Giddyup Go

I’m always a sucker for holidays. And even though April Fool’s day is probably not regarded as a real holiday, I am still celebrating its arrival. I’m happy to see April arrive because I’m happy to see March go. March was dull and bothersome. All I did was tend picky little administrative chores. Nobody gives you points for this stuff. It has made me restless.

The only way to shake these blahs is to take a road trip. I’m going to spend April planning one out. Then I’m going to gas up, mount up and giddyup go.

It’s in my American blood. It’s a true fact that on the open highway at 70 mph, with Red Sovine playing on the stereo, a bag of beef jerky perched near the gear shifter, and the dim hum of rubber rolling on concrete, you can outrun 95 percent of the world’s problems.

Of course, this means you’re probably hurling head-first into the other 5 percent, but, hey, nothing’s perfect.

Not that I’ve got any perfection to offer. So before we get rolling, I have to heed a holdover from March 25. That’s when, in my column, “An ear for language,” I mentioned a new product line from Pimsleur, the language learning company. The new product is called the “Unlimited” line. Helpful guy that I am, I misidentified it as the “Ultimate” line. Glad to be of service.

Anyway, road trips. Regular-grade gasoline in Saipan is about $3.49 a gallon now, a lot lower than it used to be, and the mainland average is about $2.05 now. That latter figure is down by about 20 percent from a year ago. I don’t remember the price trends in the year before that, but I know that I’m one of many people who have been in road trip mode for a couple of years now.

Beyond the cheap gas factor, some of this enthusiasm must be rooted in the gray hair factor.

For one thing, some of us remember when gas prices were high, and speed limits, low. By contrast, when you see 80 mph limits in some places and it doesn’t even cost $50 to fill your tank, it feels like a true windfall. Might as well get going while the getting is good, the thinking goes, since, like anything else in transportation, any surprises are apt to be bad ones.

A second reason is that the love affair with cars, and with driving, might be more old school than new practice. When I was young it was common for us to work on cars, for the simple reason that it never occurred to us not to work on cars. We were either wrenching on them or driving in them.

We had gas in our blood back then, and probably in the literal sense, since our hands were often saturated in gasoline and, for that matter, carburetor cleaner, brake cleaner, engine de-greaser, wheel bearing grease, gear oil and various other solvents and goo. For all I know, they’ll have to bury me in a hazardous waste site, after a chemical company bids $15 so it can recycle my spleen.

By contrast, what with the Web and smartphones and all that stuff, the younger set might have different priorities than driving from Portland to Pensacola just to check out the beaches and barbecue. Well, I’m sure that some like to ramble, but I doubt it’s as common as it used to be.

By contrast, back in the old-school realm, I know a dozen or so people who, upon retirement, decided to road trip permanently. Some are amateur astronomers who have a migratory cycle based around seasons and weather. The others are folks who’d simply rather keep moving than sit still.

Meanwhile, I’ve known a handful of pilots who chucked the flying life and took to the road as truck drivers. Some became owner-operators. In two cases, they’re working as husband-and-wife driving teams. I could never really figure out if this is lucrative or not. The minute somebody tells me that their cash flow is sweet, something comes along to sour the equation. Well, again, that’s transportation for you, especially on the professional end of things.

For all the homogenization of modern life into one bland, angst-ridden grayness, America is still vast and varied, with a lot of regional variations. Appreciating such things is not exclusively an American pastime. I know a Chinese professor who is a connoisseur of American road trips, especially in the old West where there are dusty old ghost towns and forgotten old gold mines.

I’ve met bikers from Poland who booked trips to the U.S. so they could ride, en masse, on rented Harley-Davidson motorcycles.

And truck stops used to be just for trucks, but they’re more family friendly now. They’re often stopover points, with gift shops, for busses hauling package tourists from distant lands. At this rate of gentrification, truck stops will soon be offering SAT preparation and investment consulting.

Anyway, now that I’ve divested my calendar of March’s gloom, it’s time for some fun. A road trip seems like an idea with ultimate potential. Oops, I mean unlimited potential. Whatever.