Driving in France

by Aysha Griffin

On my first trip to Europe in 1978, I landed a job driving a cheese delivery truck in London. I was too young and enthusiastic to be afraid of a right-hand drive minivan with no visibility or negotiating the "other side" of the road while deciphering the phonebook-sized "A-to-Z" map of London streets to locate stores awaiting chunks of cheddar and rounds of Roquefort. After six weeks, I moved on.

It was one of those jobs I've never known if I should include on my resumé to illustrate gumption and nerve, or never mention for its irrelevance. I submit it here as evidence of my behind-the-wheel experience and competence, and also the lack of clear direction in life. 

I've often taken the "next road" because it appeared, rather than plotting and staying a course. I like to think this has made for an "adventuresome" life, which I must value or else negate the roads I've taken. It's a journey that has often required me to debunk a sense of security as "illusion," although that illusion can be mighty sweet and comforting, deserving of appreciation for as long as it lasts.

I know of no happier sight than sunflower fields, so I smiled my way from Provence to Dijon along two-lane roads dotted with sunflowers and vineyards. Caption and photo by Aysha Griffin.

I admire those born with a sense of purpose and a clear path to satisfying lifelong careers and relationships. But I've discovered they are the exception. Most of us bumble from interest to opportunity, taking wrong turns, getting lost in detours, and sometimes spending years on roads that lead to disappointment in dead ends. 

I have learned to accept that life, for me, is not a clearly marked thoroughfare but a mix of toll roads where I speed along thinking I'm getting somewhere fast and not counting the cost, freeways where the landscape of time rushes past from the comfort of my driver's seat, winding country roads that meander and demand patience, and even bumpy tracks where I'm forced to get out and consider if I have the clearance and will to press on, or good sense to know when to change course. 

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A Hitchhiker's Guide to Namibia

by Christopher Clark

The bakkie went over a large pothole and I was jolted awake, the shock making me inhale deeply and sharply. The air was hot. My throat and eyes stung from all the dust. The unbending road ran like a dagger through the heart of the desert. There was nothing else. Just us, the road, the desert, the sky and the burning sun, and the great weight of my hangover forcing itself in on my shriveled, raisin-like brain and lungs.  I wondered for a second if we were heading towards the end of the world.

It had all been a terrible accident really. I knew almost nothing about Namibia except that there were a lot of sand dunes, and without a few too many drinks to lubricate the imagination and fire the yearning for adventure, it probably never would have happened. The truth is though, I could probably say the same about a lot of my trips over the years, especially the most interesting ones. 

 It had all started in what might loosely be called the ‘town’ of Springbok, a little way back across the border. I was there on a job and had confessed my ignorance of Namibia to a local Afrikaans prospector’s son named Rico, who I had got talking to at the local bar. His head was similar in size and shininess to a watermelon, yet still looked disproportionately small for his enormous frame.

Now there I was in the back of his battered old vehicle hurtling northward away from the South African border like a bat out of hell, still not entirely sure where I was headed or why. And good old Watermelon Head was at the helm up in front of me, his equally large wife bumping along in the seat next to him and occasionally barking what I could only imagine were strong Afrikaans expletives at her husband. But still he went bravely on, potholes and abuse or no, taking me ever deeper into the burning heart of the unknown. 

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Just Because You're Poor Doesn't Mean You Have to be Stupid

by Rachel Dickinson

My mother was always an intrepid traveler, which seemed odd because in other aspects of her life she is so passive. For her, I think getting in the car and heading out of our tiny village in Upstate New York was a way to escape poverty. With the windows open and the radio blaring and a cigarette propped between two fingers she'd begin the journey, which was often home to Washington, D.C.

We loved those trips. She'd buy us each a 25 cent comic book and we'd spend hours poring over each luridly-colored frame and then trade. With four kids, that meant a lot of BAM POW KAZAMM as we headed south.

"Keep your feet up," she'd say. This was after I lost a sneaker through a hole in the floor boards of the old Chevy. We had to turn back and find it because those were the only shoes I had.

In Washington she always made sure we went to the National Gallery and a couple of the Smithsonians. "Just because you're poor, doesn't mean you have to be stupid," she'd tell us.

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Dead And Dragged Out On The Throughway: Is this really a better way to go than by air?

by Sallie Bingham

Santa Fe to Tucson in a one-day mad dash

Jack the Pup is riding shotgun on the roommate’s lap as we head west on I-40 at nine AM, planning to reach my sister’s house in Tucson in time for dinner. The first miles across the desert, numbingly familiar by now, yield as this time we’d planned a back roads excursion south, just across the Arizona border. The map shows one of those intriguing dotted lines, a scenic highway, just what we need after hours of rumbling 18-wheelers…

To ready ourselves for adventure, we stop in Gallup at what is now our favorite eatery: Earl’s Family Restaurant. Here in Navajo Country Earl’s is shopping center, family reunion, and good staple New Mexico food: guacamole, burritos and so forth. Outside, Navajo craftspeople jam the sidewalk with their tables; inside, they patrol the aisles, silently holding out pins, bracelets, necklaces, and, in a departure from the usual, a pair of weird lamps, the ceramic bases coated with sand and then painted with iconic motifs. I’m charmed, I must buy at twenty dollars each, then wonder, too late, where in the world I’m going to put them….

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