The Road To Nowhere

There are those who distinguish our waking life from our sleeping life. This past week, we became aware of the difference between our real life and our vacation life. This distinction was never more apparent than the hours that we spent trapped in a car, hurtling down the highways of California. Something about having enforced scenery makes looking out the same windshield a bonding experience. "Look at that!" someone screams, and suddenly we all focus port or starboard, whichever direction the call came from. Of course, when you're moving at an average speed of sixty miles an hour, there is a lot of discussion about just what we were supposed to see, since whatever it was is now miles behind.
A lot of conversations take place over a seven day trip. They tend to happen in fits and spurts, generated out of boredom, and interrupted by food and comfort stops. Somehow sitting in front of a moving landscape rather than a television tends to inspire communication. My wife began a riff on Saturday about California being the land of many vistas that didn't conclude until this Friday when we pulled back into our driveway. In between there was a series of recollections, both near and far, primarily about other trips we had taken together and apart.
Mostly what I observed this trip was how different time feels when you're on the road. Mile one feels like moving into a high wind, whereas the last few miles feel like rolling downhill. At some point in the middle, time stands still. Those are the perfect vacation moments. I heard the quote "hopelessly lost, but making good time" first attributed to David Letterman, while others insist that it was Meriwether Clark of Lewis and Clark fame who first made this observation. Rather than spending more hours divining the author of this pithy bit of road lore, I will offer up my own mother's best musing on the subject. A veteran of dozens of station wagon vacations, she told me once, "Sometimes lost isn't a bad thing." Mother knows best.