Green Dragon Dirt Road Adventure

My commute to and from work is usually about forty-five minutes. I time it by how far I can get in my Ben Folds Five cd. Usually I can get to the beginning of the last song as I'm pulling into my driveway or the parking lot of the clinic, depending on which way I'm going.

Anyway, this week the construction gods put up those lovely orange and white trees right in the middle of a town I have to drive through. Needless to say, I had to find a detour. I started taking Dixon Rd, which runs parallel to the road I usually take, but it makes the commute longer because of all the stop signs.

Now, the road my house sits on branches off of a road that runs parallel to Dixon. I thought about taking it before, but it doesn't go all the way past the construction town the way Dixon does. Well, as I was driving home, I thought to myself, "Why not, I'll try taking Van Geisen." So I did.

I was going along at a steady clip of speeding up to sixty miles an hour, then slowing to a stop every mile or so because of the frequent stop signs. I didn't mind, Dixon is just like that. I had gone about three miles when the road turned to dirt.

I drive the Green Dragon, which is a super cool, gas-guzzling SUV, so dirt roads (and snow) usually aren't a problem. They would've been a problem if I had been driving Stink Pants #5's car, because his is a little, gas efficient, old-man sedan which probably would've gotten stuck in the mud (it spins out on icy hills too, haha!).

When the road turned into a dirt road, I got a little scared. Not because I thought I was lost (I knew I wasn't) and not because it was all muddy, but because it was a place I'd never been before.

There were so many neat, old farm houses that had been fixed up, and many that weren't fixed up but could be. My mom and I would have a field day with those. There were parts where there wasn't a ditch next to the road. The road was bordered up to the imaginary shoulder (there wasn't a ditch, so there wasn't really a shoulder) by farmland! It was like the road I was on was a strip of land where the farmer decided not to plant corn this year. If I had taken the wheel and made a sharp right or left turn, I could've driven all over some soybeans. I saw so many new things, all less than ten miles away from my house! It had just rained (that's why it was so muddy) so everything was moist and new. Plant life has a more vibrant shade of green after it rains. There were hints of mist where the air was cool and humid at the same time. This was all magic, hidden farmland and I was looking at everything with new eyes.

There were five miles of dirt road, and I was intrigued and excited by all of it. My dad used to take Mom, Noona and I for drives through the country, and I always thought they were boring. Now I think I understand why he enjoyed driving though the wilds of Orac so much.

Before I knew it, the road had turned to pavement again and I had already passed Patlick's house. I didn't even notice it until I saw it in the rear view mirror. It took me a minute to realize that I had driven in these parts before, but they still looked new to me even though I'd seen the same fields and houses hundereds of times before.

I pulled into my driveway and turned off the Green Dragon's engine just as the third song on the Ben Folds Five CD was playing for the second time. The adventure gave me a feeling that I probably won't experience for a while, so I sat in the driver's seat and soaked in it before I went into the house and re-entered my regular life.