There are times when you need to get out of the city, when the overwhelming crush of sharing a small piece of swampland with so many human beings grinds down your sense of perspective. Bear in mind, I’m a city boy and an urban dweller by nature. Walking through a crowd of pedestrians on their way to work, the dubious smell of vendor hotdogs, the noise a city makes during lunch hour; these are all things that make me glad I live in a place that allows me to rub elbows with people I don’t know.
But there are times I find myself wishing that all these idiots would just go away. I’ve come to the conclusion that sitting in traffic triggers these feelings. I’ll be rotting in a traffic jam, and I realize that I’ve spent the last 5 minutes devising suitable and horrific punishments for minor traffic infractions. Rubber-necking? That’ll get you thrown in the stocks, naked, on the corner of U Street and 14th. Tail-gating? Your car now has a governor prohibiting you from traveling at more than 15 miles per hour. And if you don’t get out of the left lane when I come speeding up behind you on the beltway? I’m sorry sir; you’re going to be serving as the District’s ‘special’ Sunday parking officer in Logan Circle. Just remember, Jesus wants people to double park.
When my Zen abandons me, and I start harboring images of large women from Kansas getting chewed alive by serrated metal stairs while standing on the left side of the escalator, I realize that it’s probably time to get out of the city for a weekend. Luckily, Miss Viking lives in Southwest VA for grad school right now, in the mountains around Blacksburg.
The whole distance relationship thing has numerous drawbacks; wear on my car, weeks between amorous contact, high gas prices, not being able to share events that occur during between Sunday and Friday, weeks between amorous contact, traveling west on I-66 on a Friday night, and I go weeks between amorous contact. Did I mention I sometimes go 14 to 21 days without getting any? It’s true. But the upshot of Miss Viking living 4 hours away is that it provides the opportunity to get away from humanity for a couple of days.
I could feel it starting to happen last week. Maybe it was all the extra people on the Mall for the Cherry Blossoms a few weeks ago. Or it could have been the spring cold that curtailed my stress relief at the gym. Whatever the cause, I could feel a minor case of misanthropic dystopia coming on. Time to get out of dodge.
A weekend at a very big house in the country was just what the doctor ordered. A heavy dose of margaritas followed by a series of Jack Daniels taken orally. Mix in an afternoon spent outside reading Umberto Eco’s new book while watching the neighbor kids fly kites, and I forgot all about those silly fantasies involving a two-thousand pound ACME cartoon weight and the BMW Mini-Cooper that took two parking spaces last week.
I feel much better now; ready to be a productive member of urban society again. I owe it all to the majesty and wonder of the Blue Ridge Mountains and copious amounts of alcohol. Seeing my girlfriend for the first time in 11 days, 5 hours and 13 minutes might have something to do with it too, but I’m not sure if it’s a correlation or causation kinda thing.
Labels: My 'The City', rant
3 Comments:
did you know that I work part time at the Barnes and Noble near by?....It's been ages since we chatted my old friend. anyways...as the weather turns warm I fondly recall the good ole days of carousing on the veranda as the last vestiges of sweater season disappear and give way to the sight of skirt season. Fulls
Hello. I have something to say about Viking Dodge. I think that in general, the company is not that bad. The problem I had was with the manager of one of the locations. He was extremely rude and incompetent. I have no idea who hired him. I filed a complaint on this great site www.pissedconsumer.com. Look it through for other reports.
I'm always trying to leave the city on weekends, I fell so stress by the noise, by the attitude of the people, etc. Nothing like been on a mountain cabin relaxing, hearing just the sounds of nature.
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