7.
You want to do what, now? You trippin? No, seriously: are you high on acid? You aren't. Hell, I think I heard of someone who did that once. Nearly cost 'em a bumper. And their life. I'm pretty sure they were high at the time. Now you're here sober as a baby lookin' for advice on how to do it yourself. Well, yeah, I'll tell you what I know, but you ain't gonna like it. Here's what I can tell you: don't even think about it. People dream about pullin' it off all the time, but nobody actually ever does. Oh, sure sure, I know what you're going to say, you've heard the stories, people sayin' and people talkin', but...
Let me ask you: do you love your car? You love your car, yeah, well, here's some advice: stop it. Don't love your car. People get weird when romance comes into play. You love your car, that means you want to treat it right, be nice to it, oil changes and no crazy stunts. Listen: stop loving your car. Because to do what you think you're going to do means giving your car up. This is nothing less than full surrender, one you're going to be committing the moment you hit the end of the entrance ramp curve at what, 20, 30 miles an hour? You can never take that ramp fast enough. Stop loving your fellow man, too. Stop loving everything. Forget love. You've got to be a real hard-headed bastard if you're going to make it. An ounce of love will get you a pound of killed.
And once you're free of love you're free to start over: love the insanity of your task, love the road beneath your wheels, love the fact that you're going to be crossing three lanes of high-speed rush-hour traffic without once looking in front of you. No, I mean it: you look in front of you, you're dead. Your neck's going to be twisted the whole time you're merging, and don't think it won't. You're going to be parallel parking your car between cars less than a car's distance apart when you're all going to be doing upwards of 65 miles an hour. If you're even able to get up that fast in the first place. And that's just for merging off the ramp!
You say you're not scared. Well let me tell you, to get to I-480 east, off Grayton Road, during rush hour traffic? It is to know the cold motion of fear.
Now give up love.
Now love the madness.
8.
It's the end of a ribbon unfurling at the end of a night, the twist of the exit. The shoreway bridges lifted you up and the road brought you back down, the wind's been slapping at your car and the lake's been smacking at the shore. Then you're almost there, the Lake Ave exit carrying you away from Edgewater. You're slowing down, and then you're straight-away, and then you'll feel it, the road twisting beneath you. Keep your car to the center and you'll feel the left side dip out from under you before the right tilts you back up, the calmest tenth of a mile you'll drive all night, the one you slip right off of as you turn back to the left, back towards the surface streets. You're almost home now. You've known the romance of the drive.
2 comments:
do you know that's very interesting, because the VERY first bit of freeway driving I ever did in Ohio was getting on 480 East at Grayton Rd. i must be crazy after all!
It's a special brand of craziness we possess here, indeed.
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