B-road Fun
I asked my friends once, ‘when was the last time you were truly happy?’ The answers were pretty diverse and interesting. The overall consensus though was that it seems that life doesn’t often allow opportunities for true happiness. Happiness isn’t the easiest thing to find in this modern world of ours; it seems we are always overcome with worry or in the midst of a crisis to be averted. Some people turn to religion for their dose of happiness, in general an accelerator and a steering wheel has always worked for me.
It always amazes me, the feelings that a machine made of rubber, metal and glass can evoke. Now, I am not suggesting that driving will cure all that ails, but for a little boost of happiness it has always worked for me. In that spirit, I decided to take a drive this evening. In general, these little excursions of mine are generally not planned affairs, the only real thing I rely on for guidance is my cursory knowledge of direction and my memory. I have lived in this area for about 10 years, so I have a decent grasp of where roads cross major highways. For today’s run, I set off west on Lewisville’s Main Street, I have a good idea that this road leaves the city relatively quickly and ends up winding through ranch country pretty quickly. It was an interesting start, driving along at near the speed limit, the car in front of me got nicked by the Flower Mound rozzers, this warned me that I should probably keep the needle under or around the speed limit on this one, a notion underscored as I drove past a black and white hiding lights off in the drive of a ranch. The speed limits backed off a bit and got a little less intrusive as I left Lewisville and Flower mound behind. The windows came down, so I could enjoy the growl of what has to be one of the most angry 2.5 litre four cylinder engines in existence. The Rogue produces 170bhp about twice what my old Mirage produced and seems to put it to the road way more effectively through the CVT and a very intelligent AWD system. I almost started enjoying having to stop for red lights. It turns out you can have lots fun on back roads, even when not straying too far above the posted limit. Pretty soon I had eaten up enough countryside that I had made it to the western leg of the I35 split, but no matter, I just jumped on and did a few highway miles enjoying the feeling of watching the 18 wheelers hauling up the highway disappearing in the rear view mirror. I chose an exit that looked to not have too much civilization around it and jumped back on the b-roads. Happiness had found me, windows down, some down tempo music coming through the stereo. Even when I encountered a horse box trundling along at 30 below the posted limit, the happiness stayed with me. I continued to drive along, biding my time enjoying the music, waiting for the solid line to melt into dashes as it soon did. My foot pushed the pedal to the carpet and I simply made the horse box disappear, leaving me with a smile on my face. Not even civilization fading back in was enough to take the smile away. The smile lasted all the way back to my car port, where I left the Rogue to tick herself cool. It was a good run, and a good way to start the week.
