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The Long Drive- How Music Made It Fast

The Long Drive - How Music Made It Fast

Valentine's Day, we drove to the Bay Area through mostly foggy freeway 101. We left the gas station at Rose and Gonzales at exactly 7:30 PM and arrived by my parent's gate at close to 1 AM, a long 5 and a half hour drive. But we hardly felt it. So used to this drive to the Bay Area. Family lives there and we go to visit them at least six or seven times a year, and more frequently, when my daughter and grandkids used to live there.

Along the way, Judy and I talked about many things - about trivial family events, about missing the Valentine's Day dance with KFG friends at St. Mary's, about the current events here and abroad, about the Olympics. Our coversations just kept going on from one topic to another. We talked of our health issues, how we started noticing (or suspected) signs of the advancing age like how easily it was to get a pulled mucle or how colds and coughs lasted longer than usual or a strange pain here and there would alarm us immediately, or how, one early morning, Judy woke up with what she felt was heartburn. 'You should have taken that med with food,' I commented to her.

It was a full moon, the road was foggy and Roxy's headlights were not so bright that to see beyond ten yards ahead, I relied from headlights of other cars, some of which have LED lights that shone so bright and I wondered why that type of headlight was even allowed. On clear sections of the freeway, the full moon's light paved the way, but there were places I had to turn the high beam on to see how the road curved ahead because there were no cars around and the moon was behind clouds.

Outside the car, the road flashed by in fast-forward mode.

Inside, it was a rewind.

When our conversation ran out of topics, we turned to listening to music. Roxy, my 2004 RX8, did not have the latest in e-gadgets to allow music from iPhones to be heard through its speakers, so we brought our music CDs. We listened and sang along to our favorite love songs from the 50s through the 70s. True Love Ways, Aubrey, Devoted To You, Lonely, And They Called It Puppy Love...and as I listened to these lovely songs, I can't help but smile, grin, laugh, especially when a romantic song played flashbacks of past events on the projection screen of my mind.

When these emotionally-fulfilling love songs were exhausted, we plopped in other music CDs. We sang our hearts out with the Beatle's Abbey Road songs, drummed our hands and shook our heads up and down to the beat of Grand Punk Railroad, and imagined our cha-cha moves and turns with Santana's hits.

Outside the car, the road flashed by in fast-forward mode.

Next thing we knew, we were exiting 880 by Oracle Stadium.  (2/14/2014)