my_window_seat | (no subject)

Now that was an interesting experience.

I should qualify that by saying that my ideas of fun - are probably very different from other people's.

Or maybe fun isn't the right word -

Anyway, so I decide to go out to a friend's house to watch some TV stuff I'd downloaded (Pssst - Mr. Grant - we've recruited another Browncoat as of tonight, hehehehe....). Probably not one of the smartest things to do, considering the weather and all, but it's early enough in the evening, and they've been scraping and gritting the roads and whatnot. The hardest part of the drive up to Rio Rancho really was getting out of my own driveway, after getting the 12"+ snow swooshed off the car and rocking it back and forth out of the drifts behind it. But all in all, not such a big deal.

Coming home - completely different experience.

Coming home, it's at least an hour or two after the real cold has set in. After the stuff that was wet and slushy a couple hours ago has had time to pack itself into what we in Washington are familiar with as 'black ice'. The stuff that isn't visible on the roadway unless you know what you are looking for. In some spots you can see the difference fairly easy because there's an actual build up of packed snow - that's simple to negotiate. It's the parts of the pavement that appear to be clear of snow but are actually just thinly greased with a light enough layer of moisture that the only thing that tips you off that it's actually ice is the slight sheen.

I know how to drive in this stuff. The most important things are not to drive over-confidently = to keep your speed slow and even. Don't let anyone behind or in front of you dictate your speed - if they're tailgating, find a way to let them get around you. If someone in front of you obviously doesn't know what they're doing, find a way to carefully get around them and give them as much room as possible. You can be the best driver in the world and it won't make a damn bit of difference if some chucklehead plows into you - you're still screwed.

Anyway, coming back, they had closed Paseo so I had to go all the way down Coors to where it hooks up with I-40. Not a big deal, just the long way around. Some pretty slick spots here and there, but very few people on the road. Occasionally, a sinuous streamer of ground level fog scuds along in front of me - just enough to remind me that it's there specifically to keep that road nice and slippery. Yummy.

Where it got interesting was I-40, where it dips into the valley. Because the valley right now is blanketed in a dense layer of fog. Shower-curtain fog. Visibility is about 6 feet, tops. And the roadway is one long, downward slope of tightly compacted snow and ice. The black pavement has disappeared under a solid sheet of grey death.

Still very few cars. Fog is so thick I can't make out the overpass signs until I'm just passing under them. I'm doing 30-40 on a freeway I usually haul ass at 65 or better on. And everything other than the three or feet around the outside of my car that I can actually see might as well not even exist. It's like I've driven off the end of the earth.

I get to wear my exit should be - I think. There's the overpass sign - I signal and get over, and a small clutch of cars, mostly trucks and suburbivans find their way around me, like a heard of behemoths parting around a pilot fish. One vehicle has his hazard lights on as he drives, and I follow his example and punch mine on, too.

I don't ever drive this slow on the freeway, so the exit, a long upward curving branch that swirls into I-25, seems to take forever. I start to wonder if I actually made the exit or just passed it by by mistake; I can't see far enough in any direction to be able to tell exactly where I am. I'm just moving slowly forward, in a gentle curve. I may never stop. This road may just keep going forever. And I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that. It's just a road with solid white banks of crumbled snow, the cotton wool of fog and my car. Going. Going on.

Eventually there's an increase in visibility. I've made it onto I-25 and my exit is just after that. That timeless space is behind me. I'm almost home.

And I make it home. And here I am.

And I'm remembering what I used to do when I was a kid, when I first discovered how easy it was to sneak out of the apartment at night, after my mother had gone to sleep, those nights she was actually home.

I remember that I didn't get out to hook up with friends. I didn't have a lot of friends back then, and none quite as wild as I was.

I would go out and just wander the streets. Silent and completely deserted. Suburban streets where nothing moved except the reflections of the traffic signals on wet pavement, changing on their timers, signaling ghost drivers.

I would walk and walk for miles. I don't remember what I thought about. I think sometimes I made up imaginary friends; half-people who were as out of place in that landscape as I was. Sometimes I would 'steal' a neighbor's bike and ride that. I even went so far as to grease up the chain and make sure that it was in better condition than when I found it. It was like paying a toll for the journey.

And when my mom decided to move us to Puyallup - where the streets didn't feel right for walking somehow - and after I'd learned how to drive but long before the learner's permit - it wasn't much harder to sneak her car keys our of her purse and take her car out and take the roads again, not on foot this time, but still make them mine. Alone and drifting for no purpose other than to move in the dark, see the world as it looked when it was really awake, like me.

I have a different idea of fun than a lot of people. It really isn't fun so much as - freedom. Seeing and not seeing. Being in motion. Blurring through a nightspace with no contact other than the thrum of pavement and the inconsequentials of street signs and landmarks the only sign of something familiar.

And I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that.

I'm okay with that.