Planes, trains, automobiles - and boats. Each mode of transport has its merits, and its own unique character. After driving just shy of 6,000 miles, the Great American Road Trip - or its counterparts, the Great Canadian Road Trip and Great European Road Trip - is something every Road Warrioress really needs to experience at least once in her life.
I have a friend who hates to drive. Oh, yes, she's perfectly capable, licensed, clean driving record, and all that. She just hates doing it! Won't even drive to the supermarket, but has hubby take her instead. Long-distance road trips - at least one US and one European annually - she meticulously plans, maps, organizes. And hubby does all the driving. Obviously, she's not a Road Warrioress, despite being a very avid traveler. Guess it's a good thing opposites attract since hubby is decidedly a Road Warrior who loves to drive, even winding little one-laners along Italy's plunging coastlines.
My friend's perspective is totally lost on me. Just don't get it. More akin to her husband (except for driving on the "wrong" side of the road, which he handles with aplomb), I love to get in the car and go.
Doesn't much matter where. I've been known to take a left turn on the freeway - abrupt decision, no accident - and end up hundreds of miles from the originally intended destination. Or decide "I just want to get out of here" at the Laundromat Saturday morning, then pack laundry and kitties and take off, arriving home just in time to get back to work Monday morning. I simply love to drive. Love going places. Even when I don't know where I'm going, but just "follow my nose" to see what there is to see.
Love to fly. Love boats, even for a speedy trip on a lake or Long Island Sound. Love trains - one of my greatest adventures was riding the rails through China for a few months.
But driving a car is a completely different experience. Answering to no one, adjusting my route on a whim, stopping whenever I'm hungry or just to shoot a few photographs because something caught my eye. There's nothing like driving across Nebraska at 80 miles an hour, glad you can race past cow-stench, or sorry you had no idea there was such a spectacular bridge to photograph and could find no place to pull over fast enough to capture it.
Definitely, Road Warrioresses, take that road trip!
May your road rise to meet you - wherever you go!
Ann
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