I forgot how much I love to drive, and what I love about driving, or is it just the road itself…

Driving through Southern France on our way to Madrid, through the Basque Country, and two days later returning through North eastern Spain, I see glimpses of the Road in a European setting; rugged hills breaking up the monotony of endless townships combined with vast spaces between settlements and an emptiness unblotted, or too immense to be paved over by humanity – and still it is the road that has brought us here.

By some luck, good or bad, we miss the turn for Madrid at Iruña, and end up at 11 pm touring the outskirts of Bilbao.

At this hour, it is disheartening to imagine another 3 hours driving until we reach Madrid.  My wife laughs and doesn’t say “you wanted a road adventure…”

On a blissfully empty stretch of road, somewhere in North eastern Spain between Zaragoza and Barcelona, my wife offers; “driving is empowering, I miss driving.”  I have never thought of it in these terms, over countless thousands of miles logged, mostly in North America, but also in Europe.

Mostly driving has been a meditation; in the days of gas at $1.25 a gallon, you could afford to “lose” a few days wandering around on lonely highways and back-roads.  On a motorcycle the possibilities were endless with a few dollars of change in your pocket.

Motorized meditation may be the closest approximation to a vision quest that the last two generations of Americans have experienced as a mass culture.

Immortalized in Easy Rider, Zen and art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and Two Lane Blacktop, motorized transcendence has been an American pastime for the past 50 years.

Most of our adventures since moving to Geneva have been via train, on foot, and on bicycle.  We don’t own a car and so don’t often venture out in one, much less so without a destination in mind.

There is something incredibly decadent, fantastic and wonderful about traveling in a car – the power to transport yourself into someone else’s reality on a whim, this turn, that road, the odd cafe, an out of the way town.

In the best sense of traveling, the road is open.