Driving 101

I'll bet Gilroy smells good. I'll read your answer tomorrow. I'm off to bed, an early rise tomorrow.
Goodnight.

Easy answer, I have a very diminished sense of smell. I leave that to others.

Driving around the city with stops or driving around California with stops, I understand both viscerally. But what about the rest a' you?

For the past few months, I have just started to hate driving - traffic in this country is so bad, that a drive is more stressful than relaxing.

I prefer to call a cab, and then sit back while someone else does the driving

So, yes, Gautam, what do you see from the cab window? Annoyances, I bet, and guess you're right. Any description to give us of lurching and stopping and sensate aggravation???

I took the family to California a couple of years ago to see S.F. and meet an old college buddy of mine who lives in Dublin.

We stayed in Femont and made several interesting drives. The kids were amazed by the hills -- very few trees and yellow-brown grass (now you know why they call it the Golden State).

My favorite ride was across the Golden Gate Bridge, through Sausalito and up to the Muir Woods. As you get closer to the Muir Woods, the scenery starts looking more like what a New Englander is used to. Then you get to the switchbacks that take up into the hills. The road is just about cut into the side of the hill, so you're always on the edge of a cliff and making a turn. The Lovely Bride (not a big fan of heights) spent most of the drive studying her knees. But the scenery is gorgeous! The Muir Woods is magnificent with all those huge trees creating a cathedral-like atmosphere.

Oh, George, I thought "the Golden State" referred to the banks of Beverly Hills.

i used to live in santa rosa, the rest of my family at the time lived in the salinas/monterey area, that was a nice drive down 101 except when the traffic was bad.

This is a wonderful thread, Osso; I have loved reading the descriptions here.

This is the second time that this description has been lost, so I have had to trim it considerably (it took me about two hours to write the first version ; ) but here goes. I never learnt how to drive; because I never had a traditional teen or student job, I had not enough money to fork out for driving lessons. This means, though, that I usually get the train or get a lift from friends.. and the journeys are usually long.

Expectably, one of the journeys that comes to my mind was the one that I took last Saturday to Sunday, from the house of my ex-friend's father in Birmingham, all the way to San Sebastián, in the Spanish Basques. (From where I got another lift to Santillana del Mar.)

The people with whom I was driving first are people who should be divided, if not by a substantial sea then by continents. They argue about everything;-- at one point, they were even knocking on about dog biscuits, and it seemed like an argument. When one questions them about why they are arguing, they just say 'for the sake of it,' and then shrug it off.'

Yet, nothing could detract me from admiring the landscape, and the odd beauty of closed vineyards and shards of grass sprouting up on either side of the window in their poxy car. The day was hazily warm, and so our disagreeable drivers dropped off every thirty minutes into one aire or another. This meant that we got to meet a lot of interesting characters. I met three unusual people in one of the Aires—the worst of them, which was a filthy toilet situated on some old russet grass— they were Dutch, and were doing something in Perpignan that involved being extreme with irons. I could not quite pick up what this ‘extreme’ thing was because of their French’s unintelligibility, but they seemed interesting nonetheless. Earlier in the day, I shared a bottle of Avignon Blanc with a random, conservative-looking couple, after arguing with them about the greatest French writer; and then I took to the road again. Motorways usually look more interesting, when they aren’t English.

Going through Paris is usually one of the high points. The first time that I properly saw Paris was in a coach at four-am, French time. It was freezing cold, and most people did not even bother to wake up, but I looked at everything. I could see the Résistance or Napoleon’s invented grandeur leap out at me from that uncomfortable window on which I had lain. There seemed to be something regal in the matte colour of the streets and buildings at that hour. This time, we never went through, but we passed under the big runway at Charles-de-Gaulle at a dizzying speed. You got a sense of being somewhere Parisian, but completely un-Parisian, when passing through all the casinos and blue-glass hotels on the route.

One of the parts that I remember most vividly was passing through these Vallées de something. It was about five o’ clock in the morning, my window was down already, and the way that the water shone towards the car made me want to get out. The water turned out to be the ocean. We parked the car on the freckled beach, felt the air jump around like capillaries for an hour, and then returned to the autoroute.

I was expecting a friend of mine, Juan Carlos, to pick me up in San Sebastián, but he arrived with a whole entourage. Since I went to his chalets in Santillana a few years ago, I have become, weirdly, like an honoured guest, whenever I stay. There were about seven of them, waiting in Donostia, in the waitress, Montse’s car—they chose hers because it was the newest— and they delightedly greeted me with shouts of Andrea, or their attempts to say my full name. The road to Santillana is blest with views of the Pyrénées, and other hills and beaches; quite a bit of the autopista is actually on mountains themselves. The wind tossed about, but it was the one day in which it never rained; and Juan Carlos’ little girl, who bore flowers, started singing a silly little Catalan chanson as we counted the kilometres.

Sounds absolutely fabulous, drom-! I love your writing. You make me wish I was travelling as well!

The sucking sound of a2kers being drawn into a driving story...

I am confused though. The couple with the poxy car, when did you lose them, or have you yet?

Yes, wonderful. Thanks.

Thanks, Dev! I only wish that I had had the Internet last week; then I could have written as things happened. You know that you, and nearly all of you on A2K, can come visit/ travel with me any time, with all sincerity. This is the only site on which I would think to offer such a thing.

Hey, Osso: I was left in San Sebastián on Sunday last by the couple, who absurdly were Holidaying together!! It was really lovely in San.S; the old town there, underneath the ashy Monte Urgull with its sea vistas, was fairly quiet, probably due to its being Sunday, but it was nonetheless buzzing. Anyway, they left me there; I got a lift from San Sebastien to Santillana by the owner of the camping/chalet site; then, due to weather, I stayed in and around Cantabria until Thursday. I went from Cantabria to Boulogne on that Thursday, stayed on my own in Boulogne from Friday until Saturday-- and then I travelled by train from Boulogne to Etaples, a lovely little fishing stop, full of Quais by the River... and then, tomorrow, I'm leaving to Paris-- probably. Someone from the far past is asking me to attend his wedding up in Prestatyn, somewhere in Wales, but I will probably turn the offer down, as I dislike weddings; well, I dislike wedding-parties.

Ah, damn, I loved that thread.