In the Car

The place Between Places

No matter where you’re seated in your road trip vehicle, the rhythms of the road ultimately end up lulling you into a sort of trance. Song after song spins; view after view passes; mile and minute tick onwards. 

In the driver’s seat, with command over air conditioning and music selection, eyes flit from the odometer to the fuel gauge to the rearview mirrors. Shouted conversations from the backseat drift forward, met with chuckles and the occasional sly comment from the driver.

In the passenger seat, rants roll on and stories are spun to keep the dear driver entertained. Navigational skills are tested on Google and Apple Maps; bladders are tested as iced coffee after iced coffee is downed.

In the backseat, minds wander and heads turn to take in stupefying green hills and miraculous blue waters. Naps are indulged, snacks are snuck, and minds zone out as long stretches of highway blur into geographical incomprehensibility.

Randomly generated car assignments make each Caravan excursion an intense bonding activity. Strangers meet, breaking the ice with majors, minors, and housing details; a hundred miles later, friends divulge tales of trips past, lives led, and maybe even the occasional piece of hot gossip, connecting in this place between places. 

Eventually, the vehicle becomes a sanctuary. Comments and secrets bounce around its four metal walls, animacy alighting this loving box as, somehow, the best, brightest memories of the trip are played out and reproduced with each turn of the wheel.

The sanctity of car conversations is known by every suburban teenager across the country. What happens in the car stays in the car, but the connections created transcend it. This microclimate monitored by music, A/C, naps, talks, chit-chat, road games, and realignment of seating positions is pleasant no matter the weather outside, comforting no matter the right or wrong roads traveled. 

A good road trip is not the destination or even the journey itself. It’s how interconnection, the interdependence between travelers, can best be originated and evolve. 

A great road trip is one where riders and drivers in a car leave sharing inside jokes; where laughs and teasing remarks ring out over car-made playlists; where when you get to where you’re going, you almost long to be back in the consoling arms of a blue Prius’ seat. 

Words: Kat Shok

Photos: Eden Porras Harth