I felt like playing hooky from work this morning.
As I drove down 83, somewhere between Exits 31 and 27, Carbon Leaf’s “Blue Ridge Laughing” playing on the Beetle’s CD player (from a road trip mixtape I made a few weeks ago), the sun broke through the wispy clouds, and the fog and the mist glistened on the asphalt, wet after the night’s torrential thunderstorms. There was a vibrancy to the trees and the hills and the mist that comes only after a thunderstorm as if nature has cleaned itself.
And the thought came to me unbidden. Wouldn’t it be awesome to just drive past Shawan Road, to drive past Baltimore and Washington, to drive further south with no fixed direciton. The Carolinas? Tennessee? Further still? Who knows? No destination to reach, no schedule to keep. Just me and the Beetle and the highway and the world.
My overdeveloped sense of work responsibility intervened, however.