2025-10-06: like i'm nineteen again

tomorrow i'm taking the day off work to take the car in for an oil change and get the winter tires on. doing a lot of driving later in the week, and won't have time to get the tires re-torqued, so my plan is to head east out of the city and keep driving. i used to do something like this when i was younger, 18, 19, just after i got my license: i'd drive into the night and turn back when i felt like it or when i felt the gas was getting low. there was a feeling of freedom in this. i wasn't going anywhere except in that moment. i was broke but i had this.

i need to put 100km or so on the car before i go to get re-torqued, so my plan is to just head outside the city, get on the highway, keep going. find some small towns, stop (unusual for me: my partner is like my dad: point A to point B, no stopping: but this is my trip, and i'm like my mum, who likes to stop and look at things). take some pictures. buy a coke or something. keep going.

unironically this doesn't feel like an imposition but instead strangely exciting, the knowledge that i'm driving with no fixed destination, that it's not costing me anything but a bit of gas. get back, get the tires re-torqued, come home. let the dogs out, play a bit of fiddle and guitar.

when i was 19 i'd drive and think about the places i'd rather be instead: driving across the states, driving out east to visit my online friends. any one of a dozen scenarios that'd never come to pass. in retrospect, i met up with the wrong online friends, never met up again with the ones who treated me right. the tyranny of hindsight. time to think about that tomorrow as the horizon meets the sky.

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