Going the Distance

I’ve made the drive a handful of times now.
It’s not an easy drive, it’s not a hard drive.
Once I’m behind the wheel it’s just something I do.

99 N. to 152 W.:

A preamble, settling in to head where I’ve got to be, leaving all this south and east of my back. It’s easy to get on the freeway and it turns right into my way home.

152 W. to Los Banos.

After which my journey begins in earnest, these are where the decisions have to be made. Which ramp will take me where I’m trying to go, which ramp will take me to where I should go?

I-5 N. towards San Francisco/Sacramento

It’s funny, the compulsion to take the other ramp, I-5 S. to the great unknown to drive on and on and on and never get home. It’s interesting that, alone in my dark car with just the CD player and the hum of the air streaming for company I could make the monumental decision to not be at work on Monday. To be in L.A. heading for Baja or Tijuana or the great big fucking desert, something I’ve never seen.

It’s more than the different between one exit and another, which will deposit me essentially at the same place. It’s a vast split in the big darkness of empty land.

It’s something I can’t quite pin down, a neutral feeling. That I do take the north-bound ramp, at least this time, that I wonder if one day I’ll take the south-bound ramp and, should that day come, whether it will lead to where I’m headed.

As I make the right turn onto 580 W. I wonder what this has to teach me about the right and wrong decisions in life, as I speed past junctions and pray this is one ramp that will take me to where I want to go. And knowing once I’ve made my pick it’s going to be difficult to go back and remake the decision.

580 W. to San Francisco

I’m nearly home; I know I took the right ramp. Well, at least the ramp I needed to take.