Turnpikin'

Another visit to Brandi last night meant another two-hour trip from Stow to Toledo on the Ohio Turnpike this morning.

For the most part, I really like to drive. I always have, ever since I turned sixteen and got my license. Even that embarrassing incident with the tree didn't diminish my enthusiasm for too long. It's a simple pleasure. Even before I was old enough to drive, I enjoyed taking long car trips. They say that getting there is half the fun, and I've always found that to be true. Well, maybe not half, but I can dig the spirit of the cliché.

I remember going on trips with my family when I was younger...it was always fun to sit in the back of the van with my headphones on and gaze out at the scenery, or read (I'm one of the lucky ones who doesn't get carsick if I read in the car), or sleep, or collect license plates from different states as we passed other cars.

Now things are a little bit different. I haven't been on a real travel-intense vacation since I was 14, and I think the farthest I've traveled from home in that time was a weekend trip to Chicago with some friends a couple of years ago, or maybe a couple of trips to West Virginia. Instead of piling in the back of the van with my cousins and a Game Boy, travel now means grabbing some CDs, getting in my Neon, and hopping on the turnpike or I-75 for an hour or two.

That isn't a bad thing. Granted, I definitely miss the old days--a lot of fun was had on those trips, even before we got wherever we were going. I still get the same basic pleasure, though. This morning I got on the turnpike around 6:00 a.m., put on some tunes (John Mayer), set the cruise control at 73, and just let my mind wander. It's harder now to check out the scenery, since I'm doing the driving myself, but that's okay--I just think about different things, and check out the scenery in my mind.

Yeah, that was a pretty lame line.

At any rate, I still manage to see some pretty cool stuff. This morning I came around a curve and saw the moon setting on the northwest horizon. It was almost full, enormous, and dark orange. Pretty eerie.

Alas, it used to be that travel meant vacation and adventure. Today it just meant one more day at work.