Before I Got Too Old

My car was a little maroon ’91 Toyota Camry named Sally. My parents inherited it from my grandpa when he died, and it really was the car that had only been used for trips to the grocery store down the street; it only had 9,000 miles on it when it was given to me to use in 1995 or so. I put quite a few miles on it in high school, driving back and forth from Denver to Lakewood, but the real mileage came when I decided mid-Freshman-year that I really wanted the car in Tacoma, where I was going to college.

That first trip from Colorado to Washington I took with Kelly, who had come home with me for winter break. A guy who lived down the hall from us in the dorms was also going to be in Colorado over the break and offered to help us drive back. He was up in the mountains skiing and proposed a route where we’d pick him up and head off using the overpass. My parents were nervous and everyone had a long and loud freakout session the night before we were to leave, involving maps and yelling about dangerous terrain and annoyed phone calls back and forth. He ended up coming to town, where we picked him up and finally started the drive.

At gas stops, he would say, “I’m going for a little walk,” and come back all red-eyed and bleary. Kelly and I were doing most of the driving, and thought it was funny that he was trying to pull one over on us. We told him we didn’t care if he smoked and he nodded and seemed cool with it. But at the next stop, he’d make the same lame excuse about going for a walk. It got to be a joke between me and Kelly. We were supposed to stop for the night, but we ended up driving straight through, the first of many times I’d end up doing the whole 20-24 hours in one go.

One trip back to Denver was with a boyfriend who lived in Boulder. Usually this was the pattern with these trips: the driver picks the music, the passenger keeps the driver awake when needed or catches some sleep when needed. But the boyfriend couldn’t sleep with the music on and I couldn’t drive without the music on. He was a bit on an insomniac and refused to stop at a hotel, where he knew he’d be equally unable to sleep. When we’d switch, he was too tired to drive. He bought a bunch of caffeine pills at a rest stop and took them, but they ended up killing his stomach. He had to drink a ton of water, and we then had to stop every half hour for him to use the bathroom. As we drove through Boulder (finally, at last), Soul Coughing was on the stereo. I love Mike Doughty, but his voice at that moment was too much for my sleep-deprived, very cranky self. I always associate Soul Coughing with that trip. J thinks I don’t like Soul Coughing, but it’s not true. I just have a bad association.

When Willow started school in Oregon, I began taking trips with her. These were probably some of the best trips. She didn’t care about stopping and loved the open road; we once stretched the trip out over three days. Driving hurt her back, so she had a little pillow she always kept around for those trips. With Willow, we would stop for meals, and make games about getting to the next oddly-named town. We would get out for pictures next to the “Welcome to Bliss!” sign. She put my fish that died on the way home in a birdbath at a truck stop. We once took a detour through windy roads and a lava field in Oregon. She liked to queue up Built to Spill’s “Twin Falls, Idaho” as we crossed into the titular city. We liked to try to eat potatoes in Idaho, too.

One autumn, Heather, JD, and I all drove to the west coast together in two cars. Their’s didn’t have air conditioning, so their cat, Thumbles (extra thumbs), rode in my car. It seemed only fair to switch it up, so we rotated at pit stops and talked to each other with walkie talkies that only worked intermittently. Sometimes it was me and Heather and the cat driving in air conditioning. One rotation, it was me driving their car, watching them in front of me; a little family contained in my Camry, with me on the outside.

I didn’t usually drive home in the winter, but one year Kelly and I decided to do it. We took her Explorer named George. I drove a little, but when I skidded on some ice and freaked out, she took over and drove almost the whole trip. It was slow going with all the snow and ice and we wished we hadn’t drove, after all. We ate cream cheese, avocado, tomato sandwiches on bagels almost exclusively.

My friend Chronic volunteered to help me once, when I didn’t have anyone else to drive with. He got free airline tickets, so would catch a plane back from Tacoma after helping with the drive. He didn’t talk much for the ride, but it was a very nice, comfortable quiet. He preferred to drive and didn’t seem to want to sleep or eat, or even stop very often. He was a driving machine. We got there in record time, in one of the easiest trips I ever made.

Another guy drove back with me later, and he was very talkative, which also made for a nice ride. It felt like we just stayed up late talking, rather than we were using the talking to pass the time. He was going to hitchhike elsewhere after reaching Denver, and he had provisions of Kool-Aid and candy, saying he didn’t like the taste of water.

And only once, I drove all alone into Denver from Boise, after dropping off a friend there. I was anxious about doing this, having only taken the trip with others. But once I got going, it was easy. The time slipped away; I didn’t get sleepy. I changed the CDs around, and sometimes I let the car be silent.

In all these trips, that route became very familiar to me, a place that wasn’t a place that I visited with all kinds of people. Is it funny to get nostalgic for a lone gas station in the middle of a dry expanse of Utah, or for Little America, or for the smell of the onion factory?