Driving to the Finish Line
Some people hate driving. They find it boring and tedious. During college, some people were always up for a good road trip. Others thought of driving back and forth home was one step up from the lot in life they would have to suffer as a bus driver if they didn’t finish college. My brother-in-law was a naval aviator. Every one of us takes pride in his service and admires his profession. Few people think of pilots as bus drivers and few people think of flying as boring and tedious. And yet, driving is driving. Whether you are controlling a mechanical contraption through the air, space, water or on land, it’s pretty much all the same except for the details.
I have always loved driving. I don’t fly and I don’t really know boats, but I do love to drive. Whether on two wheels or four, I find driving to be simultaneously calming and exciting. I was the guy who always yelled “Road Trip” first. When my wife needs to go cross-country to get her mutt to our San Diego house, I’m always up to make the run. I do the 3,000 in 2.5 days. New York to St. Louis in 15, St. Louis to Albuquerque in 14, and Albuquerque to San Diego in 8. Easy peasy. I can listen to books on tape one after another. My mind soars when I’m on the road.
As I head into my retirement years, I wonder about what I will do with my time. I know I like riding motorcycles, watching movies and writing stories. But I’ve done a lot of that already and I know that I can do all of those almost as much as I care to while gainfully employed. Rarely does thinking about doing more of those three activities make me want to call it quits and finally declare myself as retired.
What I can’t really do to my hearts content and still stay on the job is drive. I’m talking about free-form touring. Hitting the road and wandering where I want to wander. I don’t need or even want to do it alone. I want to do it with my wife and I’ll even concede the constraints to do it with her dog. But I don’t think I can do it sufficiently if I have a job weighing on my brain. I suppose that means I want to be really free of all bonds. I’ve travelled a lot all through my life, but I still have that wanderlust thing going on in my mind.
I think it must be primordial. Whenever I can’t explain something (like men’s irrational sex drive), I always default to thinking it must be primordial. The hard wiring of the cerebral cortex is a great fascination to me. I’ve read enough pre-history to know that some people are settlers and some people aren’t happy unless they keep moving. I imagine the times of the tribes when there was certainly enough land and space for everyone to stay close and still have all the resources they could handle. I ask myself what would compel a man to go further than he must? I conclude that there are just some men who need to keep moving, sometimes to explore and sometimes just to see unseen places.
I guess I’m less a settler than an explorer. I’m not sure that makes me any braver than others, but it probably makes me more curious than most. Curiosity is a wondrous and dangerous thing. It can drive humankind forward, taking it to great heights. It can drive a man to go places no man should go. Knowing the difference is what keeps us safe. I feel I know the boundaries of good sense, to a point. Good sense would probably keep me at home, so I guess it must be only a little bit of good sense.
If I stop and think about it it never makes much sense. I have a lovely home that is very comfortable. I can do what I want, when I want. Why in the world do I need to travel? I’m rarely as comfortable when I travel as I am when I’m home. When I take a driving trip that is particularly so. The car is pretty nice, but it would be hard to claim that a long drive isn’t tiring. And road motels are rarely as luxurious as resort hotels, which are simply not as nice as my own bed, my own kitchen, or my own TV. It doesn’t compute other than to understand that we are primordial compelled to wander around and check everything out all the time.
It’s worth asking where I think I’m heading and for how long do I need to head there? I revert to my brother-in-law, the pilot. He is a dozen years my senior and I would venture to say that he has the same ants in his pants that I have. He too likes driving cross-country (albeit at a more leisurely pace, which probably has more to do with his origins from the swamps of Georgia than his age). He has enjoyed motorcycle touring until his shoulder has failed him. What I see is that the extra dozen years has not doused the flame within. He would still rather be out on the road than sitting comfortably at home.
I am on the brink. I spend three times as much time thinking about getting out on the road and heading somewhere (the Pacific Northwest, the Maritime Provinces, down the Mississippi, etc.) than I do worrying about not having something that needs doing on any given day. That tells me that I am almost ready to retire. People think it’s about being tired. It’s not. I have more tolerance for the work and even the nonsense associated with it than I ever had. It’s about the wanderlust.
I suspect the Aborigines, who made it from Africa, across the Fertile Crescent, through the Asian steppes, down through The Indian subcontinent, across the land bridges of Sumatra and Borneo to the land down under, had it right. When the world gets too small or you are at the end of it, you may need a regular sabbatical. They call it walkabout.
That may be what I need, but at my stage of life, one good walkabout takes you out of the game for good. That’s fine. I’m ready. I’m prepared to drive to the finish line.