Road Trip

Two in one day…you know it’s seri­ous.

I’m dri­ving out to see Darren for the week­end. He’s five hours away, and it’ll be my first trip out of the city in the car. My car.

There’s a cer­tain sat­is­fac­tion to fill­ing my trunk with odds and ends — tri­pod, san­dals, snacks — that I could­n’t have car­ried on a Greyhound bus. Got my GPS and a full tank of gas.

I had Summer Sun by Ellen ten Damme play­ing here.

I can’t wait to dri­ve with the win­dows down while the sun is set­ting along the hori­zon, Summer Sun play­ing on the stereo. To be going some­where by myself.

Free.

Killed my top rat­ed playlist at work. Even have all the songs burned to sev­er­al CDs for the trip. My head is filled with lyrics. I may also begin my audio­book of Carson McCullers’s The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.

I’m going through some hyper­ac­tive eupho­ria again, this con­tra­dic­to­ry feel­ing of the scary and excit­ing unknown. The best part about hang­ing out with Darren is that each of us under­stands exact­ly how the oth­er feels, even though we may not under­stand it in our­selves. Something which is espe­cial­ly impor­tant right now, even though I’m pret­ty sure I’ll be okay.

I just need to get away for a while.

7 comments

  1. Watch out dude…if the Conservatives have their way you could get sued for post­ing music online like this. Motherfuckers…

    On a pos­i­tive note though, enjoy your road trip! Long dri­ves with music are so ther­a­peu­tic.

  2. i always enjoyed the dri­ve from Ottawa to Toronto, dri­ving down the 401 with my music blast­ing, win­dows down (in the sum­mer at least)… get­ting caught singing my heart out by passers by. (and not feel­ing the least bit embar­rased!)

    I use to turn my music right down when i drove over the test paint-strips head­ing back on the 401 east. (i’d even slow down enough to stay in the right hand lane just to dri­ve over them).

    I hope you enjoyed your road­ie, what a great week­end for it!

  3. Oh, how I love road­trips. Too bad the price of gas is just astro­nom­i­cal.

  4. Nice song post :D

    Last time when I drove up to Ottawa to your place I lis­tened to the entire ETD album when I was on the 416 haha.. Summer Sun is my fav song to lis­ten to on a mel­low sun­ny day… There are two ver­sions of rain ros­es and I want to hear the ver­sion that’s not on the album sooo bad­ly but I can’t find it any­where.. I haven’t heard that ver­sion in like 5 years and I’m sure you have it some­where on your com­put­er..

    I hope you had a good time down here even though you were only hear for basi­cal­ly one day… hope­ful­ly next time you can stay longer… I’m so tired right now… take care and gl

  5. @trolley — Posting music is also against my host’s terms-of-ser­vice, some­thing I got my account sus­pend­ed for once already. Sometimes, a song real­ly express­es what I want to say though, so the risk is worth for me. Then I take the song down after a week.

    @loo — My voice start­ed to get hoarse after singing so loud­ly, but it’s hard to stop singing when the right song comes on. I also tried to have the win­dows down, but the rush of air made my skin numb rather quick­ly. This prob­a­bly pro­tect­ed oth­er dri­vers from hear­ing me belt out the tunes.

    @Maeko — Yeah, the gas prices are get­ting worse and worse. I was able to make it one way on a lit­tle over half a tank, which is still cheap­er than a bus tick­et.

    @Darren — I have you to thank for intro­duc­ing me to Ellen ten Damme. I think I have that ver­sion of Rain Roses lying around too, I’ll take a look for you. Let me know what you think of that music I gave you.

    I had an awe­some time. Keep a list of the movies you want to see, and we’ll save it for next time.

  6. Is it legal to post an excerpt? What a ridicu­lous rule. Is it because peo­ple can grab the tunes? I mean how many peo­ple would know how? Corporate stran­gle­holds are just ruin­ing us.

    It is appalling to me that peo­ple who are ful­ly aware of the ben­e­fits of the YouTube viral mind­set would ter­ror­ize indi­vid­ual site own­ers over cre­at­ing a mood or ben­e­fit­ting an artist by allow­ing some air play (less than even a radio sta­tion might). In my day (cough cough cough) we would have prob­a­bly found out where the bas­tards lived and pub­licly tor­ment­ed them until they gave us back our rights.

    BTW, I was up in Vancouver recent­ly and WOW gas is ridicu­lous. But the awe­some Chinese food was worth it. Siu long bao! Hmmmmmm.

    Sounds like your breather was well worth it. Would love to have heard you bel­low­ing from anoth­er car.

  7. I’m not sure on the rules of an excerpt, but I doubt it’s legal, from what I’ve read about pod­casts. It’s not so much that peo­ple can take the music, but that you’re using it with­out per­mis­sion. There are sev­er­al things that Canadian’s can do to stop the process, but I’m not sure how effec­tive it’ll be in the end.

    I did­n’t have any Chinese food while I was there, but I made up for it with oth­er eth­nic foods that are unavail­able here in Ottawa.

    And trust me, you would­n’t want to have heard me singing…there’s a rea­son why I do it alone, or too qui­et for oth­er peo­ple to hear when they’re around.

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