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Just Get in the Car THE TRIALS AND JUBILATIONS OF THE ROAD TRIP By Christie Matherne
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n December of 2005, I was twenty and had just completed my third semester at Louisiana State University when I jumped into my friend Josh’s car with four other people headed to Colorado Springs. The road trip was ill-advised, at best. It was the end of December, our destination was near the Rocky Mountains, only one of us had ever driven in snow, and the car had an oil leak that required constant topping-off. My life would’ve been made infinitely easier if I had stayed home to work more shifts at my restaurant job; and the day we left, I was running a fever of 101. Halfway to Texas, we learned that the car—which was owned by my friend’s mother—was not even insured. With zero good reasons to go, I went anyway, due to blissful, youthful inexperience. Like the Fool in a tarot deck, I was a clean slate, ready to leap off a cliff—because, why not? Blind to the dark cloud of inevitable risk, I saw only the possibility of adventure. What could possibly go wrong?
In the years to come, I would take many, many more road trips, learning a little more each time about everything that can go wrong by entrusting so many hours at once to a speeding hunk of metal. The biggest lesson I’ve learned in my almost-two decades of roadtripping is that the peace of mind awarded by a trustworthy mechanic and a current membership to a roadside assistance plan is worth every penny.
A Geyser on Pikes Peak
This theory was unfortunately put to the test on a recent drive to Pikes Peak. My parents had flown in from Baton Rouge with my eight-year-old nephew, Garret, to visit my now-husband Josh and me in Denver, where we lived. It was my nephew’s first time in Colorado, and I wanted to make sure he got wowed. The Pikes Peak Highway is not a road for people who are afraid of heights, or for drivers inexperienced with steep downslopes. The top of the highway is
over fourteen thousand feet above sea level, and the drive begins at around five thousand feet. That’s nearly ten thousand feet of ascent over less than twenty miles. There are brake-checking stations for tourists on the way down the mountain, where rangers check each vehicle’s brakes to make sure they aren’t melting. My parents possess a standard flat-lander’s fear of heights—the kind that makes you subconsciously grip the handles above the door, and let out a queasy “woo!” on the downslopes of a hilly road. But poor Garret was afraid of heights. During the two hours that we ascended from four thousand feet to thirteen thousand, Garret faced his fear in the backseat, talking himself through waves of anxiety. My mom was making a video with her phone from the backseat because we were near fourteen thousand feet, coming up on the final few switchbacks, and Garret was in the throes of awe. He had never seen anything like it. Suddenly, I realized I had the gas pedal all the way down and nothing was happening. The engine was not shifting, despite the high RPMs. Less oxygen up here, I thought, hoping we could eke just a little further to the top without incident. This happens on Vail Pass too, I reassured myself, and I always make it up that one, right? Vail Pass is less than eleven-thousand feet above sea level, and we
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