Spring Break, the teacher’s best friend, will be here in two weeks. Instead of spending my Saturday writing, I’ll be hitting the open road — all 998 miles of it!
Yes, I will again be making the insane drive from Portland, Oregon to Ventura, California, to visit my parents. This time I’ll have Nathan, my middle son, whose college break coincides with mine. We’ll talk, listen to audio books, and when the driving gets tough, pop in a music CD and crank up the volume. Linkin Park and Red work well for this purpose.
The driving instructions are simple: Get on Interstate-5, drive for 16 hours, and take the Ventura exit. After about an hour, if the sun is still up (which it won’t be!) we’ll see the ocean, and we’ll be there.
Aside from the pleasure of Nathan’s company, it will be wonderful to have another driver along. And not just any driver — a competent driver! This was not always the case. How well I recall the time my oldest son came to me with an idea. Michael was at that time the proud possessor of a brand-new driving permit. Knowing what was coming, I braced myself.
“Mom,” he said, with awe in his voice, “I can drive the WHOLE THING. Or even HALF of it. Ten hours each way! That’s twenty hours!”
Oregon requires 100 hours of driving time before a minor can get a license, which is no small feat for a nervous mother. “I can HELP you,” he added, for my benefit.
I do not consider the acquisition of gray hair to be a help. I thought quickly. “But so much of the drive is in California,” I protested. “Your permit won’t work there.”
Ah, but I had reckoned without the power of the Internet.
Sometime later Micheal came running. “For the first ten days of a visit,” he proudly informed me, “California honors out-of-state permits.”
Oh, joy.
You need to know that the flow of traffic along Interstate-5 is, in many places, 75 miles per hour! And our Explorer, a smaller, sporty version, has a manual transmission. Michael’s ability to grind through the gears was, at best, limited.
By the day of our departure I had my excuses ready. At first it was too early. No self-respecting nocturne, such as my son, is awake at 5:30 am! He was content to sleep.
But as soon as the sun arose, Michael’s head came up. “It’s rush-hour,” I told him. “What about commuters driving to Salem? What about stop-and-go traffic? You’ll be stuck having to work the clutch, and I know how much you hate that.”
A couple of hours later he asked again.
“Ah, but we’re almost to Eugene. There could be a slowdown in Eugene.” He took out his book.
And so it went.
“Gee, Michael, you look thirsty. Have another Pepsi.”
“Say! I bought an extra bag of taco chips just for you! Have some taco chips!”
“You know what, these mountain roads are tricky. And have you ever seen so many trucks? You don’t want to mess with changing lanes to get around trucks, do you?”
“Would you look at that! Another car pulled over for speeding. These highway patrol cars are everywhere!”
“Those woods look awfully thick. Do you suppose there are deer here? If you hit a deer, the car will probably be totalled…”
Finally, at a rest stop in the middle of nowhere, he pinned me. The highway was flat, visibility was perfect, and traffic was light. What could go wrong? Plenty of things, I thought, but a promise was a promise. I bravely surrendered the keys.
But I had not counted on the responses of my two younger sons.
Nathan sat with arms crossed, grim-faced and silent, as Michael ground through the gears. Little Ben was not as stoic. Tears streamed down his face. As we neared the end of the on-ramp, with the engine straining, he began to sob.
“We’re going to die!” he wailed. “We’re going to die!”
That did it. Michael finally found fourth gear and merged onto the highway. Through clenched teeth he muttered, “Shut UP!”
He drove for an hour and a half before he surrendered the keys. And for the rest of that week he did not ask for them again.
Ah, the joys of travel.
Sincerely,
Laura Hile
