yesterday lovely and i took a drive up the pacific coast highway to malibu. no specific destination in mind, just a moment to look up and not find ceiling. i had almost forgotten about joyrides.
we all know what they are, but how often do we do them? i’ve only lived in places where the mere mention of living there triggers whomever i’m talking with to groan from the belly, ughhhhh the traffic tho. the bay, nyc, beijing, dc, and now la. in traffic towns, cars are spaces of chore, necessary evils that people don’t think to get inside just to be inside them.
but having been without a car for the past seven years, i’ve bewildered my fellow angelinos by eagerly choosing the back roads everywhere i go. i glide under canopies of palm trees, past homes i’ll never entertain the notion of affording, bodegas and dispensaries, fresh murals of kobe and nipsey, people taking long walks and carrying heavy things (usually wearing bubble jackets no matter how hot it is outside). these routes clock in at an average of 10 minutes longer per commute, but offer much more interesting scenery than the highways that are splayed out, impossibly tangled like curdling spaghetti.
but still, not a joyride. joyrides aren’t about getting anywhere, because once there’s a point b it immediately becomes a commute. with a joyride, you’ve already reached your destination once the keys are in the ignition. i was introduced to joyrides by anida and masa in phnom penh, where the march sky carries a sun dripping with heat so thick that people nap as soon as they wake up in the morning. when the sunset coaxes the temperature down and invites a breeze, people with cabin fever from their over/under air conditioned rooms suddenly fill the streets with skooters on a mission for aimlessness. near the royal palace, lovers squeezed into a single bike seat will do donuts for ten or twenty minutes. i once saw a family of five, siblings stacked on top of each other like tupperware containers, i once saw a guy sitting backseat, gripping himself in place with his flip-flopped feet while he slurped a bowl of noodle soup. joy.
i’ve been raised with too much immigrant frugality and woke guilt to take joyrides often. what a waste of gas, how terrible for the environment. with so many vehicles already infesting the roads, who am i, in these times, to blow a quarter tank just for the fuck of it? these are the kinds of concerns that greet me at the door when i return, when i’m left to my own thoughts, until the next time i get into my car just to roll the windows down.