Dad’s Porsche: Long road trips with a backroad chaser

It is now well-documented here on the blog that our family makes a pastime out of regular, (and very) long road trips. While these typically are not multi-day, transcontinental affairs, that does not lessen the drain, pain, or insanity of them. Our most recent jaunt saw us cross five states in 17.5 hours of total travel (including bathroom and charging stops).

Having written a multi-part saga on our first road trip with our Rivian R1T, I will recap in brief here to say: it remains an exceptional choice for these long sojourns. Between driver aids, comfortable seats, decent passenger cabin volume, and loads of useful storage, it is as enjoyable a place to be for an entire day as any other vehicle I can imagine.

It also is still completely exhausting to drive so many miles in so short a time. And this holds for passengers as well as the drivers. Both our children, stalwarts of the road though they are, at some point “had enough.” Maybe it was boredom. Maybe it was the claustrophobia of the backseat. Maybe it was waking up at 5am to set off home. At some point, time and mileage come for us all. We could stave them off with Annie’s Bunny Gummies and endless Bluey for only so long.

It was around then that they passed out in the waning hours of the day as we entered our home state and passed the final few hours of the 3/4 of the day that we spent in motion in panicked terror hoping not to kill a deer (or ourselves) in the darkened, windy roads that led to our hometown. Evidently for our oldest, these harrowing moments passed in seconds. All he recalled was seeing a beautiful sunset over a lake, and then us waking him up in our driveway. Ah, to be young again.

The next day, as my passengers awoke at home delighted to have at least completed a night in their own beds for the first time in a week I found myself utterly depleted. I love long road trips. I always feel it is analogically the closest that I will ever get to the thrill of automotive endurance racing. What I forget in this romanticization is that when the excitement of the race or the road trip is over, life still goes on. There was a cost to be paid, and that bill comes due the next day.

So how did I decide ultimately to spend my rest and recovery day? First, I collapsed hard after lunch and took a nap. Then, I woke up and went for a drive in the 911.

I know, it sounds completely insane. You were in a car for almost 18 hours and so you chose to get in a car again?! But let me try and rationalize or connect this back to something more accessible.

Driving a long road trip is fundamentally a different activity from taking a sports car out for a Sunday drive. Imagine that you’ve just finished a multi-day, hundreds of miles hiking excursion. The last thing you want to do is get back outside and walk, right? Well, if it’s a nice day, and you happen to be in some beautiful countryside, maybe you do want to go for a stroll. It’s not the same.

Or say you’ve just finished reading and studying for your college exams. The last thing you want to do is see a book any time soon, right? Well, maybe you finally have the chance to read something for yourself.

For me, getting into the 911 was a necessary part of the carthasis that whets the appetite for the next road trip. It’s a reminder of why I love automobiles, and why I love the experience of driving. Because it is a machine built exclusively for driving. Being able to bomb it down a backroad without sleeping children in the back (or deer on the borders), was a healing time.

Best of all: it was only 30 minutes. A sunny, glorious half-hour escape.