Louise's thoughts

Road Trip

The last few days I have been on the road, driven more than 800 miles back and forth between LA and Oakland, to visit my aunt and uncle one last time before I leave for Denmark. It was wonderful to see them, short but nice. My aunt is 81 but we spent time looking at yarn and shopping nail polish and lipstick. She is one of the most cheerful people I know and even though we have only known each other personally for about 4 years, she is incredible hospitable every time I go visit them or need a place to stay for a few days in the Bay Area. I usually go to San Francisco when I am there (it is my 3rd favorite city in the whole world), but this time I was so exhausted from paper writing, celebration and well, driving up there, that I just hung out with my aunt and uncle all day. I had a great time, because sometimes older people are just so blunt and honest, telling stories of back when it was okay to call a shovel a shovel (admitted, that is a Danish expression, which sounds weird in English, but I believe a bit of mixing is in order since my aunt is half Danish). My aunt was a flight attendant in the forties and fifties, back when they were actually nurses and mainly there for safety reasons. She vividly tells about when they went over the mountains and they had to serve the passengers oxygen; this was before pressure cabins. My uncle was a sea captain for the US Marine and served during several wars before going into the juke box business! I have to admit that Betty and Fred are like the grandparents I never had.

Driving up I5 all alone is quite boring and I was glad that Prince, Kylie, Pink and Britney kept me company. After getting out of LA's packed traffic on the 405, the freeway decrease to only two lanes, which immediately gave me flashbacks to the motorways in Denmark. The good part was that Americans are far friendlier drivers than Danes and I only once had one of those '3 feet behind you' maniacs drive up and trying to push me. Fact was that I was already driving 85, which I find quite fast, and there were several other cars right in front of me, so that was just the speed of traffic. After him aggressively passing all of us on the inside (when he finally had room), he continued out towards the horizon, only to be hitting heavy traffic on the 580 about half an hour later where I caught up with him. So much for speeding and annoying the rest of us. But as I mentioned, there are few of these drivers here, most American drivers are patient and considerate and I find that it is contagious. I always let people in and I always keep a good distance to the next car, not only to keep him in a comfortable mood but also because the chance of hitting a car is negatively correlated to the distance you keep to it.

On my way back two days later, I stopped at one of the larger travel centers (they are actually called that!) that featured a Star Bucks, nice sunshine and a gorgeous view of the mountains. I was sitting enjoying my ice-mocha, checking my email on my cell phone and this nice man casually chatted with me on his way out to the car. It made me in such a good mood and I realized that this is what I will miss the most about the US. The fact that people just talk to you, and that they are sincere about it. This guy was clearly on a road trip from A to B as well and just needed to make sure his voice still worked. And in the process I found out that mine was still there despite hours of screaming together with Robbie Williams.