'The longest unzipping of my life'.

I promised I would write about a particular recent experience in my least poetical, least metaphorical, and least euphemistic way possible, something which my dear reader is perhaps not so used to. So here goes, I pledge my troth fools!... at bare length.

Whoever said that the longest journey begins with a single step, not with a turn of the ignition key, I'm afraid, couldn't have been more further away from a practical truth. After all the hype in the news about the dangerous monster of snow that has shook the island, about people freezing to death in their cars and all that blablayaddada, and against what my folks insisted I should do, me-being-me went hand in hand with a stubborn gut squeezing tight, telling me I should buckle up for my heavily anticipated four hour drive. So I hit the evening road like Jill; and it turned out to be the best drive I've had so far since I was given my driving license a couple of years ago. The journey took three hours on the dot (never drove to the same destination for as short a time as this)... roads couldn't have been clearer, half-filled by heavy trucks busking in queues, and far fewer car drivers who drove timidly without reason behind these lonely trucks. Well, with the exception of one, or maybe two if I count myself in.

And if you drive, you'll probably know what I'm talking about. It's that quiet time of the night where you find yourself driving across a motorway either head to head, behind, or in front of another car, both of you sensibly keeping within the 50mph speed limit that is permitted over a lengthy bit of road works. No rush getting anywhere, changing your CD meanwhile, keeping a fair distance between the two of you, easing on the speed when one decides to overtake the other slowly, and so on. Basic driver's etiquette that not all drivers seem to feel comfortable with. However, when one of the drivers is a female and the other one a male, that usually tends to add a different ingredient to the chemistry that is taking shape on the road. It certainly does not level the individuals out, especially if one is driving a shiny snow white Range Rover, polished like a baby's bottom, and the other, well, an old runny family Merc... and ridiculous though it may sound to have these two cars put together, you find yourself competing. Sort of.

So what follows after you become unbound by the 50mph limit is a bit of a daredevil game of catch-me-if-you-can. The unwritten rules were that he would slow down and let me catch up, but only after he would let me have a go at keeping up. And boy, did I not go for it... The handsome Rover would bring it back to steady again, allowing me to leave him behind, while I satiated my appetite on tarmac '...she then proceeded to pump her vehicle in and out of turns sometimes dropping down to 50 miles per hour, only to immediately gun it back up to 90 again. Fast, slow, fast fast slow! Sometime a wide turn, sometimes a quick one... she preferred the tighter ones. The sharp controlled jerks, swinging left to right before driving back to the right, only so she could do it all over again until after enough speed, and enough wind, and more distance than I had been prepared to expect...' [video is the bare shizz.]

And it's all happening like you're on a first date, girl drops a tissue, guy picks it up, guy fires something up, then girl brings her bazooka and spreads conflagration. Except, there never really is a bombshell crashing the party from any of the parties involved. It's all a playful, youthful flirtation (even with death at times, but let's not be tragic) of two gentle folks, I'm a gentle girl, and he most certainly seems to be a gentleman by his way of driving. And you can't beat that. Flashing out, flashing in, fast slow fast fast slow, really you become partners in crime as you both bend the law while perfectly aware of the circumstances. Then you go your way, he goes his way, as it is ever so the case. Nothing complicated, no mumbo jumbo, nothing that you do not wish upon, just a friendly ta-ta wave from one back to the other ~ enough to keep a smile on your face for the rest of the drive. Simplicity at its best. This type of affair is maneuvered by changing gears, speeding up without any sudden intimidating breaking, keeping your steering wheel solid, and your eyes always set on the road, never on each other. Neither of you will ever stop, even if the road takes both of you in two different directions.
And it always does.

Looking back on it, a day hasn't passed without my thinking about how much I wished I would have recorded that whole event, like so many other moments of the past that are worthy of being recorded and kept alive through other means outside your own head. Writing about it shall have to do.

Someone once told me that if you wish to know a person's true character, put him behind a steering wheel and you shall find out. I quite liked what I found, and left, on that snowy night. And on that bombshell, here's a few excerpts from my wonderfully solitary six hour drive in a little bit of snow. Sit back and relax, or else buckle up ;)



And as I was saying...

Hey pretty...
Don't you wanna take a ride with me?
Through my world