on the freeways, there you feel free

[jazzfish]

I've been out of DC for long enough that I'm starting to think of driving as fun again.

I've popped down to Seattle a couple of times in the past few months to play 1817, one of them honking long train games, with a group down there. It's about a 2.5-hour drive, so I've been leaving around 8-8:30 and arriving at elevenish. Then we play for eight hours, and I drive back, getting in well before midnight. Reasonable.

Traffic is light, the scenery's pretty, and I get to dig into some music I've forgotten I had. (Coming home last weekend I listened to Loreena McKennitt nonstop.)

Maybe this is bundled up with why I like traveling: if you're traveling, there's nothing you need to do other than travel. Nothing that needs worrying about, nothing that needs attention.

I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

Comments

[jazzfish]

It's taken me a long time to put that together. And how I've described it there isn't even exactly right. It's... something like, travel isn't normal life, with its weights and responsibilities. Travel is precisely *not* normal life. And it comes with its own baggage (ha), but it's a break from everything that I've been dealing with, in whatever capacity.

Of course I miss the good things when I'm traveling, but when I think about travel, when I get excited about it, a good chunk of that excitement is the knowledge that I can leave behind the things I'm unhappy about. At least for awhile.