On Saturday I returned home from a week-long trip to Quebec where I spent almost 100% of my time walking in and between two buildings and never stepped into the driver's seat of a motor vehicle. And you know what? I didn't miss it. Upon my return and being picked up at the airport, I was in no great rush to hop back in my car and hit the road and actually reflected positively on staying someplace where everything I wanted was a just a short walk away. This isn’t the first time I’ve felt this way after returning from overseas either.
Is this the end? Is this an early warning sign of an enthusiast losing his passion for all things automotive? Could it be, in a world of increasing urbanization and a reduced need for vehicles to get to one's destination for city dwellers, where an increased push for automation is ever reducing a driver's own input, that there is no place for petrolheads? And that I'm only now coming to this realization after visiting Canada's fairly accurate facsimile of Europe?
No. The pistons still slap in my heart and my head still swivels with every crank of a big bore V8. Driving may not be as necessary or encouraged as it has previously, but that doesn't mean there isn't a place for it. We're just doing it wrong, and it can beat your passion into submission if you let it.
Why we lose the faith
Think about the last ten times you drove somewhere. Chances are it was either commuting, running an errand or visiting a friend or restaurant. These urban or suburban drives – chock with stop-and-go volume, punctuated by traffic lights and street signs, pedestrians and cyclists – these are the drives that will beat down your passion for piloting a car or bike. Opportunities for getting up to an exciting speed or tackling sweeping bends with aplomb are seldom, and rarer still are the opportunities to get out without some obligation directing your travel to well-worn routes with limited excitement.
And don't get me started on other drivers. They're worth an entire column which I'll probably address sometime soon, but the majority of drivers have no business behind the wheel and make driving an excruciating, frustrating experience for those of us who try to find joy in it. Most of us spend more of our time in the driver's seat swearing, rather than smiling, and that's where the problem starts and the passion stops.
How to stop the bleeding
So how do we fix this and save ourselves while we still can? By making time. In the same way your kids are important to you (though, granted, probably to a somewhat lesser extent), cars, bikes and driving are important to you, and you make time for your kids, so do the same for other things you love. Plan your route; take a gander at Google Maps or an old fashioned print-out and find some roads within a reasonable distance that look like they could be fun to bomb around on. Carve out a section of your schedule, maybe on Sunday morning when all the terrible drivers with Joy 99.1 stickers on their cars are stowed away in church and hit those roads. Yes, the yard needs to be mowed, the dogs should be walked, the laundry room won't paint itself, but getting mired down in the admin of life is the primary killer of hobbies and the chief executive officer of Suck, Inc.
It doesn't even have to be a long drive either. Take your normal route to work, but hold back when the light turns green so you can really hit that on-ramp and get some g-forces going and launch yourself onto the interstate. Take a longer route home around the traffic. Your car won't mind a few extra miles, you might get better fuel mileage than sitting in traffic and you'll probably have more fun to boot.
Remember why you got into cars. The times after you first got your license where you would just hop in the car and go for a drive without a destination or the confines of adulthood handcuffing you to chores or errands. These experiences don't have to exist only in our distant memories if we just make time to relive them. Life's too short to only eat kale and grilled chicken for every meal, and commuting and errand running are the kale and grilled chicken of driving. I implore you not to lose part of what you love, so get the bacon cheeseburger every once and a while, and finish it off with a pint of ice cream.