I Dare You To Move: Highway 395, California, USA

Three hundred miles stretched out ahead of us with only my beat-up old car to take us the distance.  No cassette player, no air conditioning, and the backseat piled high with sleeping bags.  The odometer clicked past 180,000.  We rolled the windows all the way down to catch the rush of the air, barely cooler than the ninety degrees of sun blazing down on us.  Our elbows stuck out in sharp angles and when the radio stations all inexplicably switched to commercials at the same time, we switched it off, content to sit amongst the flow of our own conversation.

It was a two-lane highway most of the way there.  Every so often, the solid double yellow lines gave way to the dash-dash-dash that signaled to the intrepid that they could brave oncoming traffic for a chance to pass the lumbering vehicle in front of them.  For the most part, we stayed timidly put, but as the hours creeped on and the heat dragged trickles of sweat down our faces, our impatience won out over caution.  Once, twice, a third time our car inched over the dash-dash-dash, only to quickly jerk back into our lane in the face of an onrushing truck, its passing causing our whole car to tremble in its wake.

Finally, we took a deep breath, exchanged a look, then swung into the other lane, speeding up and up and up.  A dark speck resolved into another car, growing larger with every passing second.  We were too far forward to switch back into our lane, too far back to pass in front.  Faster and faster we pushed until finally, we swerved back into our lane, the car in the other lane swooshing by us, the car behind us shrinking in our rearview mirror and we were laughing, laughing until our breaths caught in our throats.

I stuck my head out the window, the heat blasting into my eyes, my hair whipping out behind me, and whooped as loud as I could.

We felt young and free and utterly ridiculously wild.