I’ll let you in on a dirty little secret. Just this one, though.
I love driving.
That’s right. This car-hater loves the wide open roads, top down, wind blowing back your hair, car commercial driving. Zoom zoom, or whatever that weird kid in the ads says.
Problem is, to truly experience such movie moving images, you have to get off the beaten track, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, far from the madding crowd. Be dedicated to no timetable and prepared to detour at a moment’s notice when other freedom seekers clog up your automobile induced bliss. Who the hell wants to drive 55?
Alas, such fantasy is rarely achievable. Driving, for most of us, most of the time, amounts to little more than a daily slog, nothing more than a utility, a mobility utility. Getting from point A to point B in the least efficient, most expensive way possible. Zoom zoom, my ass.
Trouble begins when we demand the dream promised us in the incessant push of television commercials. Have car, must travel. Must travel fast, top down, wind blowing back my hair. Open the goddamned roads up.
As we’ve discovered, cities suffer in their attempts to cater to that. The car life requires lots of space. Such space devolves into sprawl. Sprawl means distance. Distance needs speed. Without speed, distance simply becomes, well, distance, a time suck.
The road trip, as we’ve come to think of it, dream of it, is an entirely different beast than the work trip or that quick trip around the corner to get some milk. We need to differentiate between the two, and stop building communities and cities around the illusory freedom of the open roads. Such a thing only exists on TV and on the rare occasions we are able to get away from it all, the traffic, the congestion, the HOV restrictions lanes, and truly put the pedal to the medal and fly as God and Madison Avenue intended us to do.
— confessingly submitted by Cityslikr