road trip thoughts...

So, I'm back from Alabama. It was an awesome weekend, I had a great time and took lots of pictures and there's a lot to write about it. But the driving part was so interesting, I thought it merited its own blog post. The thing that surprised me was how much it wasn't boring, driving eight hours with no one to talk to. In fact, I actually kind of liked it. The trip went by really fast, although I suspect that has as much to do with not having to stop every 2 hours to change diapers, distribute juice boxes, and mop up carsick as anything.

Matt's decade-old Sunfire handled better than I thought it would. The speed limit in a lot of places is 70, and you know what that means, don't you? It means that you can go 80 in the right lane and a Mercury Marquise will be riding on your tail, flashing its lights and making obscene hand gestures. (I'm just kidding. Mostly.) I've gotten better at passing trucks - that's long been a white whale of mine - although I still do, and always will, hate driving I-65 through Nashville. I mean, what the hey? The northbound seems to be slightly less leg-waxingly painful than the southbound, but really it's a lesser-of-two-weevils situation.

Odious highway interchanges aside, it was a really beautiful drive. The hills of Kentucky and Tennessee - while hard on the inner ear of this flat-land Midwesterner - are always a pleasant view. I've always been oddly fascinated by the way that you can still see tool marks on the rock faces from where the workers blasted through, however many decades ago that was. (Hmm, I should look that up.)

Driving through rural areas - especially in the South - often means that you have your choice of static, country, religious, or (if you're really lucky) staticky religious country. I was pleased to find great radio stations in both Bowling Green and Nashville. And being a taxpayer, I availed myself of the books-on-tape at my local library. I think that Eat the Rich as read by the author - Mr. O'Rourke has a surprisingly deep voice - was a big part of why the trip went so fast.

Anyway, it was really great to be alone with my thoughts, the road and some gourmet trail mix. But not the kind with raisins in it. Yuck.