long car rides

Ahoy,

One of the immediate differences I noticed early in my companionship with the RRS is how we define long car rides. Whereas he has grown up driving up and down the California coast, I had no reason to venture outside of Chicago because there is nothing in the Midwest except Chicago. We grew up with completely opposite habits of car rides.

My elementary school was a 2 minute car ride away (we didn't walk this because my mom is over-protective and super-human and determined to prevent us from being kidnapped and sold on the black market), and my high school was 10-15 minutes away. The longest car ride I had been on when I left for college was probably a little more than an hour, and that was a once a year thing. We only went to the suburbs for the mall and that was probably once every season. I had no reason to ever be in the car longer than 20 minutes. In my world, if you have to go on the highway - it is too far. I could get to most places I wanted to go with a 20 minute car ride, bike, or public transit.

Imagine the shock when I first arrived to LA and everywhere we went was on the highway, a 40 minute car ride was considered short, traffic jams constituted of a scale ranging from flowing to parking lot. The RRS spent most of his life with a season pass to Disneyland and made the trip regularly from NorCal to SoCal. His family regularly made trips to places far away ( >20 minutes). Not only this, he enjoys driving with a passion I've only witnessed in kids with emotional attachment issues to blankies. My friends and I avoid driving whenever possible, and I know people who didn't get their license until their 20s and still don't have their license today.

I do think my limited perception of distance in a car can also be attributed to my parents' immigrant status. As foreigners who can't read signs, don't know how to get around or communicate if they do get lost, they tend to stick to familiar routes and are wary of going somewhere new for fear of getting lost. So I do give my mom kudos for shuttling us around as much as she did, because I'm sure my uncles and aunts with an even more limited grasp of American roads rarely venture outside Chinatown.

You should also be warned that I hate sitting still. The first time I made the trip up the coast with him, I was shooting between the back and front seat so much, the RRS said he was getting carsick watching me. Long car rides are not something I'll ever get used to, and I wouldn't want to. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy.

devastatingly geared,
jt