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per hour or more over the speed limit, the window open, the sticky yet cool air of
the summer night blowing my hair and passing around my face, as if I was in a wind
tunnel, or living out some teenage, Kerouac-esque fantasy. Jose Gonzales crooned
through my speakers, the soft tenor of his voice and the twang of the acoustic
guitar leaving me in a state of somber silence.

It's around twenty miles from the intersection of Main Street and Route
27 to Interstate 70, and along that route you are unlikely to encounter much. You
may encounter some construction, which, on a two lane road, leads to annoyed
interactions with a sign holder who's about as excited to be there as you are; I
encountered this a few times those two weeks. You may run into a cyclist out on
what you can only assume is a charity ride, with two blocker cars behind a faint,
blinking light on the back wheel. There's only one traffic light until you get to out-
skirts of Mount Airy, and it stands witness to a Seven-Eleven, a small family restau-
rant, a Shell (that, by the time I passed it, was always closed), and a liquor store;
the night hangs over the intersection oppressively. Otherwise, you mostly pass
through farmland and small residential neighborhoods, full of houses lit by nothing
but a flat screen television showing late night comedy shows and antidepressant
ads, a porch light, or perhaps by nothing at all. It's a quiet drive. Few people
pass you on the other side of the road, and there's not a cop in sight. To this day I
can tell you most of the landmarks by heart.

Once you get into Mount Airy, two options present themselves to you. The first
is to turn off, a route that will take you towards Shady Grove Metro Station, the
furthest out stop of the DC Metro; unless your intention is to go to a shut-down
metro station and sneak into DC in the morning, or alternatively off yourself in a
parking garage, this is probably a poor option that nets nothing but wasted gas
and sixty dollars in Montgomery County speed camera tickets. They've caught me
many a time. The other is to turn onto Interstate 70, which offers a clear shot to
west to Fredrick or east, back towards Baltimore and, more importantly, Westmin-
ster. It's easy to guess the option I choose.

Once on Interstate 70, I tended to become what one might deem even more
reckless. On the highway, the only obstacles were slow moving trucks, piloted by
the unfortunate final remnant of the American Dream that is the long haul trucker;
most of those nights I'd have been lying if I said I couldn't relate with them in some
sense. And so I floored the pedal...70 ... BO... 90, speeds that shook the car, causing
the steering wheel to vibrate in my hands and my seat to shake. I can recall one
night when the fog was thick and visibility had been reduced to less than a hundred
feet in front of me, and yet I maintained a high speed that would have certainly
required superhuman reaction time to prevent a crash. In hindsight, I'd be right in
calling the behavior near suicidal, but at the time it felt right.

Interstate 70 intersects with Route 97 at Exit 76; when you get off, you're
forced to cross a lane of traffic to get to the Northbound lane towards Westmin-
ster, a harrowing experience even when the roads are devoid of activity. The drive
back from here becomes strange. It loops through twisting, turning wooded roads,
crosses a thoroughly isolated train track, and then goes up and down hills, past
cows and commercial developments. The areas in the woods always particularly
unnerved me. In the dark emptiness, it felt the type of place in which one sets hor-
ror movies; instead, though, it was simply a place in which I encountered two deer,
both in the same spot, both standing in the road and staring at me, then darting
off into the woods and across the tilled fields.

I'd generally make my way back to campus between two and three in the morn-

ing. My strange bedfellow would often be asleep by this point; if inspiration