Night Driving

As I mentioned earlier, we went to the Winter Jam concert last Sunday night. It was good. And it was over rather late.

Of course, I guess “late” is a relative term. So for clarity, the concert ended around 10:00 PM. And by the time we got to our car and started to drive out, it was around 10:30 PM. On a school night. With a ten year old. Maybe not the ideal parenting decision, but it was one that we consciously made, knowing we would probably be out that late. And in the long run, it turned out to be okay, because Jaylin had a good day at school the next day. But anyway, back to our story.

The concert was at the FedEx Forum in downtown Memphis. According to Google Maps, that is somewhere around 53 miles from our home. And that usually takes us a little over an hour to drive between our home and downtown Memphis, depending on traffic. Once again, we knew that when we were going into it. So it looked like we would be home around 11:30.

As for the “depending on traffic” part, I figured that the traffic wouldn’t be all that bad. After all, how many people are out driving late on a Sunday night? By that time, most “normal” people are getting ready to go to bed to get up and greet Monday morning with a cheerful smile, right?

Fortunately, that assumption was true. Well, the light traffic assumption was true. I don’t know about the assumption of greeting Monday morning with a smile, but judging from posts on Twitter and Facebook, most people didn’t accomplish that one.

Anyway, we sailed right through the downtown area and all across Memphis heading east. There were several cars out on the road, of course, but nothing like normal daytime traffic would have been. No problems at all.

And then, once we got to Fayette County (the county we live in, and the next county over from Shelby County where Memphis is, if you aren’t from around here), everyone just vanished. No cars at all. Nothing.

It was almost spooky, actually. We were just driving along all by ourselves. Over the distance of 20 miles from the Fayette/Shelby County line to our house, we saw a total of three cars. Three cars in twenty miles. That’s pretty lonely. At least I had the other people in the car with me to keep me company. But they were asleep.

So it was mostly just me driving along in the darkness of night with the road all to myself, trying not to sing along with the radio to stay awake because that would have woken everyone else up. And then they would have seen that we were all alone, too.

Actually, I like driving at night like that when there aren’t any other people on the road, because you don’t have to worry about getting stuck behind someone going slowly without being able to pass them on the two-lane road. You can set your own pace, just as long as that pace isn’t over the speed limit so that a friendly law enforcement officer who is lurking in the shadows can give you a ticket. But since I make every effort to drive the speed limit, that isn’t a problem, either.

Night driving is fun. Just me and the car on the open, empty road. Along with some sleeping passengers.