Sights, sounds and scents ...
This morning, on the way into work, I did something a little different; I opened up my windows.
I run a newer car for the daily commute to work since I need to know I'll make it in every day and, like most newer cars, it's quiet inside. Too quiet, in my opinion. Oh, and there's the cabin air filter. Isolation from the outside of all senses except sight. This doesn't make for a good driving experience. Granted, commuting in general doesn't make for a good driving experience, but why ruin it more than necessary?
So as I left the house I put down the windows and just drove along. It was refreshing to feel the wind on my face and realize that the old driving experience can still exist, even in today's more modern cars. I could smell the trees and flowers as I drove along rt 119 through northern Massachusetts and I could hear everything going on around me. I could even hear the motors of the little cars, as quiet as most of them are.
The interstate was where it got really interesting.
As anyone who has ever driven I495 and I93 in the morning knows, it's a little like running three abreast at Loudon and the speeds are rarely anything resembling legal. However, even in this environment, I left my windows down. I could smell the tires, hot on the pavement from high speeds and could tell when the car that just passed me was using it's brakes a little too much. Tires, brakes, clutch and the smell of a hot engine as it strains under the load of high speeds and high RPMs. More appropriate to the racing circuit than the interstate, but I was on I93 at the time, so it wasn't a surprise by any means. Passing one vehicle, I could hear the tread on their tires buzzing against the pavement; a nice smooth even sound telling me their tires were in good condition. Other tires didn't sound so smooth.
It was almost surprising to me when the memories of better drives came flooding back. Pull into the right lane (the slow lane, which merely means driving at the speed limit), lean back a little bit and just enjoy the drive. Pull out into the fray and join the insanity as everyone jockeys for position in order to, for some reason, get to work just a little bit faster than everyone else. Whichever driving experience you might looking for, it was there this morning on my way in.
Taking away the barriers between me and the world outside my car was refreshing. It reminded me of cruising in my 1969 Plymouth Barracuda, vaguely, as there was none of the "I hope it gets there" that the `Cuda always brought with it. The cars of the 60s and 70s had and air about them, other than the usual one of "unsafe beyond comprehension." There was something more liberating about the way we drove, and even though we were inside multi-ton hunks of steel, we were somehow closer to the roads we were driving on. Manual transmissions, manual steering and the motor was directly under our control. We drove our cars; we weren't merely passengers sitting behind the steering wheel.
What a lovely drive it was just to feel the wind in my face and listen to everything that was going on around me. Sometimes, even commuting can be enjoyable.
