On The Road Again

An attempt at describing the magic of road trips...

Photo by Bence Balla-Schottner on Unsplash

Breathe in. Breathe out. Do you smell that? There’s adventure in the air. Take another whiff and the flavours become more distinct, gasoline and trees, and week old fries and soda pop. 

Now listen. Do you hear it? Nothing? Listen closer. Just behind the rattle of old 80s hits, underneath the ceaseless roar of tires on pavement, in between the hum of the forest and the murmur of conversation. Right there, nestled in close you can hear the excitement building.

That’s how it starts anyway, as you walk out the door, and throw the bags in the car. It’s a whisper then, something you strain your ears to hear. But as Dad starts the engine and you pull out onto the highway it grows. Louder and louder with each mile until it reaches its fiery crescendo.

The adventure, the excitement, the feeling of the road slipping by beneath you, envelopes you. It moves your feet up and down, wriggling and squirming with impatience.

Inside, the car is heavy with the desire to run, to leap, to bound with joy because you know you’re going on an adventure. 

Just wait, you whisper, we’ll be there soon.

And maybe, just to keep yourself occupied you bust open a chocolate bar. The big ones, made for sharing, but which are so much better eaten alone. The kind you save for weeks and weeks, waiting for just the right moment to eat yourself sick. 

And after you’ve eaten your heart out, and you’ve thought to yourself how glad you are that you saved that chocolate bar, you turn to the window and stare as the monotony of the ever changing scenery lulls you into a dream state.

Vague voices from the front reach into the back. You almost focus on them but you don’t, because to change anything now; to look away, to breathe differently, to make a noise; anything at all would break the spell. 

You stop at broken down gas stations with leaky gutters, and motorbikes parked outside. And once you even stop at a restaurant to satisfy the craving deep in the pit of your stomach that your chocolate bar could not kill. But none of that is important, not really anyway, all of that is just distractions from the real goal, from the destination.

And even though your foot’s been tapping, and your head’s been nodding, and every hour in the car stretches into eternity the drive is over before you know it. And deep down inside, you wish it had lasted forever.