to pull off the road before I hit the freeway. Turned the car off. Turned it back on. And it was working fine. But the fact that it was bouncing around at all at the beginning of this trip only adds to the list of horrific events that are to follow.
I hit the freeway at seventy-five miles per hour, cruising along and passing the slowpokes who don’t know if they’re supposed to exit RIGHT NOW or in another few miles. And all of a sudden, I slowed down to a measly twenty miles an hour in traffic. I did a mini-cheer in my head as I merged into what seemed like the fastest lane: “That’s alright! That’s OK! I’m gunna pass you anyway!”
After what felt like an eternity, I passed the car wreckage on the side of the road that had been holding up traffic (because some people couldn’t help but gawk at the pretty, spinning lights of the police car instead of just driving forward at a normal speed). The little time dial on my GPS told me I only lost five minutes. So I turned on cruise control, and settled in for the remainder of the drive.
One thing you start to notice when you drive with cruise control is the varying speed of all the other people around you. There’s the guy in the mini-van who wishes he was driving a Porsche, so he starts speeding up when you try to pass. There’s the twenty-year old who’s putting on mascara, but as a result, erratically speeds up and slows down with each brush stroke near her eye. Or, my personal favorite, the impatient business man who is swerving through the lanes at the speed of light and then has to slam on his brakes because he got too close to the twenty-year old make-up fanatic.
About an hour passes, and I start to come close to my favorite part of the drive. I call it: The Hill (and I could add an “of Doom” to that title, but I figured that was over-doing it). At night, this section of the road is lit up like an electric eel, as all the car headlights blur together in an up-ward slope. I get chills just thinking about it.
I have a game I play on The Hill. My car is really good at climbing at speed. Meaning I can get up this beast of an incline going a steady seventy miles per hour, while other cars fall behind. So my game is to try and keep this speed going all the way up, despite heavier traffic in the area. More than often, I’m forced into the fast lane that rides right up against a giant cement wall, but once I reach the summit, I feel like throwing my hands up in victory (even though I’m racing people who don’t necessarily know they’re in a race).
This time, there wasn’t even room to merge. I was at a dead stop in traffic, again. And right before the best part of the drive, no less. As I approached the base of The Hill at the speed of a snail, I felt my hopes of a good race dwindle into nothing. But wait! What was this? An opening? I took it. And I found myself in the slow lane, going forty miles per hour! I waved at the cars still stopped at an angle. I waved at the people I passed in the fast lane. I even waved at the policeman who had pulled someone over half-way up The Hill. It wasn’t seventy miles per hour, but I was moving. And I was winning.
That was about as good as my drive got. The next time I hit traffic, it didn’t let up.
I was twenty minutes from home when I came to a halt. The sea of red brake lights stretched way off into the distance. There was no hope. Don’t think about trying to merge off. You’ll get hit. Don’t honk your horn at the person in front. You’ll get hit. And don’t, under any circumstances, loose focus, because, guess what? You’ll get hit.
I tried to distract myself at first. I played with taking the clutch out of gear and just coasting down the road, but that got me nowhere when I ran out of natural momentum. I had a moment of joy when my favorite song came up on shuffle, but you can only put a song on repeat for so long. I remembered I had packed a few Reese’s for the road, and experimented driving with my knee, shifting with one hand and un-wrapping with the other. Unfortunately I had only brought along six of those little sugarcoated morsels.
I had nothing to do and nowhere to go. My eyes were glued onto the time dial of the GPS. Five minutes behind. Fifteen minutes behind. Thirty minutes behind. At one point, I was so desperate for speed that I wanted to slam my car into the back bumper of the guy in front of me, just so that I could step on the gas.
My dad called to ask where I was. He called again twenty minutes later. And never once had I wanted his tree-hugging-get-out-of-jail-free-Hybrid-commuter-lane car as much as I did at that very moment (usually I’d take my BMW over that squirrel-run machine any day).
So when I finally got out of traffic hell an hour later, I wasn’t stopping. Not for no way, no how, no one. I was going forty in the residential areas of my neighborhood, taking corners at no less than thirty. And I pulled into my driveway with a heavy sigh of relief.
My family was full of hugs and smiles when I opened the front door, but all I could manage to say before dropping my belongings on the floor and rushing into the house was, “I’ve really got to pee!”
