Here’s to beginning our next adventure.

Last week, I found myself driving myself up and down Highway 1 on a two-hour roundtrip in and out of Santa Cruz, sourcing some ingredients for an upcoming dinner. I relished in the gentle, joyful solitude of driving alone on this particular stretch of road. The windows were rolled down, the salt air still cool on the fresh breeze of spring. Frothy yellow and soft purple wildflowers, vibrant after weeks of heavy rains, skimmed up and down the hillsides.

I turned up the volume on the stereo, listening to the kind of country music I try not to admit that I like. It made for a romantic soundtrack, all about false loves and unrequited wanting, missed opportunities, and waking up on the wrong side of the sunrise. I had only my own thoughts for company, soft and rubbery as they wobbled through my mind. I couldn’t help but envision a movie’s opening credits as I propped my elbow on the sunny windowsill, hair blowing across my sunglasses. It would most certainly be a love story.

The open road — and the promise of freedom at the far end of it — is addicting. Ask anyone who has managed their way through a full season’s tour (or a few) and you’ll be able to see it in their eyes — at once wistful and a little bit war-torn. It’s hard, certainly. But the romance is real. Our truck is a little clubhouse, home of whispered secrets and long hours of good conversation, comfortable silences as we all gaze at the changing view and singalongs when the landscape gets mundane. It’s a special kind of intimacy, unmatched by many typical experiences. Being on the road together is about camaraderie, it’s about ritual — the gas station stops for special treats, assigning beds at the end of a long day, knowing which flavor of energy drink each person prefers, knowing when to chat and when to slip into silence on those long drives after long hours of work and truly no time alone.

Driving for hours on end requires a unique combination of stamina and long-ago-learned skill, a practiced focus and a release of oneself. It turns out, there is a name for this. It’s called a flow state. You hear about “flow” a lot from athletes and artists, when they are fully immersed in their work, with no distractions, often no sense of time, sometimes fully removed from their body. It’s a level of focus hard to find in our world today, with its constant notifications and never-ending inputs. I find one of the easiest ways to slip into it is by driving down the open road.

A really good event can also put you into a flow state — and not just as an individual, but as a team. Suddenly, service seems to become a ballet; food is ready at the exact right moment and you hit the table with wine just before those seated begin to think about wanting more. Waters stay full, supplies are under your hand when you reach for them, and walking paths remain clear. Everyone is working in perfect harmony, in complimentary motion.

 

Suddenly, the sun is setting and it’s time to break down. The event is over. Smiling guests are leaving, and you surface from the flow to realize it all happened in a gentle, perfectly choreographed blink. It’s cinematic; you can almost see the tracking shot along the table, showing a cheers here, a platter being served there, conversations surfacing from a general, joyful chatter. This movie, also, is a love story.

As with any great love, there will always be something to fight over — and the road will test you with everything it has. But, when the sun sets over the Bonneville Salt Flats or the Midwestern sky lights up with lightning from a summer thunderstorm, when the truck goes quiet not out of boredom with each other’s endless company, but in awe of the wonder of this world we get to travel, it’s easy to forget the struggles of every day and fall a little bit more in love with this life, again and again. To me, that is the greatest love story imaginable.

See you out there.

—— Ariel