To Travel Hopefully

There’s so much about a road trip that mimics real life, and yet I, for one, am slow to apply the lessons of one to the other.

Arizona is an enormous state (sixth in line after Alaska, Texas, California, Montana and New Mexico), so getting from one place to another here takes a while. Driving from where I live in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa to my mother’s cabin outside Prescott, for instance, is a two-and-a-half-hour commitment, yet my family takes it in stride and thinks nothing of it. Buckle the seatbelts and go, and just chill until you’re there. Even my kids get this, and are generally (and atypically) patient about the process.

Why, then, is patience so hard in other realms of life? The same guy who can sit motionless for a numb-butted six-hour drive to San Diego can look at the clock on a dreary workday afternoon and nearly come unglued that it’s only 3:00. Or put that guy in a situation where he’s waiting for a bad thing to go away—or a good thing to arrive—and he wants to scream.

I think the main difference between “road trip patience” and “life patience” is the distinct lack of visible progress that’s so common to the latter. What with in-car GPS telling you where you are, scenery whizzing by and regular Interstate signs assuring you of the dwindling number of miles to your destination, you know precisely when that fidgety are-we-there-yet part of your brain will get some relief.

Real life calls for a different sort of endurance.

God appears to understand that “life patience” does not come naturally. Why else would there be a Bible verse that says, “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer?” Everything about that sentence feels like a ticking clock—a slowly ticking clock on which the hour hand is on knock-out drops. Google “Bible verses on patience” and see what you find. That verse is by no means alone. Evidently—and bluntly—this is something we humans appear to suck at.

And yet, when I look back over every life situation that’s required endurance, I see that all of them—100 percent—came to an end. Just like a road trip. I set out, I drove . . . I got there.

Apparently, then, the only unendurable life situation is . . . whichever one we’re in right now. And only because we can’t clearly see the end from here. But again, looking back at other equally unendurable situations, I recognize that I was never without road signs. I was never without something (or someone) that let me know I was, in fact, getting somewhere.

It’s curious that some of the most fun memories of childhood road trips weren’t the destinations, but the traveling—playing “I Spy” or “Slug Bug” with my sisters, reading as my Dad took us cross-country hauling a travel trailer, or just seeing new and different things pass by. Getting where we were going? That was a given with Dad at the wheel, so I relaxed and enjoyed the trip.

Would I go so far as Robert Louis Stevenson, who said, “To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive?” No. Arriving is good. But so is the journey. Waiting isn’t wasted time. Joy, patience, faith—they let the miles roll by easily.

Trust

            For a guy who’s addicted to all the sensations associated with driving—the rush of wind, the blur of passing landscape, the visceral thrill of all the physical forces associated with motion—I can be confoundingly complacent.

            It was six years between college and my first fulltime job.  Another six elapsed between meeting my wife and marrying her.  Seven more until kid number-one.  And despite periodically pondering a job change, it’s been 23 years since I took my current job—the aforementioned first fulltime job after college.

            You could chalk it up to paralysis by analysis (of which I’m certainly guilty), but the simple truth is this: When it comes to life’s big things, I’ve always thought that unless I know exactly what to do next, I should just sit still.  Until I figure it out.

            It’s ironic, then, that stuck to the cork board in front of me at work are these call-to-action Bible verses: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.”

Why’d I choose that one?  I don’t know.  If the only cough syrups that really work taste the opposite of good, then, by extension, it makes sense to choose a passage that’s the opposite of what I actually do.

            I want to do what the verses suggest, mind you, but here’s the holdup: “Trust” is a motion-word.   I mean, you can’t really sit still and understand anything about trust, can you?  Just as you can’t know anything about a car’s handling unless you’re driving it, or can’t steer a boat unless it’s sailing, you can’t sit still and figure out trust “in theory.”  You pretty much have no idea whether trust works until you’re doing something that requires it.

            Unfortunately, moving forward is what I rarely risk doing.  But lately I’ve taken a tentative step or two, and I’m starting to understand that there are some things you just can’t grasp until you’re moving.

            Now, I’m not devaluing the importance of planning, or suggesting that any motion is always better than no motion.  If you’re at the edge of a cliff, not moving forward is wise.  But in those tidbits of Solomonic wisdom above, don’t miss where it says to consult God “in all your ways.”   “Ways” are passages where motion happens, right?  The way you do things, the way you’re going, the way you get from here to there.  You can have a map that shows the way, but you need to take it off the wall and bring it with you to see what the map really means.  Mile after mile, you begin nodding in understanding as the map comes alive, the squiggly lines turning into real places instead of ink on a page.

 I’m a fan of the British TV show Top Gear, and not too long ago they took an enlightening spin in a Formula 1 car.  Literally.  Despite the enormous mechanical grip the car derived from its low stance and fat tires, they were constantly spinning out in corners.  Why?  They weren’t going fast enough.  You see, much of what enables a Formula 1 car to take turns at vomit-inducing speeds is the aerodynamic downforce generated by the nose and tail wings.  But that invisible force can’t work until there’s enough air going over the wings to bring them into play.  When the Top Gear drivers finally trusted the car’s owner and counterintuitively mashed the gas even harder, the car settled down and took corners the way it was supposed to.

            Pretty funny, isn’t it?  A force you can’t see or understand, and that doesn’t work until you’re moving.  I wonder if Solomon was a race fan?

           

God Bless Wes

            God bless my neighbor Wes.  I may not have the disposable income to own a collector car, but by golly, Wes does.

            Three of them.

            A Vietnam vet and retired drug sales rep, Wes moved in across the street a few years ago.  I may be misremembering, but when I saw the carmine 1954 Buick Special and white 1969 Pontiac Firebird 400 he brought with him, I believe radiant halogen beams shot down from heaven, and a small garage band of angels sang Route 66.

            Since then, Wes has added a 1972 Pontiac Luxury Le Mans to his stable.  It’s red with a white vinyl roof, and it has those half-covers over the rear wheels.  Not really my style, but who cares?  It’s an old car and it’s in great condition.

            Here’s how this relationship works: I go out on Saturday morning to mow, and somewhere along the line Wes’s garage door goes up, signaling the start of a car-fiddling session.  Wes saunters over, I shut off the mower, and he fills me in on the latest headlight bezel he’s polished, cruise control he’s added or firewall he’s painted.  It’s an excuse for me to go over and have my own personal mini car show, and I always welcome it.

Thanks to Wes, I’ve enjoyed access to award-winning vintage cars on a level I’d never have had otherwise.  The Buick was even “Miss January” in a Hemming’s Motor News calendar a few years ago.  He’s let me touch them, sit in them and crawl under them.  Sometimes—be still my heart—he’s even let me help him work on them.  (Okay, “help” really needs to be in quotes there.)  But then came the day when Wes officially became The Coolest Neighbor Ever.  It was the day he let me drive—yes, drive—the Firebird.

 

The Firebird had always been my favorite.  I gravitate toward it, inquire about it more, and generally just can’t stop looking at it.  And Wes knows that.  A few weeks ago, he asked whether Jake, my 14-year-old, might like to earn a few bucks waxing the ’Bird.  I was only partially joking when I suggested that I should be the one waxing it, and that I’d do it for free.

Turns out there was something for me in the deal after all.  When Jake finished and we were looking the car over (it’s white, so missed wax can be hard to spot), Wes suggested Jake and I take the Firebird for a drive and handed me the keys.

The keys. 

What an incredible time machine.  Jake and I quickly got over the lousy vinyl seats, the thin-rimmed plastic steering wheel, the vague brakes and the squishy suspension (and, for that matter, the lack of shoulder belts): All we cared about was the rumble from that large V8, the view over that sexy hood, and the looks we got tooling around East Mesa with the windows down.  My son and I were both powerless to stop grinning like idiots.  “I’ve never driven in a car like this!” Jake shouted.

Truth is, neither had I.  A co-worker once let me drive his clapped-out ’65 Corvette, but it was in need of so much work that it was hardly representative of its class.  Wes’s 1969 Firebird 400 looks like it just rolled out of the showroom.  After the drive, I half expected to turn on the TV and hear Neil Armstrong giving the “One small step for man” speech on a grainy black-and-white TV, or to find True Grit still in theaters.  Although a modern-day Honda Civic is a superior machine in nearly every respect, that old Firebird provided something a Civic never could: An experience.  Jake and me in a fine old machine on a sunny afternoon.  Hard to beat.

I keep hoping that fate will conspire to allow me the finances to afford my own hobby car someday—say, a 1969 Corvette convertible.  My plea with God is that a fun car like that would make a good bonding experience for my boys and me.  But maybe God knows what he’s doing: as it stands, I’m having loads of fun while Wes pays the bills and does all the work.

Indeed, God bless my neighbor Wes.