LIFE IS A HIGHWAY by Wanderlust Jones

GOD, I miss driving. I mean, I really miss driving.

I can compile a list of hundreds, maybe thousands, of reasons I love living in New York.

I can also compile a list (maybe equal in length) as to why I'm so over living in New York City. But within the Top 5 things that bum me out about being a Manhattan dweller is that I no longer have a car and driving is a rarity these days. And that, my friends, sucks parking meters.



I love to drive. LOVE IT. Almost anytime, almost anywhere. But I didn't start out that way.

My dad drove us everywhere when I was growing up. Family road trips were the norm. Each August, we'd load up the Family Truckster and head off to tourist outposts dotting the northeast. One summer it was New Hampshire - the White Mountains, Kankamagus Highway, the live bear show at Clark's Trading Post and Mount Washington (we took the cog railway up.) See this photo? That's us on top.

The following year it was the Amish Country (Good 'n' Plenty, Dutch Wonderland, chuckles over Intercourse, PA) and Philadelphia's historic sites. We made several treks to Lake George and visited our nation's capital (with an "a", and Capitol with an "o.") One year we schlepped up to Maine for nine days. It rained seven of them. The two nice days are family legend to me because I never actually witnessed them; I came down with my first ever (and worst ever) sinus infection and was left in our Mount Desert Island motel to sleep it off during the day while the family took in the majesty of Acadia. It was not a banner vacation -- it was our own National Lampoon's Vacation. When we finally made it to Maine, it was closed! The following year, we headed across the border to Niagara Falls and Toronto; my father made every dinner reservation under the last name "Griswold."

I grew up on Long Island, smack dab in the middle of Nassau County. My father had an unbelievable knowledge of the roads and highways, able to navigate around traffic and through backroads to get us to destinations. I don't recall him ever needing a map (when he did glance at one it was before he left the house) while traversing Nassau or Suffolk. He knew his home borough of Brooklyn and knew Queens pretty well too. The man was really good behind the wheel.

Long before I was old enough to get a Learner's Permit, I announced I wanted a car. The parents laughed -- not only wasn't I old enough to drive, I wouldn't know how to get anywhere anyway. I said, "try me." They would throw out destinations -- friends in Stony Brook, Port Washington, Oceanside. I answered with detailed (and correct) directions. So my father tried to stump me. Great Adventure. Pittsfield, MA. Lake George. Montreal. Whatever I learned of geography I must have learned from my dad, through osmosis perhaps, because although we never actually discussed routes and roadmaps, all of my directions were dead on accurate. When I explained that the Taconic Parkway was an alternative to the Thruway but north of Albany the Thruway changed into the Northway and it was a straight shot to the Canadian border, my father conceded defeat.

But as the age of the Learning Permit crept closer, the subject came up again. It was made very clear I would not be getting a car at sixteen. (And there was no way I could buy my own; what money I did make babysitting or as an arts & crafts counselor had been invested in concert tickets, albums and posters of men donning progressively longer and longer hairstyles as the years went on.) My parents claimed there was no need for me to have a car. High School provided a bus and was within walking distance. I'd always have friends with cars. I simply didn't need one. How could I argue? I didn't even have a license. Sort of the chicken and egg -- why get a permit to learn to drive if I wasn't going to have a car? Why would I need a car if I didn't have a license? (A no less reasonable argument than my best friend's decision to never get a license; she believed the only car worth driving was a Lamborghini and since she knew she'd be living in Manhattan and would never own that premium sportscar, why waste the time learning at all?) The issue of automotive ownership was tabled but my need to learn the skill couldn't be ignored anymore. I enrolled for Drivers Ed in my senior year of high school.

I'll say this: I did not do well in Driver's Ed. I had no home lessons and the teacher was not great. He grew easily frustrated (can you imagine having this gig?) and I can't imagine his nerves or stomach lining were in good health. I had coordination problems. My brain and my eyes and my hands and my feet didn't quite work together very well (this was the same problem I encountered years later when I attempted to learn to be a DJ at my college radio station, though my feet did not factor into the equation nor has anyone ever been run over by a speeding reel-to-reel machine.)

I remember our teacher attempting to get us to drive on the highway; let's just say the on-ramp experience scarred me and probably shaved a few years off our instructor's life. It's an ART to navigate an on-ramp and smoothly merge and blend into highway traffic; I know this now. Back then, it was terrifying. The teacher kept trying to get us (all of us; I wasn't the only one having major issues behind the wheel) to speed up. He'd bark at us, "Book! Book! Book! BOOK!" which I KNOW was him urging us to step on the gas but add his screams to his mess of brown curls, his moustache, his big glasses and his wild arm gesticulations and, well, quite frankly, the man sounded like a deranged chicken. The only sense of calm I felt during the entire semester was when we took a ride out on Ocean Parkway on a Saturday morning and we each took turns driving sixty miles an hour alongside the Atlantic.

It was clear by the end of the class that, although I received a passing grade, I was nowhere near ready to take my road test. God bless my parents (who definitely did not want me alongside them on the road.) They paid for half a dozen private driving lessons with a guy who smelled like patchouli and wore Birks. He was odd and possibly perpetually stoned but in the Spring of 1988 I passed my road test (Garden City Park) on the first attempt. Yay, me. I now had permission from the state Department of Motor Vehicles to drive a vehicle but I had no vehicle of my own. I would have to 'share' my mother's metallic blue station wagon (which sported the vanity license plate ILENEAL, the merger of my brother's and my names. For years other drivers presumed I was Ilene and my husband was Al.)

The problem with the 'Blue Bullet' was that it had no pick-up, zero, zilch. Thus, I was scared (positively terrified) to attempt to drive on the parkway. I had nightmare images running through my head of the impending Newsday headlines: "Woman Causes Thirty Car Pile-Up Attempting To Merge." So I refused to drive on the Long Island Expressway, the Northern or Southern, Meadowbrook or Wantagh Parkways... all of the major arteries spanning Long Island. I stuck to the surface streets (yes, I know we don't actually refer to them as "surface streets" here in New York but time spent driving and surviving LA traffic has its consequences.) Inheriting my father's uncanny ability to traverse Long Island through off-the-beaten-path shortcuts, I managed to get everywhere I needed to be without having to brave the on-ramps of doom.

I was headed upstate to college. When I suggested I might need a car, I was met again with blank expressions and the reassurance, "no, you don't." (I also was mocked by my father asking me how I'd manage to get to Albany via only local roads.) The Greyhound bus ran in and out of Hempstead and there would be enough other people I knew with cars (and strangers posting on the ride board at school.) I wouldn't need a car of my own. So I survived my first three years in Albany without a car. I lived on campus, my friends had cars, there was a free campus bus. So, yes, my parents were correct. But at the end of my junior year, I applied for a summer internship out at the rock radio station WBAB. There was no way my mother, my brother and I could share the Blue Bullet all summer.

For my 21st birthday, my parents bought me a used car. When I came home from school, a candy-apple red, 4-door 1988 Chevy Nova was parked in my parents' driveway. I took it for a spin around the neighborhood, ungraciously bemoaning the lack of a decent car stereo, but otherwise elated. That day, my father asked me to take him to his allergist appointment. He knew what he was asking and so did I. My father's doctor was in New Hyde Park. It would require me driving on (gulp!) two different parkways. I took a deep breath and headed off with my dad in the passenger seat.

This car definitely had pick-up (it was a Toyota engine inside a Chevy body) and suddenly driving was a pleasure! The on-ramps were easy! I had no problem merging with highway traffic. The off-ramps were a snap. It was a fluid motion. No sooner did I return home with my father than I called my boyfriend upstate and announced I would be visiting for the weekend (and that involved five parkways and two bridges!) I never looked back. I've been a driver ever since.

That summer, I worked at the radio station on the Morning Show and was expected in the studio by 5:30 each morning. So I was up and showered and out of the house long before the sun was up. The only other drivers on the parkway at that hour were Newsday and Entenmann's delivery trucks and drunks just coming home from the night before. That car was freedom on four wheels. It was the most independent and confident I'd ever felt.

I drove back and forth between Long Island and Albany my senior year. Off to Massachusetts or Lake George when class schedules allowed. Interning two towns away across the Hudson River. I simply loved driving. I loved being behind the wheel (plus, I'd bought myself a much cooler car stereo.) After graduation, I spent a lot of time at the beach near my home. On summer nights, I would drive along Ocean Parkway late in the evening, alongside the Atlantic Ocean, all the way out to Captree State Park. I'd pay my entry fee and settle in at a picnic table with a book near the Robert Moses Bridge, to watch the sun go down. Eventually I'd head back to the car and drive home, passing the Jones Beach Amphitheatre, hearing that night's concert in the distance.

Eventually, my car could steer itself to most parts of New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania with little to no involvement on my part. New York, Connecticut, Long Island - me in the little red SuperNova was a frequent site. But when I moved into Manhattan, I left my car out at my folks' house. There was no need for a car in New York City.

Plus, the hesitation I once felt driving the Blue Bullet on the highway I now felt about driving any vehicle in Manhattan. Really, why would anyone want to drive in the city? It was chaotic. The drivers were crazy. The cabs out of control. It was a non-issue until my boss gave me his Mercedes S500 for the day and I navigated the streets of Gotham, running errands and leaving the car in pristine condition (I didn't even have to move the seat up much!) Once Manhattan was no longer intimidating, no city was intimidating. Boston? D.C.? Detroit? Chicago? Cleveland? Montreal? LA? Piece of cake. (Any of them are still better than one hour spent on the Cross Bronx Expressway.)

Sadly, we said farewell to the red SuperNova in 2003; she had begun to slip gears. The past few years when I'd visit Long Island I would drive the "extra" family car, the spare forest green '94 Pontiac GrandAm. I call it The AssMobile. It drives like ass. It smells like ass. And I'm the only ass without a new Honda in the family. (The AssMobile was referred to as "Fenway, "the Green Monster, in front of friends' children because it was more appropriate.) But even The AssMobile is on its final days. My mother has finally begun to loosen the vice grip she keeps on the keys to her new Accord. And what a pleasure it is to drive.

I've thought long and hard about why I love driving so much. For starters, I'm really good at it. (Yes, I know everyone thinks themselves better drivers than they actually are.) Except for a few people who consider picking on me a legitimate hobby (and an impatient someone who thought me too patient a driver in LA traffic) most people seem to be OK riding in a car while I'm driving. Friends and relatives allow me to drive with their children (in car seats when necessary) and my passengers often drift off to sleep, a sure sign that they're comfortable with me behind the wheel.

I also possess a very good sense of direction. If I've driven someplace once, I might need a reminder on how to get there a second time but after that, you'll never have to tell me again and I won't need to refer to directions. It's almost impossible for me to get lost. At worst, I consider myself temporarily misplaced. So long as it's decent weather and there's gas in the car, you'll get where you need to be - there's no reason to panic. I also love maps. Yes, I can read them and utilize them for travel-planning purposes but I can really get lost in a map. During the trip-planning stage, it's a print-out of possibility -- the places I've yet to be. During the trip itself, I love noting the town names passing on the fold-out as miles click away on the dashboard. It's my sense of exploration laid out before me.

Mostly though, I think my love of driving is a control issue. Behind the wheel, I'm in charge. I can choose the direction and the speed and the music. So many things in life can seem, at different times, to be beyond our ability to control them. The everyday issues of friends and lovers, checkbooks and cheesecakes and the more existential issues of life's purpose and career paths, soulmates and destinies. Behind the wheel of a car, all of these things can be pondered in abstract with the appropriate soundtrack playing. It's a tiny bubble, a sanctuary, a little pod of privacy. No one can see you crying if you're out on the open road. No one can hear you singing at the top of your lungs either. (Note: I don't recommend either activity on a heavily-trafficked roadway in the larger metropolises of the Northeast I-95 corridor. Or Hempstead Turnpike. Funny looks ensue.)

Even when work travels gave me the opportunity to take a bus or a train or a shuttle flight, I'd often choose a rental car. No matter how overwhelming things might feel, being in the cocoon of a new rental car gave me a sense of calm and composure. And control.


But I also like the way things look from behind the wheel of a car. A horizon line promising a destination yet unknown, a two-lane paved highway through a small town or scenic vista you'd never experience before. A good road trip fuels me. I don't think I'm ever more myself than when I'm behind the wheel of a car on a road trip, alone or with a good friend and good music (sidebar: no Pink Floyd, no Gloria Estefan, ever) and some not-so-heart-healthy road food at local joints. Pack some hiking shoes and plenty of batteries for the camera and an atlas. I love having no agenda other than discovering what there is to see. (And a word to the wise: loosen up. If there's something kitschy and touristy, homespun and podunk, stop by! Some of the best restaurants, funniest vacation memories and nicest people I've met have been at roadside dives and tourist traps. This is America, schlock and awe!)

Some people can give you the Top 5 concerts they've ever attended or the Top 5 Meals they've ever eaten (OK, I admit I can probably muster up those lists for you, too) but I can definitely rattle off the best road trips I've ever taken. (And though I enjoyed it thoroughly, due almost entirely to the stellar co-pilot and diversionary day in Savannah, Georgia, my round-trip excursion on I-95 from New York to Florida and back during the 1998 Christmas season will not be included because that, my friends, is the schlep from hell. Yes, I did stop at South Of The Border. Well, how can you not? I love me my Americana and kitsch.)

So, what made my list?


PCH / US-1
My first trip out to California was planned entirely around the iconic drive. Los Angeles to San Francisco, hitting everything in between. Yes, it's completely predictable and on everyone's best-ever road trip list but it must be experienced firsthand.



2001 SOUTHWEST ADVENTURE - UTAH & ARIZONA
Rented a convertible sportcar in Vegas and headed out for two weeks, making a full circle: Vegas to Zion, to Grand Canyon's North Rim, to Bryce, to Capitol Reef, to Arches, to Moab, to Canyonlands, to Monument Valley, to Petrified Forest and Painted Desert, to Flagstaff, along Route 66 (I stood on a corner in Winslow, Arizona!) and finally to the Grand Canyon's South Rim, Hoover Dam and back to Vegas. It was a lifelong dream. And it was life-changing. I've never felt more at home anywhere on earth than when I was in that landscape.


SEDONA
First time I visited Sedona, I drove north from Phoenix on I-17, intentionally overshooting Sedona so I could U-turn in Flagstaff and drive south down 89A through Oak Creek Canyon and first see Sedona from the most iconic vistas. Sedona is my happy place, the most beautiful place I've ever been. (The only thing more fulfilling and energizing to me than driving in the red rocks of Sedona is hiking them.)


YELLOWSTONE/GRAND TETON
We spent two full days in Yellowstone, driving through the park, exploring every corner, spotting bison and coyotes and elk and bighorn sheep. We saw geysers and mudpots and hot springs and canyons. It's everything they promise it will be. Once I caught a glimpse of the Grand Teton range, I was a believer. I encountered moose - up close - and I'll never be the same. I was in awe of the mountains. The sky, the clouds, the light... I really don't have words. I was sure leaving the grandeur would be behind us but we drove 89A south from Jackson Hole to the Utah border. It was idyllic. A two-laned road at the bottom of a narrow canyon, along a meandering river under a canopy of late fall foliage. Thomas Kincaid's manufactured beautiful can bite me.

Even my smaller trips were great fun.
- Las Vegas to Los Angeles, with a must-see stop for lunch at The Mad Greek.
- A birthday run out to Lobster Roll on Montauk Highway in Napeague.
- A Girls' Weekend in Washington, D.C. not so conveniently timed to coincide with invasion by millions of Boy Scouts on National Jamboree.
- Trying to outrun a monster blizzard by driving south, fast, from Montreal. We did not win.
- Cruising 80 m.p.h to make the reverential visit to James Dean's gravesite in Fairmont, Indiana.
- Spur-of-the-moment adventure landing us in Lambertsville, New Jersey experiencing their annual 'Shadfest' celebration.
- Winding through the mountains for lunch up at the Sundance Institute.
- Even four hours of torrential rain and thunderstorms driving between Nashville and Memphis with nothing on the radio but country music was metaphorically wiping a slate clean.

I could go on and on... because even the crappiest roads (the Jersey Turnpike or Route 17 or the 405) can make the best road trips if you're with the right company. Never underestimate the treasure a truly great co-pilot can be. To me, time spent driving IS part of the fun. The journey IS the destination.

So now, living in New York City, I'm prone to feeling fidgety and claustrophobic. I suffer from perpetual wanderlust, always jonesing for the next road trip (I think "Wanderlust Jones" would be an awesome alias.) If money weren't an option, I'd be renting a car each weekend and getting out of town with no plan. Just to escape city life. I'm constantly planning road trips, either in my mind or by getting lost on the internet and Google Maps. I know where my next mini-road trip will take me. This weekend I'm East End bound, headed to Long Island's North Fork for a Girls' Day Out. No plan. No schedule. No worries. (And no chance I'll be driving 'cause I still don't have a car. But you know who might? My best friend from high school who finally learned to drive. Truth is, a Honda filled with two kids beats a showy Italian ego-mobile hands down.)

Still, I don't know where my next grand road trip will take me (though the words "Yosemite" and "Skyline Drive" keep returning to my Google Searches. Then again, so does "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.") Truth be told, I don't really care where I go. Life is a highway, and not a lost one. I'll always choose to take the scenic route.

"To have never taken a solitary road trip across country?
I mean everybody's got to take a road trip, at least once in their lives.
Just you and some music." - Elizabethtown