bironic: Neil Perry gazing out a window at night (lost highway)
[personal profile] bironic
18. Middle School

My best friend A.'s family invited me to go up to the KOA campground in Kingston, NY with them for a weekend in their motorhome. We drove up on a Friday night. I can't have been in the front passenger seat, but I had a clear view out the front windshield. At one point we were passing through a particularly heavily-wooded area with no street lights, oncoming traffic, buildings or other signs of habitation, and when I looked, all you could see was the vehicle's headlights disappearing into complete blackness.


(I'm sure this would be nothing special for the country bumpkins among you, and I'd been in cars and a motorhome driving at night in uninhabited places before that camping trip. But for some reason, that night in particular stands out in my memory.)

WTF

Date: Jan. 18th, 2007 06:14 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] thewlisian-afer.livejournal.com
One of the things I liked best about the yearly trips to Florida that I mentioned some time last week was night driving. My mother would fall asleep and Daddy had to stay awake so I'd talk to him and ask all kinds of questions about things I wanted to learn. He always had an answer, even if it was an, "I think, but I don't know for sure..." Since we were doing highway driving there wasn't a lot of scenery to look at. It was fairly dark anyway, but the lights from the other cars made it hard to look at the stars. So I'd sit in the middle of the back seat and watch the red rear lights of the cars in front of us and the white headlights of the cars going the other direction. Sometimes I'd screw up my eyes so it went all fuzzy and they were just lines blurred lights as far as I could see.

Date: Jan. 18th, 2007 06:37 pm (UTC)
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From: [identity profile] bironic.livejournal.com
Narrator: Even then, Amanda was a night owl.

That sounds sweet. It must have been nice not only to be talking with your dad like that but to be doing it when the other passengers were asleep. Like it was sort of a magical time.

You've reminded me -- the epitome of nighttime driving when I was a kid was coming back on the parkway from our grandparents' house, lying back and closing my eyes but still being able to see the orange flashes of the streetlamps and listening to the rhythm of the pavement seams. Like Robert Redford in Sneakers, if you've seen that, only without the being-tied-up-in-a-trunk part.

Date: Jan. 18th, 2007 07:05 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] elynittria.livejournal.com
Hmm...night driving isn't jogging any memories for me. However, the most nerve-wracking childhood drive that I remember took place in Virginia, on the Skyline Drive. Our entire family was heading to a lodge there for a few days of vacation in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Unfortunately, Hurricane Agnes was bearing down on the area at the same time. The weather was horrendous: pouring rain and thick fog. Not the greatest conditions for a narrow, winding road with steep drop-offs! We were lucky enough to make it to our lodge before the road was closed due to the bad weather.

Needless to say, we didn't get a chance to do any of the nifty outdoors stuff that the lodge offered, like horseback riding. You couldn't even see any scenic woods from the huge picture windows in the lodge's restaurant: all that was visible was a wall of white fog.

Date: Jan. 18th, 2007 06:46 pm (UTC)
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From: [identity profile] bironic.livejournal.com
Gah. Scary. The most terrified I've been in a car was going down switchbacks in the southwest in a 28-foot (I think) motorhome with my dad driving, and he's never been known for his moderate speed. I wasn't sure whether it was worse to look out the window at the drop or to screw my eyes shut and leave it up to fate. Heh.

Well, there was also the time I was with my boyfriend and he was speeding along this bridge from Manhattan in a narrow lane along the right edge, separated from the main lanes, which I wasn't even sure was meant for cars (it was), clutching the sides of the seat and being convinced we were about to go flying off the edge.

Disappointing about not being able to do and see what you wanted to in Virginia. Were you ever able to go back when the weather was better? When I visited Kilauea in Hawaii a few years ago, the mountain was all fogged in so you could see down into the crater from the top or up into the lava hills from the shore, like what you've described when you looked out of the lodge's windows. And Hawaii is not a place to which I can easily return!

Yes, let me reply to your comment with three stories about ME. :)

Date: Jan. 19th, 2007 12:13 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] daasgrrl.livejournal.com
The night driving really didn't prompt anything for me either, but the talk of switchbacks reminds me of one road in NSW which was just one switchback after another, on and on and on. I think it went on for an hour or so, and by the time we emerged from them all I was literally dizzy. I wasn't driving, but I still refused to go back the same way, as I wasn't convinced that it didn't have some impact on co-ordination - if not his, then other people's.

Date: Jan. 19th, 2007 12:30 am (UTC)
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From: [identity profile] bironic.livejournal.com
I was going to ask whether it was the dizziness or the drop that got to you, but then it occurred to me that the dizziness would be worrisome because of the drop, so really they're inseparable.

...Glad we settled that, then.

Switchbacks are not my friends. A good percentage of the dreams I've had about being in cars have involved malfunctioning brakes and big drops.

Date: Jan. 19th, 2007 12:50 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] daasgrrl.livejournal.com
...Glad we settled that, then.

LOL. Yes. Me too ;)

*shudders at your dreams*

The most scared I've been is actually in buses/coaches (particularly double decker buses) taking curve after curve next to yawning drops with wholly inadequate guard rails. I mean, two or three feet of concrete isn't going to mean a thing to a bus. IMO XD

Date: Jan. 19th, 2007 12:55 am (UTC)
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From: [identity profile] bironic.livejournal.com
Oh dear. It sounds even worse to be in a careening vehicle with someone you don't know (and who doesn't know [or care about] you and the other passengers) behind the wheel. And when you're on the second deck, you really feel the swing.

Date: Jan. 19th, 2007 12:26 am (UTC)
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From: [identity profile] bironic.livejournal.com
Er, to clarify -- I was the one doing the clutching and being-convinced, and that should say couldn't see down into the crater. *shakes head*

Date: Jan. 19th, 2007 01:59 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] elynittria.livejournal.com
Ah, yes, switchbacks and large vehicles. Definitely not a good combination. And I'm not fond of driving over bridges even if I'm firmly in a middle lane. (My car doesn't have electric windows because I'm very paranoid about ending up in the water and not being able to escape. I think I saw the movie Stuntman way too many times.)

As for the Blue Ridge Mountains, we never did get back to them as a family unit. However, I went to grad school at UVa, which was a stone's throw away from the Skyline Drive. I took the opportunity to go hiking there as often as I could.

Date: Jan. 18th, 2007 01:29 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] crazypalefreak.livejournal.com
One summer I went to stay with my family in Crete. Half the holiday was spent in the small village where my uncle grew up. One night, my aunt was driving us through the village towards a cafe in the town. All of a sudden she just stopped the car, turned it off so that we were in complete darkness and screamed blue murder. My cousins and I all screamed too, of course. And then my aunt was roaring with laughter. She just did it to frighten us. And then we sat there in the dark for a while and listened to a farmer herding about 50 sheep down the road.

Date: Jan. 18th, 2007 06:47 pm (UTC)
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From: [identity profile] bironic.livejournal.com
LOL. What would possess her to do something like that? Was she just a crazy eccentric woman like that?

Date: Jan. 20th, 2007 12:14 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] crazypalefreak.livejournal.com
Yeah, she's just really silly. She's great fun though, if a tad unreliable. LOL.

Date: Jan. 18th, 2007 06:23 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] stephantom.livejournal.com
I remember once driving home from somewhere - my grandmother's I think, and my family had to drive a mini-van back then - 7 people, 7 seats. Although, there might have only been 6 then. I can't remember if my brother had been born. But at one point, one ore more of my sisters used a hairbrush as a microphone to lipsync to the radio, and we all got kidn of into it and laughed a lot. And then it got dark and I rested my head on one of my sister's shoulders, and she rested her head on top of mine, and we said that we were like the two-headed monster on Sesame Street. Pretty sure we both fell asleep.

Date: Jan. 18th, 2007 06:50 pm (UTC)
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From: [identity profile] bironic.livejournal.com
Big family, huh? That's a really sweet image. I'm sure it didn't make up for all the times everyone fought with each other, but still.

Date: Jan. 18th, 2007 07:03 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] stephantom.livejournal.com
Heh, yeah there were some big fights. Most of the time it was either between me and my brother, or between my older sisters (who were all close in age, whereas I was 5-7 years younger than all of them (and 5 years older than my brother). For a little while I had constant fights with one of my older sisters, but actually she's the sister I've always been closest to (and the one whose shoulder I was reading on in that memory). Shrug. I liked having a big family though. It's weird now that everyone but my mom and brother has moved out.

Date: Jan. 18th, 2007 07:04 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] stephantom.livejournal.com
Erm. "reading" should be "resting" or possibly "leaing."

Date: Jan. 18th, 2007 07:05 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] stephantom.livejournal.com
.... LEANING. My god, why can't I type.

Date: Jan. 18th, 2007 09:55 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kabal42.livejournal.com
As a child, I used to lean back on my seat and tip my head back or to the side so I was leaning and could look out the window. Then I'd let my eyes relax and unfocus and watch the lights slide by in the dark. It looked so pretty. It made the time pass as I entered an almost trance-like state.

Date: Jan. 19th, 2007 02:23 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] catilinarian.livejournal.com
You've suddenly made me remember looking out the car window at a field a few miles outside Princeton while my parents drove us home. The sky was that deep, dusky blue that's almost black, and the moon must have been full or very near, because I remember spending the entire trip staring at the outline of my face reflected in the window, impossibly pale and superimposed over the moonlit field beyond.

Date: Jan. 19th, 2007 03:33 am (UTC)
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From: [identity profile] bironic.livejournal.com
Mm, pretty. I love how these simple recollections become so lyrical in the telling.

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