Flying in my Car

I think most of us have a dream of flying, not just in first class from New York to Paris, but to be in the cockpit at the stick. I still occasionally have dreams of stepping into a small jet and taking off from a grass field, fear rising in my belly as the plane yearns for the sky. I wage an internal struggle between the dueling ideas of “I don’t know how to do this!!” and “I got this, no problem.” Once airborne, my spirit soars with the plane and I am tuned into the sky forgetting the hard reality of landscape below. Intuitively I sense not only where I am going but how to get there. The fear doesn’t re-enter my belly until the inevitable thoughts arise - “I may know how to fly, but I don’t know how to land!!” and “Landing’s the easy part.” Sometimes these returns to earth in my dreams have been accomplished Fred Flintstone-like with my feet as landing gear, most times the landings are much more conventional – and I always make it. These dreams color my perception as an adult in the only place they can, behind the steering wheel of my car. Each time I put on my seatbelt, a small part of me is strapping in for instrument check and take off.
This reminiscence came about today as I was driving and I pulled into a merge lane. I looked in my rear view mirror and an SUV suddenly slipped in close behind me, a bit too close. The driver appeared to have taut Aryan features, short blond (almost white) hair, and he wore reflective sunglasses. He seemed ageless. The name Richtofen sprang to mind as I kept a wary eye to my rear while looking for space to maneuver. It was a tight chase for half a mile before I shook him by slipping into the lane to my left. I toyed with the idea of sliding in behind him as he flew past, but I had proven my mettle and the game was over.
I stay observant as I drive, and the pilot mindset helps to always keep my mind fresh and my eye sharp. It is not always dog fights and evasion out on the road. Quite often it is keeping a watchful eye out for amateurs and show offs who compromise traffic patterns when their egos are writing checks their bodies can’t cash. This evening my wife and I were making our way to American Furniture Warehouse on a cargo run. We were hoping that the third time would be the charm for the new armchair we were to exchange. When I got the chair home on Monday and unboxed it, I found there were no legs. On Wednesday when I was able to pick up the legs, we found out that the legrest when at full extension was prone to a sizeable roll (invigorating in a positive “g” banked curve, but very disorienting for stationary activities). About halfway there, we were in a holding pattern at a stop light. The two lanes to our left were designated for turning onto the highway, and the car in front of us decided to make our lane into a turn lane as well. The car roared to life into an aggressive maneuver from its standstill and abruptly shot around a truck and made a perilous dash for the ramp. Even though the maneuver was successful, I think I have shown it as something not to do.

Keeping a weather eye out and not simply relying on instrumentation, helps keeps me safe, but has on occasion provided me a good laugh. Several years ago, I was driving our van back from a wedding delivery. It had been a long day, and I was anxious to make it back to the deck and catch some rack time before I had to return later that evening to pick up the rentals. However, traffic was tight, and it was not time to be a slacker. Suddenly, there in front of me were two small sedans filled with even smaller elderly people. They were slow and overly cautious, with one following the other. What tipped me off to potential danger (besides their slight swaying motion in the lane) was that the lead car had on a right turn signal, and the trail car had on his left turn signal. I tapped my brake, giving myself room for the unexpected – anything could happen. Hesitantly the trail car drifted right and pulled beside his wingman. His wingman then made a sudden and stuttering left hand turn! I stared in amazement, foot poised to pound the brake if necessary, and hands tight on the wheel as from the right hand lane the other driver jolted left to follow his wingman. These events executing in the slow motion only very old or very young drivers can accomplish. Meanwhile, in the back seat of the car turning left from the right hand lane, I could make out a little old man with his hands hard on the roof, his eyes wide as saucers, his neck craning around crazily to see if anyone was about to ram them. He looked to me for all the world like Slider (Iceman’s rear) trying to follow and find the two Migs that just executed a supersonic flyby. I couldn’t help but smile at the image even as I cringed and hoped that God really did watch over fools, drunkards, and Americans.

Day Follows Night Redux

The sunrise comes as no surprise. “As day follows night” the saying goes and proves its truism each morning. From the eastern horizon the sun threatens, rays lighting it and spreading west. The light in these brief moments of dawn is transfigured crossing the prairie to cast a coral glow on the rise of Rockies. Such a contrast, landlocked mountains painted the color of sea life, bringing together ocean and mountain, ephemeral moments, blink and it is gone. Gaze upon it and drink it into your soul before the sun at the start of its brazen passage whitewashes all with its naked stare, claim this daily miracle for your own while it last.

Mile markers and mountains race by as I head south on the interstate. I long for there to be silhouetted Saguaro about me, frozen arms outstretched in acceptance or submission, but not here, there are only walking stick cacti to see in Colorado. Sad stand-ins for the quintessential quilled plants that inhabit our image-ridden imaginations. Still walking sticks are something, as cacti are succulents of myth and lore in my native South.

As I look over the hood of my car, the blacktop goes by and beneath me. Years on this circuit have imprinted upon me, and I can gaze about freely in the knowledge that my car knows where it is going. Amid the stark, arid beauty of these barren plains that abut the Rockies, people I pass and that pass me seem oblivious with eyes on nowhere and cell phones nestled against their cheeks. How can they not see, how can they not think of God instead of the microcosms of their lives?

At seven thirty in the morning (or the A.M. as might be said in the masterpiece of a movie, Raising Arizona), they are talking on their cell phones. Who is on the other end? Are they talking to other commuters, reaching out for kindred spirits with whom to hide from the braking dawn and its majesty, or someone at home who tugs at their hearts in a life that seems more commute than anything else? I don’t know, but I wonder. I have no one to talk to that early, and wish no one to talk with. They need their sleep or start to their day, and I need to commune with the visions about me to assure myself that I am part of the coming day. I see exits familiar in number and name, and locations marking my progress, a self-congratulatory pat on the back that one meager morning milestone after another is passed, each milestone taking me further along from bed to work.

My mind is a transition as well. I process dreams, think of home, and then accept work and its list of things that cry for my attention. These last thoughts nurse me along the final miles to the office so that the beginning of my work day builds upon the foundation of my thoughts.

Returning home reverses the imagery of going to work. I take the drive to unwind and drink in the surroundings, to numb the thoughts that are best left to my desk and tomorrow. The mountains take on a different quality as I work my way north. The sun having dipped behind them is still lighting the world, and leaves the mountains in relief to such an extent that they appear cut out of cardboard. Layers of mountain shapes shown in two dimensions to the thirsting eye.

I leave the work behind and settle into the home ahead. I plan what to fix for dinner, I scan the mountains and the prairies. I see different faces in adjacent cars doing the same thing as their morning counterparts – talking into phones, ignoring the world, absorbed and self-absorbed.

Home is the boon I unconsciously await all day. It is the gift afforded to me by trial of a fifty mile each way commute. I relinquish home in the morning, knowing I will reclaim it at night. Returning to my wife and our dog, to cook dinner, to relax together and taste each others waters of the day.

It is at the end of this routine that bed waits, that sleep dreams for my return as the price of a new dawn. I know not where the dreams will take me, though I try to be the boatman of it across my private river Styx. I have some say at times how I enter, where I tread, but never the whole of the whole. The true boatman is my subconscious and goes by the name angst. My dreams are the very definition of worlds colliding. They are linear feed and juxtaposition of past and present and mist enshrouded future. I embrace them as such; I groom through them for insight, and take them at face value.

When morning comes, I walk free of the dreams and must rise from the bed trailing a longing glance back to my sleeping wife. I partake in my morning ablutions and return to my car and my commute, the cycle repeating as cycles must. My day is under way and the sunrise comes as no surprise.