Driving at Night

I love driving at night. The open highway empty other than the few other drivers and the truckers out there with you. The radio playing faintly in the background and those late night DJ’s seem to connect so well with their audience. I find it peaceful, watching the hypnotizing white lines and highway markers pass by. It’s a different world at night, as you drive by all the small towns with the neon brightly glaring but most of the businesses closed for the night and most of the resident sleeping soundly in bed. And the people you do see at night, in their cars and at the truckstops and restaurants that stay open 24 hours… they’re just regular folk, but somehow different, somehow more interesting, unconstrained by the mainstream 9-5 jobs, or the traditional daytime waking hours. Do these people know what time it is? Do they care? I don’t know. What I do know is they’re folks on a mission. Anyone who is driving on an empty highway in the middle of the night must have somewhere important to be. Maybe they’re young college students roadtripping, maybe they’re truckers trucking, maybe they’re parents traveling with sleeping kids in the back seats of the minivan. Regardless, I suspect they’re all free spirits, happy to be on the road and willing to look the darkness and lack of sleep in the eye and say “fuck it”, let’s get some more coffee and go for another few hours!