Category — gettin' smart

Who chooses a scenic highway with a top speed limit of forty-five miles an hour over the interstate? This girl. I drove the Blue Ridge Parkway to Lynchburg, Virginia this weekend. I could have taken I-40 or I-26 to I-81 and made it in four hours, but I didn’t.

The Parkway is one of my favorite places in the world. So simple, so beautiful- in a world of double-tandem semi-trucks and seventy miles per hour speed limits, the Parkway is a haven, a refuge. My parents don’t call me their “little ridge-runner” for no reason.

I regretted my route once; when I found myself behind a car with Iowa plates on a steep decent with more than a few descending decreasing radius curves- a fancy engineering term for a bitch of a curve. A descending radius curve is where the road changes elevation in the curve- you’re not just turning, you’re also going downhill. A decreasing radius curve is where the turn gets harder as you go through it.  So, of course, a declining decreasing radius curve is one that combines a drop in elevation with a tightening of the curve once you’re in it.

What makes these curves so treacherous? The grade of the decent causes your car to accelerate, which makes you want to hit your brakes to slow back down, but that makes it almost impossible to steer into the apex of the curve. You pick up speed when it is the last thing you need.

After you’ve driven in the mountains for awhile, you get the hang of these nasty little curves. You learn to start into them slower than you would a level turn. The car sets itself a line as you start the curve and pick up speed, and your job is to interfere as little as possible with that natural line, steering only as much as necessary, and only braking very lightly just before the apex if absolutely necessary.

People from Iowa are perhaps not familiar with this technique. So they fight the line. They ride their brakes or hit their brakes hard in the apex, which makes steering much harder. I feel for them- they’re scared, they’re getting a lesson in vehicle physics that isn’t had in Iowa, they are white-knuckled and full of fear. (Not to mention that they’re melting their brake pads and running the risk of losing braking power altogether). It’s frustrating and irritating for me to ride behind them; they ruin my line when they fight their own, but I’m irritated while they are scared for their lives.

I wish I could tell them not to fight the line. To slow down a little more coming in, if they’re nervous, but once the curve starts, take your foot off the pedals and just steer. Fighting the line is actually more dangerous.

I’ve been stressed, scared, frustrated, angry and unsure of myself. The life I dream of is on the horizon, and the life I once cherished is ending slowly but surely, like the passing of mileposts. I cannot see what the road looks like from where I’m at to where I’m surely headed, and that element of uncertainty is what makes me crazy. I drive myself crazy trying to plan and plot and scheme and prepare for every possible outcome or pitfall or obstacle, drafting plans A through ZZ in a attempt to find some security in life-changing situations that are well beyond my control.

I’ve been fighting the line. I’ve been braking and freaking out and over-steering like a flatlander. I’m making things much, much harder than they have to be, and more dangerous too, in the sense that my health and emotional stability have suffered, are suffering, and that means that I’m not bringing my best self to anything I’m involved in.

Time to take my foot off the brake, loosen my grip on the wheel and trust the road.

“Feel the wind
And set yourself the bolder course
Keep your heart
As open as a shrine
You’ll sail the perfect line..”

-bob seger “in your time”

Have I told you lately how much I hate waiting, and how impatient I am?

At this very moment, I’m waiting for the sun to melt enough of the six or eight inches of snow in my driveway so that I can go to class tonight. Whether or not it will clear up enough remains to be seen. It looks promising- the sun is shining, the wind is blowing- these are all very positive signs. I don’t know right now, though, if there will be enough sun, if it will get warm enough, if it will be safe enough for me to forge ahead with my plans.

This particular situation in no way parallels any other situation in my life. At all. Certainly not a situation in which I’m a little more emotionally invested, or one in which I am so anxious to know the outcome that if it were a book I would read the last page today, or at least skip ahead a few chapters just to see where the characters are a little further along in the plot.  Not a parallel to be had, no sir, not at all…

Of course I realize that waiting is important. Necessary. An act of self preservation, of caution and prudence and maturity. You don’t take a cake out of the oven before it’s baked through, you don’t take a fiberglass and aluminum two wheel drive paid for car out if it’s going to be icy. That is when things get messy; when accidents happen, when poor decisions are made, property is damaged and people get hurt. Plus there is no cake, just a gooey mess that might give you worms. No one wants worms, especially when they are so easily prevented by just letting the cake bake till that toothpick comes out clean and you’re ready for frosting.

Some people are able to relish the waiting- they love the smell of a cake filling the house as it bakes; they want to want that first piece of cake so badly that they’re drooling before they cut it.

I’m the girl that scrapes every last bit of leftover batter out of the bowl with the spatula, eats the frosting with a tall glass of milk while she works, and has a wicked stomachache by the time the oven timer rings.

Oh baby don’t it feel like heaven right now
Don’t it feel like something from a dream
Yeah I’ve never known nothing quite like this
Don’t it feel like tonight might never be again
We know better than to try and pretend
Baby no one could’a ever told me ’bout this
I said yeah yeah

The waiting is the hardest part
Every day you see one more card
You take it on faith, you take it to the heart
The waiting is the hardest part

-Tom Petty “The Waiting”