Humbloggery

My dad learned to drive at the age of 13 in an old Ford that belonged to his father. I, on the other hand, learned at the age of 20 in our trusty Mitsubishi Galant. I remember that car fondly because it was the only car my father ever bought brand spanking new. That was in 1991. It's funny how I grew up in a tiny two-room apartment but my dad always seemed to have two cars, both, of course, not running. Both the cars that I grew up with were 2-door sedans and my sister and I considered four doors to be an amazing luxury. Not having to plop front seats forward before clambering in using yoga-like stretching was definitely priceless. Even when the Mazda 121 (hilariously known as the Mazda Cosmo elsewhere; Japanese carmakers have the funniest names for their Japanese market cars as a visit to Toyota's Japanese website will confirm) and the BMW 3-series died, we had two Mitsubishi Lancers that we interchanged, one blue and the other brown. Finally, though we settled on the Galant. By 2000 when I learned to drive in it, the car was on its last legs. I'm sure I wasn't too gentle on the clutch.

After moving to Detroit, I had a month of mandatory learner's permit driving in a Hyundai Accent that my dad's friend Ahsan bought for me. I drove on that permit to Chicago and back, which I guess would qualify as my first road trip. Pretty uneventful as far as I can remember, except that it was 18 hours long and I had a cramp in my right foot from all the driving. I lost the car about 7 months later when I couldn't take living with Ahsan any longer and moved closer to downtown, near campus. And so when I moved from Detroit to Oklahoma via Philly, the first major road trip I ever took, I did it in a Buick Regal that National Rentals was nice enough to let me return free of charge at Tulsa International Airport. Thinking back now, I did it extremely unprepared and without a lot of driving experience under my belt. I don't think I ever checked my tire pressure, I didn't have a first aid kit and I had all of my possessions in the trunk and back seat.

In a way, that trip was boring. I only used interstates, and I drove a lot on I-70, which is only interesting in the Appalachians. I visited my friend Viswam in Philly, which was the whole point of the outlandish detour between Detroit and Oklahoma. I liked Philly a lot, although coming from Detroit that might not amount to much. I mostly remember walking around South Street and taking exception to the perceived rudeness of a waiter in an Indian restaurant. I remember watching the fireworks near the bridge into New Jersey on a bitterly cold New Year's Eve 2001. There's some bitterness attached to Viswam too, who graduated from Temple and got a job somewhere in Connecticut and then promptly disappeared from my life and the lives of all his older friends. I'm not sure exactly what happened or what I or the others did, but he just stopped talking. He still exists, of this I know, but apparently has no interest whatsoever in communicating with all the people he knew back in college in Dubai. Makes me a bit sad because I liked my old Vinu B.

The other friend I visited on that trip (Jacob was the first in Dayton; another disappearing act of sorts, but somehow less bitterly felt) was Sadi in Wichita, Kansas. Sadi was an amazingly funny guy from Tajikistan who was just a sweetheart. He loved his souped up Nissan Sentra and lived with a bunch of Indian guys. I had driven about 12 hours from Plainfield, Indiana to get to Kansas and he was still closing down the Burger King where he worked. He let me in and fed me, and I promptly fell asleep while trying to write something in my trip journal. I think he's got three kids or something now and is working in his dad's bank back in Dushanbe. I never got to see him again despite living only 2 and a half hours away.

There were other, more minor road trips while I lived in Oklahoma, one of which ended badly, and upside down, on a state highway in New Mexico. Perhaps I'll condense those in another post before I relate the tale of my visit to a girl nicknamed Bubbles in Nebraska in 2006. It was during that trip that I made the decision to move to Portland.