Project RS

[ScottyB]

went on a drive last week to handle some business needs up in VA. decided to stop over in Roanoke at my folks place to split the drive up and it occurred to me that i'm completely stupid. i never realized that its just as fast to take backroads + the blue ridge parkway as it is slugging along up 77 and then 81 whilst dealing with the shitshow that is semi trucks pacing each other up the mountains in both lanes. i felt like warden at the end of Shawshank Redemption. how did i miss this?

so i had myself a pretty excellent time getting back to one of my favorite joys in life, which is bombing mostly deserted old appalachian roads deep in hill country. from VA exit 1, 77 at Fancy Gap i climbed up into orchard lands and then north through the hollows and vineyards of the BRP in Floyd county. then jumping off onto 220 just in time to drop down Bent Mountain and down some familiar short streets to the house.



i don't have a whole lot to report other than it was a nice reawakening. i forgot what i bought and built the car for. kind of forgot what the seat bolsters feel like when they're doing their job, and how the steering isn't alive until its really loaded up. it made me remember that feeling of being a kid and sprinting across the yard just because you can, pushing against the ground and the ground pushing back. the exhaust sounding a call into the deep rhododendron thickets and hearing it call back with the riot of a million little bugs and things constantly disappearing past the open window. after hours and hours of interstate it was like being handed the keys to a kingdom.

i reached the first of the route at sunset and almost never saw another car. it was sublime. every flavor of banked, off camber, decreasing radius, gut-drop elevation change, chip-coat to fresh black asphalt. i had the windows down and kept cranking the heat up because i was shaking. it wasn't until i was wiping sweat off my temple that i realized i wasn't shaking because i was cold. when you're away from "home" that long without realizing it, the excitement can just be too much.



it broke my heart to watch those mountains recede in the mirror again when i took the onramp back to the low country of GA to get back to my house at the end of it all. back to the maps for next time.