One of the few things that hasn’t changed in the last 40 or so years, or so it seems, is the interstate drive between Eugene and Stanford. My childhood included the stretch from Los Altos to Mt. Shasta, and my escape event the piece just north of there, Callahan, and Weed. And I was pretty much a child the first time I drove it all the way through to Eugene. We’d been married four months. We were both children. 22 years old. And a few months.
And our youngest daughter, Megan, was 22 years old and a few months as she sat, happily, next to me, just a few weeks ago, when we took that stretch together, Eugene to Stanford, one more time. One time that rolled up all the others and, well, I get ahead of myself.
This was Sunday, July 5, 2009. By 10:30 on a bright sunny summer morning we were sailing past Cottage Grove. Radar detector on, staying around 70, gliding around rolling curves, getting in rythm. I admit, even though things are just things, and it’s embarrassing for a full-grown over-educated would-be-intellectual and would-be zen 60-year-old guy, I’ve loved that mini cooper S from the day I first saw it. And, paradoxical as it may seem, driving it down to Palo Alto, with Megan, to leave it with Megan, was the best time I ever had in it.
Not, by the way, that I didn’t have good times in that car. I really did. There was that day in June, 2005, when it was just a couple months old, that I drove it over the Santiam Pass from Eugene to Bend in just over two hours. Listened to Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink on the ipod attachment. Clear day, dry, no traffic, and I just sailed that little car over the mountains and through the high desert, up the Mackenzie River over the pass through Sisters to Bend. And that other time, Bend to Eugene, over the Cascade Highway; again, bright, warm, dry, and empty highway. And lots of curves.
I’ve loved cars before. Several times. My first car, a VW type 3, dark red. I was 20, bought it new in Innsbruck, drove it all over Europe. And across the United States, three times. And from Mexico and back, twice. We called it Chofs. That green volkswagen beetle, that we drove all over Mexico. The Acura that bled the day I got it. And I loved my new Audi sports car, today, actually, as I drove it fast over Fox Hollow Road.
But none of them like that mini-cooper. And never as much satisfaction as giving it to Megan.
(to be continued)
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