Let's pretend: Instead of a Toyota pickup, imagine it's a '67 Fairlane. Imagine it's a long time ago, young and carefree and quite a bit careless with more horsepower than good sense.
Here's the 8 mile + route I rode or drove to school for 12 years.
(bottom right corner to top left from home/first pavement to Miami)
After I got my own car, the trip would look like the following video, but instead of 55 miles per hour at the most, it would be...well, more than that. A lot more, if the car could go that fast and the coast was clear and weather permitting. I took almost the exact same corners back then because...I had to. Thank the good Lord for not letting me kill someone and also for keeping my own young/dumb butt safe.
I never cut the blind corners though, even though the vid looks like it on some. I could see if anything was coming.
Earn entries in our upcoming "Free Gas for a Month" contest by naming the songs played and picked through during this ride. (you'll also have to imagine them being on an eight-track tape player if you wanna get authentic with the time)
Excuse the shoddy camera work; this was my second attempt at this. Excuse the singing at the end, sheesh. I also meant to drive into the school parking lot, but there was a little boy and his bike right at the entrance.
He waved, and I wish I had turned the camera on him and ended the movie right there.
Do not attempt this at home.
June 28, 2008
Hwy 282
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6 comments:
Oh my gosh, Mike. It was really weird "riding" along with you to town. I knew where every curve was and how fast you could safely get around it. I have a hard time making people who have mostly lived in the Dallas area their whole lives understand how it is to go 8 miles and only see a handful (if that) of cars. I'll have to say I'll take making that isolated drive any day over having to drive 8 miles in this traffic. It might take you 2 hours to go 8 miles if there's an accident or construction. By the way....who taught you to drive? (and don't say me!) I just remember you ducking down in the back seat when Sandy was learning to drive and saying that you wished you were a Cocker Spaniel. I got my drivers license when I was 14, so if she was about 13 and learning to drive, you were about 10 years old, right? Too bad you didn't go down Codman Lane for me! LOL! Thanks for sharing your video. I enjoyed it very much.
I tried to follow the same "line" that I did going 30 miles an hr. faster. I knew the road wouldn't be crowded; that's the only reason I did that. That video is probably enough to have a warrant put out on me for reckless driving, huh? -grin-
It's sure hard to think that 14 yr. old kids got their licenses back then.
I was extra-careful because I sure didn't want to rollover all the way down off of one of those bluffs. I wouldn't mind being famous for a good reason, but sure don't want to have my fame come from a spectacular YouTube upload.
I don't drive that way these days. Back then I was ten foot tall, covered with hair and indestructable. IOW, stupid kid.
I had a typing teacher, won't mention her name, but she used to pass me all the time, especially on the blind corners.
Also, I had in mind the dozens and dozens of antelope and deer on the side and crossing the road that I had seen on previous trips.
I remember Mom letting me drive and I was cruisin' right along, not going too fast at all and her saying "60 is a good speed, isn't it?" We both agreed that a mile a minute was fast enough to travel on ordinary bidness.
I remember her being so grateful when I was driving back from Canyon after visiting dad. They were doing major work on the Interstate there in Amarillo and is was totally freaking to be driving two lanes bumper to bumper with an eighteen wheeler two feet away while going 65. Bless her, I was terrified but didn't tell her until we were down the road.
Dad used to let me drive all the time, almost always from the little red school house to our house. I always accepted the offer to drive; it was either me or Lord Calvert.
I did an estimate once about how many ballgames our folks attended and started to try to do the math of the miles travelled. Sheesh, it wasn't anything to travel 150 miles roundtrip for a football game, and even the teams in our basketball district required a 50-60 mile RT.
Oh yeah, and Sandy?
Guess you weren't there when mom was letting her drive and we were coming into Pampa at a rapid clip, passing where the old Gibsons used to be...then zooming around that curve and mom saying:
"Don't you think you should slow down?"
Sandy glanced at the speedometer, looked up and pointed to a sign
"Speed limit is 70." she informed mom.
"Sandra..." mom calmly replied as we whizzed by cars at the speed of sound.
"That's 'Highway 70'. "
Hey that was cool Mike~ I want to try this at home! lol How'd you rig the camera to stay in place? just curious as I do want to try it and try not to mess up my dash at the same time. ;)
Yeah that would have been a perfect ending to turn in and have the kid on the bike waving.
That route looks a lot like it used to be here before they put 5 frickin' lanes through the whole length of the county. :( well it was inevitable here, but I do remember driving for miles here and not meeting anther car for miles, back in the day of 8 tracks! :) that was cool too how you did the music, I was actually naming off the songs while you were flicking through 'em but will have to go back and write'em down next time ;) Used to love cruising to the music back then, until the 8 track ate the tape, which seemed to happen a lot :(
Hey you were getting into the song there at the end weren't you! LOL well I think you were good, maybe a new addition to the blog, Mikes Cruisin' Karaoke Music Vids! ;)
Nice job!
I just put it on a towel, Garazon. It allowed me to more-or-less cushion the camera to level.
I wanted to show the hood, just almost like driving, but it was to the right of me a bit up on the dash.
You can tell where I glanced at the viewfinder and noticed the towel was showing a bit.
If you'll notice at the first, I had backed into "our" old cattle guard and was screwin' around w/ the CD player, found "Under My Wheels" and took my foot off the gas only to find out it was still in reverse!
Knock on wood/my head, I've always been a pretty safe driver and have never been in a wreck of my own making and only one other, I guess, come to think of it.
I've also only had a couple of speeding tickets in my life. I really try to be alert, but I've also had some close calls.
I HAD a mix CD made up, was going to do the Alice Cooper song and also Deep Purple's "Highway Star".
When I pulled out from the cattle guard, it was exactly a quarter mile down to the next dirt road, Codman Lane. You can see it just at the bottom corner of the Google screenshot, the four playa lakes at the intersection.
OMG! I'm so glad you suggested that I look at this post because it led me to figure something out. On my Kindle, all of the older videos on your blog were just showing up as a blank square. I thought it was because they were no longer on You Tube, so I just skipped over them. But when this video wasn't working on there either, I knew something was wrong because you wouldn't have asked me to watch something that was no longer there. I went to check it out on my computer and realized it's just my Kindle. I love my Kindle, but it's not like a regular computer, and I guess that's why it doesn't work right with the comments and the videos. Maybe I just need to install a program on there for the videos--Adobe Flash Player?? Not sure. Do you know?
Anyway, the video is interesting. I don't know how you come up with these different ideas. Boy, you sure did live in a very deserted area. I can't believe you could drive so many miles in the middle of the day without passing any cars. I guess you're lucky that the road was paved.
Your voice, or at least your singing voice, is much deeper than I was expecting.
Thanks for sharing, Mike!
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