Top Gear once went on a
search for the best driver's road in the world. With a map beside him, Clarkson immediately wrote off several countries, including the United States. Now, I'm no blind patriot, as his assumption stems from a grain of truth:
most US roads are
painfully boring. If you get on a highway anywhere in the mid-west, you can set the cruise control, get one of those Club antitheft devices to lock the steering, and take a nap. When you wake up, you'll still be on the same road, in the same lane, going in the same direction at the same speed, barring a shortage of fuel. Anywhere else in the world, you'd have a horrible crash, and people would think you a tremendous idiot for trying something like that. In the mid-west, people passing you will think, "Hey, that's not a bad idea," because there's no such thing as a curve in the plains and desert.
But the United States, thankfully, isn't just the mid-west. Not all driving in this land need be boring. In fact, I scheduled vacation time for today, with the express purpose of driving. It took a lot of explaining, when I said I'd start and end at my apartment, for it was not the destination that was the highlight of the drive: It was the
330-mile detour that I took.
The link omits the commute from my apartment to 'A' and from 'K' back to my apartment. You don't need to know exactly where I live to get the point. That detour included
The Tail of the Dragon (twice),
the Cherohala Skyway (twice), State Highway 360 in Tennessee (which apparently isn't significant enough for a Wiki page) and
State Highway 28 in North Carolina (which somehow is). When you've got a drive like that, it doesn't matter if the destination is the fiery depths of hell because you'll arrive with a grin on your face, and no torture will take it away from you. As driver's roads go, this route has all the elements in place and nailed down.
Back to Top Gear for a moment: They went trundling all over central and southern Europe, over boring motorways and irritating ferries, through towns and international borders, for
three days and found a couple hours worth of exciting driving. Comparatively, I popped out of my apartment, commuted for a ninety minutes, enjoyed five hours of driving on brilliant, well-maintained, and (except for The Tail of the Dragon) largely abandoned mountain roads, before returning home for the night. No passports. No hotel charges. No faffing about with ferries or wetting one's self over countries imprisoning speeders.... You know what? Top Gear can have their dozen miles of Alpine noodle, and I'll keep my road. (And even if I can't keep it, it's not like I lack an
alternative or
twenty in this area.)
