It focuses your attention on a different set of things when you travel. I find that the act of putting everything you'll expect you need (except for food and drink, of course) in some bags and taking off makes you think about your possessions and your needs and relax and go with the flow of the world. Or fret over finding the one thing your spouse decides he wants while you are driving.
When you go on a driving trip, things at home take on a different perspective as the miles unwind behind you. You imagine yourself cleaning out a closet or cabinet and having it go really well, knowing just what you want to do with everything, no hesitation, no sneezing because of the dust.
Today we left the house to the house sitters and headed out for a leisurely drive to....Lubbock. Rather than make Santa Fe in one nearly 700 mile hop, we decided to spend the night in Lubbock, making two pretty easy drives of it.
Our new Accord seemed to purr along effortlessly. I like to eschew cruise control to stay connected to the drive and I had to keep from putting my foot in it and exceeding the speed limit. we don't see a reason to waste gas and squeeze past the limits too much. It's a vacation! Relax! We listened to jazz (mostly...the real non-Kenny G type) and acoustic rock on the XM radio. That's a plus. When the other person was driving, we read the day's papers. We made a stop for gas and the bathroom. We stopped at a Chili's for an early lunch. And we stopped at, gulp, McDonald's for a fill-up of our commuter cup with coffee and the bathroom. (McDonald's coffee is not that bad. And cheap. In any event, there weren't a lot of local coffee shops offering organic shade-grown fair trade brews at that point.)
The road offered the usual small and half dead Texas towns (with names like Bangs and Lawn). One town's school mascot was the Gorillas. Hmmm. Most of these towns had a few derelict structures along the highway, some suspicious-looking eateries and maybe a junky 'antique' shop. To add to those usual entertainments and the roadkill spotting there were some amazing displays of wildflowers, a few dramatic wind farms and donkey heads pumping oil. With our reading material and radio, it was really effortless.
Lubbock is just a stop so that we don't work too hard getting ourselves to Santa Fe. The road is part of the trip.
When we arrived at our Quality Inn the staff was nice and upgraded our room. We searched the Internet on the free wireless and found what we hoped was a non-typical restaurant for Lubbock. We ended up having dinner at a wannabe French place called Chez Suzette. It wasn't bad and better than we could have hoped for its arbitrary selection. Drinks and music at a place called Stella's was unexpectedly good, too. Especially the conversation with a young couple who could walk right onto the set of Friday Night Lights.
No comments:
Post a Comment