Life is a Highway

In keeping with the theme of driving...

I did it.

I put the key in the ignition,
started the very quiet European engine,
backed out of the driveway,
and drove a little VW down the insanely narrow, curvy, steep mountain roads of Alpine Switzerland.

With three kids in the car.
And no copilot.
And everyone lived to see the light of another day.
I call that awesome.

I remembered to yield to those going uphill
and that I have the right-of-way coming back ("two lane" my foot!)
I drove about 10 km under the whole way to the sports center in Lenzerheide, four towns away.
I remembered WHERE the complex was, despite having only been in it once before.
I navigated a foreign parking garage without injury or getting a parking ticket.

Go me!

.     .     .

The above was a week or more ago, and I have since played the role of chauffeur several times. I now know my way by bus, car and on foot in every direction surround Malix--a least for twenty minutes worth of travel, anyway. Which, in reality, is saying rather a lot, as twenty minutes in a car is about one tenth of what it would take to drive to the French boarder. Can you imagine driving twenty minutes and reaching Canada or Mexico? I'm lucky if I can get to downtown Spokane in twenty minutes!

But, time not withstanding, the driving here is far more involved than a simple straight shot down Monroe. There is, in fact, no such thing as a straight road in all of Switzerland, as far as I can tell. Everything is steep, narrow, and...did I mention steep? I asked Carrie once, really just as a joke, how often she has to replace her brake-pads. "Yearly. More often if we take long trips," she told me. I believe it! And yet, for all of the difficulties of Alpine driving, I have rarely seen a more beautiful stretch of road than that which I drive from Chur to Malix and back again. Despite early snow and quite a bit of rain, fall is still evident in the color of the trees and the yellow heaps beside the roads. Ambitious hikers with ski-poll-like sticks trudge ever upward, whatever the weather, as when morning fog settles on the valley and I am forced to drive at half speed on my way to the Co-Op, mindful of the weather, the wet roads, the hikers, and the combine that just passed, no doubt irritated at my snail's pace.

Ah, well.  To each their own. I use to think that life, like school or employment or any other game we human's play, was all about the race. The result. The "I won" moment. After all, that is how we are conditioned from birth. You try hard at "x" to achieve "y," which then allows you access to "a," which you must accomplish before moving on to "b"--and all of this must of course be done in reference to the rest of the world. After all, what is a man if not weighed and measured against his fellow man? How do we know what our value is unless we compare ourselves to others?

Well, I guess my little Alpine adventure has shown me that the race is not the most important thing--not right now, at least. Sure, I still envy my friends who are "ahead" of me, in some ways. Those who are in grad school or married or fully and gainfully employed, for example. But then I remember that I am not in competition with those I love. We each of us have our own tasks to deal with (for me of late, it just so happens that my road is a literal as well as figurative one,) and in our own good time. And if it takes me longer than the man driving the tractor to get from here to there, I guess all I can do is enjoy the scenery.