A Freezing Cold Drive in Western Pennsylvania

Taking advantage of a long January weekend, I set off to western Pennsylvania to look at… “stuff” and to just drive.

I wish I better understood the draw to just get out and wander. It’s an inclination that can be difficult to sufficiently explain to people who don’t feel similarly about it. For example, if someone in my office asks me what I did over the weekend and I tell them I drove around the Pittsburg area with no specific destination in mind, they’ll tend to look at me blankly as if waiting for me to finish the story. After all, if you didn’t go somewhere specific what the hell were you doing? For some, the thing isn’t the doing, it’s always the destination. For me, it’s often the opposite. The doing is the thing.

When you were a teenager, did you and your friends just hop in the car and cruise around your town? Maybe meet up with other cruising kids in an empty parking lot or something? It seemed like this was a universal pastime for American teens, this type of localized wandering; seeing what’s going on out there. How do so many lose it in adulthood? Has the always-on connection of our devices stripped us of this want?

There is a calming, meditative that comes for me while wandering. All of the sights, sounds, the imagined lives of people – they hold me in romantic thrall. These are the things that help to shape my inner world.

Here are a few snaps from when I was busy driving around doing nothing on a freezing cold weekend in January: