Driving

This post is about driving, specifically about driving our Subaru, something I have been doing quite a bit of lately. Most of the trips are in and out of the city, winding up and down the hills on Purcell’s Cove Road and figuring out the best route to take once I get into town, or deciding how to get out of town and then navigating Purcell’s Cove Road on the way home.  What I love the most about it is the opportunity for a kind of seamless smoothness in the journey.

When I used to commute from here to Uniacke District School, which I did for seven years, I wasn’t particularly aware of that aesthetic in my travels.  For one thing I was either heading to school, getting ready in my mind for what the day might bring, or I was heading home, processing the events of the day and preparing to be clear of them in order to focus on supper instead.  For another, I always had CBC Radio going so it was Information Morning one way and Mainstreet the other, and the heavy traffic was always going in the opposite direction so I didn’t have much to contend with.  As a result, I didn’t really think about smoothness in the drive, I just drove.

When we first moved to Istanbul and travelled during our orientation period on school service buses, I was happy to just watch out the window, but I was also getting itchy to drive.  Part of it was the way others talked about the difficulties of driving there, and part of it was just watching the way the traffic moved, or sometimes didn’t.  Soon enough we got a car, and soon enough we were both driving, heading out from campus onto the TEM or down to the D100 or the sahil yolu (seaside road).  It was a challenge, and you quickly learned to check your mirrors and every angle through your windows because the drivers on the TEM were often fairly fast (like coming up behind you at about 160 and flashing their lights at you as you are passing a long truck and can’t easily get out of the way), fairly aggressive (like riding your bumper so close at 120 that you can’t even see their lights in your rear view), and fairly daring (like using every lane and the paved shoulder to weave their way through traffic at 140).  It was a challenge, but if you liked driving (as we do), it was worth engaging in.

Lorraine noted early on that the key was fluidity, keeping the flow going; as she put it, If you can go, you must.  There was little room for hesitation, and too much politeness (You go.  No, you go.) just interfered with that necessary flow.  So we got into the flow, with some trepidation at first, and started to develop a feel for driving in Istanbul (driving in the rest of Turkiye is a piece of cake by comparison) and the kind of confidence you need to keep going with the flow and keep the flow going.

Now we are back in Nova Scotia where there are few challenges when we set out for the city or its environs, and in the absence of a challenge you need to develop an aesthetic, which is the seamless smoothness I have mentioned.  It’s important to me to be driving a standard, to make my shifts at the right moment so that they are almost imperceptible, to use my brakes as little as possible, to change lanes strategically and elegantly, to get from A to B as smoothly and efficiently as possible, and to pay attention to the sometimes reckless behavior of Halifax pedestrians (in Istanbul they knew how to cross roads without interfering substantially with the flow).

There is, with the exception of pedestrian unpredictability and the inconsiderate actions of some drivers, the relaxation of driving, something that comes with the smoothness of flow and is connected with those right brain activities it requires: scanning the road, anticipating the moves ahead of you, watching the seconds count down on the Walk/Don’t Walk signs, and moving the car through it all like a larger body you inhabit to the place you are heading for.   

If you are, like me, a language person, these periods you spend in the other side of your brain when you are driving can be both peaceful and productive, as thoughts and ideas find space to emerge and blossom, except of course when you come up behind a Pontiac Vibe that is going too slowly or a Mercedes that keeps braking for no conceivable reason.  My road rage in these cases is limited to mild expletives addressed to the car itself, and most of the time I enjoy the meditative calm of a good drive.

I know something of the environmental costs of driving and try to minimize them, but because of where we live and where we sometimes need to go, those costs are sometimes unavoidable.  Given that, I believe it is important, and in fact something I do take pleasure in, to drive well.  You can’t tell, I’m sure, if you see me driving that I am cultivating an aesthetic, but if you notice me coming down the steep hill into the Cove and rounding the corner by Kiley’s at the bottom without needing to brake, you should know that I am feeling a small sense of satisfaction. 

 It’s the satisfaction that comes from being one with the Subaru and moving through it all smoothly and well.