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A Love Letter to Driving Alone
- chrstphrknwtn 3y ago> Along Australia’s Great Ocean Road, I pulled over to see the beach where Patrick Swayze pursues the “storm of the century” in Point Break. It was filmed in Oregon
- emblaegh 3y agoIn his defense the Australian beach the scene is meant to take place does exist.
- defrost 3y agoBreath [1] does a far better job of capturing southern ocean surf lifestyle and was filmed not far from The Right proper "storm of the century" offshore break [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breath_(2017_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breath_(2017_film) [2] https://youtu.be/xjHaFOGBPzk?t=148 https://youtu.be/xjHaFOGBPzk?t=148
- alfiedotwtf 3y agoAnyone else besides me who can't drive for more than 30 minutes without wanting to fall asleep :( ?
- cristyansv 3y agono joking: it is probably related to an eye issue, it could be that your eyeglasses formula is not correct or that you need to wear them if you don't have them yet.
- kqr 3y agoYes. First line of attack should be to experiment with improving the quality and/or quantity of your night sleep. If this happens to you mainly after you've been awake for 8 hours, try a mid-day nap. If none of that helps, investigate medical conditions that might affect your arousal, be they psychiatric (depression, ADD) or physical (sleep apnea, eyes). A possible remote third option is that you're frequently traveling as a passenger and allow yourself to use the riding time to rest, so your mind associates the running car with a resting place.
- alfiedotwtf 3y agoYeah... I'll give you that. I don't really have good quality sleep and this would mostly be it.
- inconceivable 3y agotry changing your cabin air filter.
- zwieback 3y agoYes, came here to say this. I like driving alone but want to fall asleep almost instantly. Pulling over and taking a 10 minute nap is helpful.
- jurmous 3y agoI am 41 and still have no driving license. But I can relate to cycling alone outside the cities. There is just something about just moving forward outside the cities without a clear goal.
- pavlov 3y agoI’m also in my early forties and got a driver’s license not very long ago. It seems to me that people who started driving as teenagers have a fundamentally different relationship to the activity. They presumably went through a phase where the license was a manifest symbol of adult freedom and they had fun experimenting with the car. With that fundamental mindset, you can probably enjoy just driving around. Whereas myself, I don’t find any pleasure in driving. It’s just a necessary chore to get somewhere out of reach by train. It requires a constant level of attention that I’m not used to, and I’m always too conscious of the potential of catastrophic consequences beyond my own control if anyone in traffic makes a mistake or happens to be feeling suicidal. There’s no joy at this age in wrangling these big machines.
- hprotagonist 3y agoI think there’s something true about this, yeah. Which is a bit of a shame; getting over the neuroplastic hump gets harder the older you get, even if it’s to your benefit.
- lanstin 3y agoi recentlty heard a neuroscientist who is also an opera singer asked this, and she said that outside of language acquisition, there really isn't any strong evidence that learning becomes harder. old people just forget how much time and energy people put into practise and learning when young. it helps to be in school when your job is basically to learn, and you dont have kids to tend to etc. i do notice the pull towards resting on ny existing skills as being less work than learning new skills (in software, in my 50s) but i can't be sure that hour for hour the rate is much lower. i do have less energy and more enjoyable leisure alternatives than 30 years ago.
- yawboakye 3y ago[flagged]
- victorbojica 3y agoI don't think the author talks about loneliness. He talks about the experience of driving alone. Which everyone can do. Take it at face value. And even if it would be about loneliness, there's nothing wrong in connecting with people over internet. I do think everyone should travel alone at least once. I allows you to discover yourself.
- OfSanguineFire 3y agoThe ancient Greeks were well aware that man is a political animal, but at the same time they had an entire genre of literature romanticizing shepherds who could sit alone in the wilderness and think their own thoughts. The desire for solitude out in nature is age-old.
- yawboakye 3y ago[flagged]
- dang 3y agoCan you please not cross into personal attack and/or other swipes. You've unfortunately been doing this repeatedly (e.g. here, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36402415 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36402415, and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35794991 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35794991). It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for, and we have to ban accounts that post this way. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- yawboakye 3y agoat least we now know a few things: (1) that there’s surveillance—whether based on username or vocabulary or ip address or a combination of them and more, we can’t tell. (2) that calling out weak and unsound argument that is net negative information by way ad hominem—an accepted usage of ad hominem—is contra hacker news. it has resulted in the many and nonsensical comments. (3) that dang goes hunting for people like me, politely threatening them with a ban if they don’t make quick adjustments to fit the culture. And what’s the culture? Don’t call out people for poorly thought-out argument, nor for potentially disparaging comments about whole groups of people.
- beeforpork 3y agoCO²!
- PartiallyTyped 3y agoOne of my fondest memories is driving back home from the university at 3 am after a 16 hour code grind with friends for final project. Ahh, i miss that.
- jonasdegendt 3y ago5AM, empty highway on the way home from a 15h long LAN party binge. Similar feelings of nostalgia, ah to be young.
- throwaway22032 3y agoDriving alone through foreign lands is the sole reason you can pry my car from my cold, dead hands. Trains will never replicate that.
- pjc50 3y agoTrain travel through foreign lands is a different great experience, and neither quite replicates the other.
- throwaway22032 3y agoAgree!
- henvic 3y agoI like road trips. I've done quite a bit both by myself and with friends. If you read the text and have an urge to travel, please make sure to be safe. It's extremely easy to get out of the beaten path and get in trouble. I've had a couple of close calls in the desert in my early 20s (I'm 34 now), which I deeply regret. Always have plenty of water (for multiple days if it's dry/too hot/too cold) and capable communication devices (and a smartphone won't cut it in the middle of a desert).
- bjarneh 3y agoFully agree. I even prefer the music turned off. I've driven for days like that, it's the ultimate way to travel. If I had the money, I'd book a one way ticket to Italy, and drive a new Lamborghini back home to Norway; stopping by wherever I wanted to along the way. A friend of a friend of mine sold his business many years ago, and after he had sailed the globe, he took a plane to New Zealand and bought a Harley Davidson motorcycle down there. The he drove it back to Norway; using 6 months to do so (some ferry rides along the way of course); but not a bad way to spend half a year on the planet.
- Havoc 3y agoSimilar applies train - limits you to the network obviously, but crucially you don't need to pay attention during the commute. That moves potentially hours of dead time interspersed with occasional looking away from lane to time you can actually use. Stare out window uninterupted or watch a movie on tablet or sleep or read or whatever. Loads of excellent reasons for preferring a car (big family, limited rail net, equipment etc) but for solo experience it seems inferior to me
- naz 3y agoSure, you can optimize for different things. You could argue that the best way to travel alone is by private jet. You get there quickly and in luxury, with a birds-eye view, and have food and drinks served the whole way by your chef. It's all subjective.
- Nullabillity 3y agoNot being able to "use" the time is the point.
- systemtest 3y agoThe reason I love road-trips in foreign countries is being able to stop wherever I want, whenever I want. Talk to locals, visit small shops, visit a historical site, a museum. If I see a nice waterfall on my map I can just route my GPS to get there. With a train you have to plan ahead for this. Get out at the right station, figure out how the bus system works and how to get to your destination. And hoping that I can even get there, as an example many countries don't have functioning local public transit on a Sunday. Or because the closest bus stop to where you want to go is a couple kilometers out. It feels very restraining to me.
- qwertox 3y ago> I feel my own power Power over what? I've spent much time alone, driving, biking, but I'm not sure I understand what he means by feeling power.
- 2-718-281-828 3y agopower to go where you want, when you want.
- mahathu 3y agoI had that feeling once when I was driving and saw a bus full of school children on the other road. It reminded me of when I was at their age and wondering how amazing it must feel for all those strange people in the little cars to have the freedom to go wherever they want.
- Gordonjcp 3y agoPower to just do what you like. Power to go "you know what, I'm going to look and see what's down *that* road, I've never been that way before."
- qwertox 3y agoIsn't "freedom" then the better word?
- InCityDreams 3y agoCycling is good for that. I hit every street in what i thought was a tiny town i live nearest to...took ages, and it's on strava (so it counts). Took all day because i had all day. Place is a lot bigger than 'only' 8000 inhabitants would ever lead you to believe.
- Tade0 3y agoA comment from a while ago named it "asphalt therapy" and I think the name fits: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35003547 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35003547 I used to regularly drive 20h from where I lived to my family home to visit friends, show up in the office etc. Dangerous if you do it in one take, so I split it into two legs. I had no music on for the most part because it was tiring. Gave me a lot of time to ponder about some things in my life.
- debok 3y agoI did this a few times on a specific route. It was a +-R1400km trip where about two thirds is desert, and the last third is grasslands. The last time I did this was in January 2022. I find it very relaxing to drive alone on a highway for 16 hours straight, especially if you are taking it easy.
- Ambroos 3y agoI do this a lot, it's very relaxing and a good way to take time to just think. When I lived in Seattle I'd often extend my drive home from work by an hour or two. It really helps to turn off work mode. All my holidays are road trips. The longest one has been a 4400 mile EV (CCS) roadtrip in 2 weeks in July 2021, taking me from Seattle to Yellowstone to Arches to Big Sur and back. Now that I'm back in Europe and no longer own a car it's probably the one thing I miss most about living in the US, the amount of unseen roads available to go drive on.
- throwaway22032 3y agoThere are tons of "unseen roads" in Europe, you just have to get out of the populated bits. Northern Scandinavia and Scotland are two good examples. I agree that nothing quite compares to middle-of-nowhere USA or Canada, though.
- pjc50 3y agoScotland feels positively crowded in the tourist season. There aren't many roads but each of them is the only way in or out of a settlement without a massive detour. Especially if you're anywhere near the "North Coast 500". I think my greatest empty road experience was, oddly, on the A1; it was shortly after dawn, and for a brief period there were four empty lanes ahead of and behind me. The experience of being the only person in a space designed to be crowded.
- throwaway22032 3y agoOh yeah. I try to drive at night as often as possible for that reason. Driving in or around London at 4am is magnificent. Huge roads with no-one to use them.
- kayodelycaon 3y agoI remember being in Chicago on a Sunday morning. No traffic. No pedestrians. No sound other than the wind. I was the only person in sight for a few minutes. It was eerie but cool being somewhere that would be a parking lot in 24 hours. It's a similar feeling to being the only person in a hotel other than the employee at the front desk.
- mahathu 3y agoI was surprised this article was talking about driving alone in a car in nature, which is just a lamer version of going hiking, which is not cool, instead of driving alone in a car at night on the Autobahn, which is cool.
- taffronaut 3y agoOr - also cool - enjoying the solitude whilst driving along the road that the autobahn/motorway/highway replaced because you managed your time so as not to have to hurry to your destination.
- PartiallyTyped 3y agoThere's something beautiful to just seeing and observing your surroundings changing while you sit and mechanically drive with little to no thoughts.
- HPsquared 3y ago"Wir fahren, fahren, fahren auf der Autobahn Wir fahren, fahren, fahren auf der Autobahn"
- hprotagonist 3y agoI strongly prefer solo motorcycle travel, but it’s at the same time often poignant; i want to share specific moments with a few people, but it’s more or less impossible to do so. So you lean a bit further into the turn, breathe, enjoy the moment, and hope the people you’re thinking of will get that moment one day as well.
- leetrout 3y agoThere is something that you can only get flying an airplane solo or riding a motorcycle on roads outside of cities and traffic that I've yet to find a substitute for. The adrenaline. The air. The G's (even on small bike or small planes).
- hprotagonist 3y agothe smells are underrated. Slicing smoothly through the countryside on an empty road, golden hour after a spring rain, the smell of cow farm and cut hay, pulling through big sweepers fast enough to feel the countersteer but somehow dreamlike slow, nothing about the bike in your field of view, just the world and the wind? “i thank you god for most this amazing / day; for the leaping greenly spirits of trees”
- tiedieconderoga 3y agoYou might enjoy the classic philosophy novel, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_Maintenance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_...
- hprotagonist 3y agoOf the poppier books of musings and bikes, i like shop class as soul craft somewhat better. zen and… would have clicked for me if i had found it as a younger person, but by the time i got around to reading it i had already come around to the major focal points of the book by other means and the impact was less.
- geocrasher 3y agoI live in the western US. I didn't drive more than necessary because my only vehicle got 11-12mpg. I recently purchased a vehicle that gets 20-27mpg and can do light off-road travel as well, and just this weekend I went on a small expedition to camp, and when that destination was unreachable due to flooding, I had to improvise. I travelled roads I hadn't seen in 25 years or more, and many that I'd never seen at all. I was completely solo, and it was transformative in a wonderful way. Windows down, wind in my hair, radio off. I had a similar experience when moving 700mi to my current home. I even wrote a song about the effect that solo driving, windows down, radio off, mind fully engaged. It's a thing.
- ZeroFries 3y agoAlthough it's the riskiest time for deer, I love centering my road trips around dusk, so that you get some daylight, some golden hour softness, a beautiful sunset, and some darkness. It feels like a complete experience that way, a miniature but whole life cycle.
- mwattsun 3y agoI've taken about 40 solo road trips around North America, about 120,000 miles from Fairbanks, Alaska to San Felipe, Mexico to Key West, Florida to Nova Scotia, Canada and everyplace in between. All 50 states and most Canadian provinces. I spent all my software money but now have memories to replace it. I did that in an attempt to get sober. I realized that if I stayed home drinking I was going to die, so I moved out one day and hit the road. The experience now forms the foundation of my sobriety. "When I’m alone in epic nature, I feel my own power" is how the article describes it. I've never explained what I was doing to my family and no one ever asked, but this short article comes closest to an explanation.
- flir 3y agoI personally think set and setting is a massively underestimated tool in kicking addictions. Good for you.
- mwattsun 3y agoI agree. Sometimes getting away from certain people can be beneficial. As William Gibson said "Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes." Then there's that other saying "Everywhere you go, there you are" which points to yourself as the problem.
- jjtheblunt 3y agoI didn't know that quote, but I've thought the same thing often out walking with our dog and her dog friends (and my friends): that being exhausted by dealing with even a single asshole has seriously draining side effects, and that could look like being depressed. but the two things are very different. Thanks for sharing that quote!
- mwattsun 3y agoWilliam Gibson gets credit for it, but he tells people he retweeted it from one of his followers according to the story I read. You're welcome.
- manicennui 3y agoI lived in the city without a car for over a decade and just started driving again regularly last year. For some reason I absolutely hate driving on highways now. I recently drove from the Chicago area to the Ann Arbor area, and I absolutely hated it. Over the last week I've taken several trips farther into the NW suburbs and really enjoyed it. The big difference was hours of monotonous highways versus some heavily wooded areas.
- JPws_Prntr_Fngr 3y agoSimilar experience here. I'm almost certain that American drivers got even worse over the last 6 years as I was holed up in the city. Maybe it's more distraction from phones, worse controls/UX... or maybe drivers ed has gotten even worse. American roads have always been filled with absolute morons - maybe our IQ is dropping? Whatever the reason, I despise driving now, until I get to the mountain backroads.
- tptacek 3y agoI used to do that drive about once a week. It can be lovely from Chicago to just around Benton Harbor (hug the bottom of the lake), and then plan to stop in K'zoo to break up the drive.
- karaterobot 3y agoWhen you're on a solo road trip and everything lines up—empty, winding road, golden hour lighting, perfect song comes up on shuffle—its magic and sacred. But a lot of the time, it's also about you driving behind someone going five miles an hour under the speed limit on a two-lane road for 50 miles, or desperately looking for a place to poop that isn't a rancid vault toilet.
- vidanay 3y agoSemi truck in the right lane going 65 MPH and another semi truck in the left lane going 65.1 MPH.
- karaterobot 3y agoI call this "dipshit formation"
- lanstin 3y agoif you aren't in a rush, this experience need not harsh your chill.
- brewdad 3y agoGet yourself a car with adaptive cruise control. I've found not needing to manage my speed constantly really helps deal with these types of driving scenarios. Of course, it also helps if you don't really have a timeline to meet for that trip. :)
- shagie 3y agoFollowing getting laid off in June of '09, I did my "great unemployed road trip". Starting from SF... Seattle; Pacific City, OR; (up the coast) Astoria, OR; (down the coast) Bandon, OR; Lassen, CA; Crescent City, CA; Astoria, OR; Pendleton, OR; Mt. Hood (Romana Falls); Forks, WA; Mt. Rainier; Seattle; Banff, AB; Waterton, AB; Glacier NP; Yellowstone NP; Salt Lake City, UT; Vernal, UT; Moab, UT; Denver, CO; Taos, NM; Aspen, CO (car broke - got a new one in Glenwood Springs); Lake City, CO; Steamboat Springs, CO; Devils Tower; Mitchel, SD; and then to family. This lasted from June through October and had two oil changes on the way... and a new car (the old car was repaired and my family took the train out to pick it up and drive it back - just that I wasn't going to sit in Glenwood Springs for a week while the part was ordered). It was just me, my camping equipment (went camping in some locations), and my cameras. No responsibilities, no job, no apartment, no dependents. I'm glad I did it then - I was younger and had the energy / endurance to do long days of driving and/or hiking with a heavy pack. I wouldn't have quite the same freedom now (house and cat) or endurance (I did a too long day returning from the eclipse in '17 that would have been OK a decade earlier).
- rconti 3y agoThis really spoke to me. I also love traveling alone but especially love road-tripping alone. I think part of it is the focus. When I'm driving, I'm doing exactly what I need to be doing, right when I need to be doing it. There aren't bills to pay, laundry to do. There isn't the feeling that I "should" be doing something else. I can enjoy the scenery, and listen to music or podcasts. My mind can wander, a little bit, but it can't wander too far from the task at hand.
- NoGravitas 3y agoThis has got to be the most boomer article ever written. In praise of the atomized self in the automobile, not a word about carbon emissions, or the inefficiency of using a whole car to transport just one person.
- LispSporks22 3y agoRather do it on a motorcycle though. You feel more connected to the world around you.
- lanstin 3y agoeven more so with a bicycle or walking but there isnt a recipe for everyone here.
- boredumb 3y ago"How do you know someone's a cyclist? Don't worry, they'll tell you"
- jjkaczor 3y agoHeh - just did a road-trip from Ontario to DC a couple weeks ago, alone, brand new Audi rental - and my phone loaded with tunes. About 10-hrs each way, enjoyed it immensely.
- wglb 3y agoDriving was likely the largest single component of the wheat farm I grew up on. Truck to haul water and wheat, tractor to summerfallow and seed, tractor pulling baler to bale hay and straw, swather to lay down rows of barley and wheat, combine to harvest. Some of these were pretty tricky to drive — the swather had a small engine driving a pair of variable diameter pulleys, one for each wheel plus reversing pedals. Took my dad a year to master that one. The definition of mastery here was the ability to smoke his pipe. Certainly an odd thing to do in the midst of a wheat field where the humidity would hover around single digit percentages. Also about hauling water https://william-g-lederer.net/daily//blog/2008/03/13/HaulingWater.html https://william-g-lederer.net/daily//blog/2008/03/13/Hauling... I wrote about that kind of driving here https://william-g-lederer.net/daily//blog/2008/06/01/Driving.html https://william-g-lederer.net/daily//blog/2008/06/01/Driving... Later I would be able to do recreational driving, often along US 2 in northern Montana or along state road 5. Going through rare counties for my ham radio buddies. And driving was a key component of a cousin’s reunion https://william-g-lederer.net/daily//blog/2007/05/25/TheSummerthattimestoodstillPart4Onthewayhome.html https://william-g-lederer.net/daily//blog/2007/05/25/TheSumm...