Driving home

Joanna Derks
Aug 22, 2017 · 8 min read

He switched off the music player. The road and the driving were quite monotonous — after all it’s one of the desired characteristics of a highway that there is not much happening on it in terms of surprises - but he had heard enough music in the last few hours, and would love to enjoy the silence for a while.

If only the car was one allowing for that. He resisted the urge to check whether the windows were closed properly — sure they were, but there is not really a connection between that and the car being quiet. With the bare bones base model his additional equipment of choice was the several hundred bucks left in his account. And now he was getting to know what paying — or in his case, not paying — for silence really meant.

There was only one bigger town ahead before his destination, so hopefully until then he could keep on driving on his personal autopilot, half hibernated, half remembering that the last time he smelled coffee was many many miles before.

Being able to close the eyes seemed like a rare privilege saved only for those who were lucky enough to live in one of those less-than-a-hundred-inhabitant-villages he was passing by. Where the envelopes with the odd postal delivery had to have a hand-written part of ‘a red house behind that old big tree’ or ‘at the top of the little hill’ or otherwise they would be lost forever. Now he finally would have known what to answer to a standard school question in his classes: `What are the advantages of living in the countryside`.

His whole body was feeling the road moving forward underneath and was probably going to still feel it for a good few hours once he got out of the car. So closing the eyes would not actually change much — replacing the passing landscape with the recalled image of the passing landscape.

Thankfully it was still rather quiet on the road and so he could lay back — as far as anyone in the driving seat can ever lay back — and let one of his hands rest against the door, making only the slightest adjustments with the other hand on the wheel.

There was something going on at the horizon of the ever moving asphalt ribbon of grey. A group of people surrounded a car, hardly fitting between the roadside line and the railing. They dutifully opened the hood and kept staring at the insides, exchanging worrisome looks and occasionally pointing fingers to some strange and completely foreign elements of the car. Frantically trying to remember what the guy was telling them several months back at the garage about some … things needing replaced.

He could almost hear the words, which never thought would leave the mouth of any of those people, causing a weird and uncommon sensation on the unexpecting tongue: like a timing belt or the bottom swing frame pin. They were throwing them at one another as if playing a game of ping-pong, soaking in the sound of the unfamiliar sounds they had no image to attach to, finding a deep kind of a weird pride in listing the most things that could ever break down in a car.

Just call the bloody assistance people, really.

It was a good hour ago that the sunglasses have given up their prime position on the nose to join the rest of the clutter in the glove compartment, where they were going to spend the rest of the journey, and likely the rest of the night along with some receipts, a few mismatched candies and unwanted gift vouchers from the last pit stop. Or even longer since rain was forecast. The life of sunglasses is really not all that sunny as one could imagine.

The time of day was approaching when after having lunch — contrary to the popular belief — you don’t get an energy boost but experience a sudden and kinda overwhelming energy surge instead. The time when you could have done with an upgrade to your attention span or even more urgently with some extended patience. Exactly that was the time of day when the road was getting busier, exposing people to more and more so called Sunday drivers. People who once in a week or once in a month go down into their private car park, blow the dust off the car with one precisely directed lungful of air, get in and drive happily onto the nearest highway, keeping the gas pedal at — hell yeah — no less than 45 miles per hour.

And exactly at that time of day, the regular driver has to be twice as vigilant since their combat is no longer only against standard sleepiness and strain, but includes also finding out the boundaries of one’s patience and good will. As many a life coach would state — that’s the perfect conditions for experiencing the true self and building the understanding of the fellow drivers through empathy. The best way of finding oneself in this hectic and chaotic world, a way of slowing down and just enjoying the ride.

Well, there’s just no way around slowing down, that’s true. The rest of the advice is what’s paying for the couch the coach is enjoying himself on while their clients are conveniently slowing down and extending the frequency of the sessions to twice a week. To find themselves. At least to find themselves in the office of the live coach twice a week if nothing else.

The sky had been getting more and more cloudy for the last few hours, but it had still been possible that the rain would only come later at night. Now it no longer was. The first little drops of rain landed on the windshield. They were well exposed in the orange-ish light of the street lamps scattered alongside the merge lane that was leading out of the gas station where he was refilling his car and taking a short break.

As much as he didn’t usually care about the wonders of nature, this time of the twilight between the day and the dusk has always been his favourite. The time when the sky is more blue than during the day and the blueness seems emphasised by the warm orange artificial light, making the edges of things and creatures sharper, the last time before making them go more and more blurry within the next minutes.

With the merge lane ending several meters away, he hit the gas pedal harder seeing that there is a gap before the next wave of vehicles.

The stop has taken longer than expected. Why would multiple completely independent people, who possess their own independent minds, leave their cars next to the distributor and go enjoy a meal consisting of an appetizer, two main courses and a dessert, leaving you waiting in line right behind their car. Why would they choose to do that on a busy gas station, right at the time when everybody from literally all over the place decided to choose exactly this place to refill their cars with gas.

To notice the positive on the situation as the aforementioned life coaches are teaching away these days, at least the little red car that looked like it was built to go fast but their owner was never told, got blocked at another distributor for far longer than he was. That meant a relaxing journey ahead. He even cut down his shopping to make sure he was going to leave the station first.

This red monstrosity of a car kept going at exactly the speed limit minus five miles ever since it joined the traffic. If only the little bastard didn’t speed up just that little bit every time it saw him moving closer in an attempt of taking over. If it wasn’t for the gas station, resisting the temptation of shoving the annoying little thing just that little bit off the road might have proven to be too hard a task to master for an ordinary, flawed by nature, human.

Red cars — red sports cars foremost — should really get reserved for people who know how to drive. Five years of proven driving experience, including at least one speeding ticket a year, that would do it. Red cars are kind of expected to go fast. It shouldn’t be possible to follow a red car all the way on the journey, unless you are another red car. To any other color, the red car should be less than a flicker seen from the corner of the eye, barely allowing to move the right hand up, start opening your mouth to utter an amazed ‘ooooh’, close the fist to move the index finger forward and point to the beauty at the last moment before it disappears on the horizon.

In case of this red car, the gestures would have to be carried out in a turtle-snail kind of slow motion, and for the car to disappear on the horizon at all, the landscape would have to probably be rolling hills of extreme level difference.

The rain kept pounding on the windshield, now heavier than even a moment ago. The road ahead was shining in the darkening twilight. Its wet and uncommonly clear surface was reflecting the now white now red lights of the cars passing by on the left lane, keeping a quite steady rhythm now that they were approaching the city borders. White, red, dark. White, red, dark. All those cars speeding away, jumping ahead to reach their destination before the twilight goes black and then starts turning into dawn.

The red stop lights of the cars in front of them were making the drivers in the next cars squint, almost hoping they still had their sunglasses handy on the passenger seat.

As the wipers continued their slow to medium paced dance across the windshield you could learn to be grateful for the constant light coming from the cars in front of you. It’s as if you had a mobile streetlight driving around showing you the way. Even if it hurt the eyes a little bit, who wouldn’t want to have street lamps all the way alongside the highway?

It’s the only way you can make it through the long evening on the road, having a little respite from the previous time of an hour or more peeking into the darkness, hoping that ahead of you there is still road where you would expect it to be.

The higher density building seemed to be announcing the beginnings of a serious part of the landscape, which still only aspired to be a big city, but was doing it in a great style.

He looked at the clock, now well visible on the dashboard in the relative darkness of the car interior. Good time, after all. He always compared the current time to the previous three, so that he didn’t slip into the trap of slowly allowing himself to slow down too much.

He silently awarded himself a pat on the back for getting back to the top of the charts.

Only minutes now were separating the stream of vehicles from reaching their destination.

Taking the next exit, joining into the far less predictable but slower and more sleepy city traffic, driving across the town to the district furthest away or pulling into the next driveway.

Patiently waiting for the lights to change or speeding through the darkest orange of the traffic lights you have ever seen. The layer of raindrops on the street making them sound as if a whole army of cars were passing through, magnifying each wheel turn to an artistic road performance.

Some taking advantage of the bus lane, being anything but busses, some ignoring the street signs directing them through a narrow tunnel instead of taking the main road straight across reserved for privileged vehicles only.

It’s Sunday, it’s dark and it’s raining.

But he is finally home.

)
Joanna Derks

Written by

Developer. A friend of black and white keys, Yamaha guitars, strange writing and language quirks.

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