I love to travel. I like nothing better than to get in the car and just go. Even though I get a pinched nerve in my neck that makes one shoulder ache after I’ve been driving for more than an hour, I still love to drive all day. It’s great to get to the destination and do all the fun stuff on the list, but I enjoy the journey.
When I fly, I sit by a window and watch all the landscapes flowing away under the plane, even if the landscape is just clouds. When I drive, I try to take in the scenery while still paying attention to my driving. Even covering the same routes over and over never gets old. Nothing is ever the same. Seasons change, weather changes, even the light changes.
I don’t get to travel as much as I would like. What with gasoline prices being what they are, I have to choose my voyages. Then there’s the fact that my car is nearly twenty years old and has “issues.” I’ve given up on the air conditioner. And as I live in central Texas, you can see where this might tend to limit or discourage me from venturing out for long drives in summer, in the middle of the day, when the sun is out.
If I run the air conditioner, it quickly uses up its supply of coolant, as there is some tiny leak in the system somewhere that the repair shop has not been able to track down short of tearing out the dashboard to expose all the hoses and connections they can’t access from the engine compartment. To compound things, there is also some tiny leak in the engine cooling system, also in an inaccessible location, that lets air in, which locks the thermostat closed and makes the engine overheat. Oh, the joys of owning an old car.
But if I had a decent car, and, while I’m dreaming, a decent income and a lot of vacation time, I would travel first all over Texas — see some places I’ve never seen, and others I haven’t seen in years — then start visiting other states to see their “scenic wonders.” I read a few travel blogs of people who travel the world, and I think it would be great to be able to do that. But first I want to drive all over North America. I would blog about it — really I would. If somebody wants to sponsor me. Like maybe Subaru.
