First published in the Ipswich Local News May 10, 2024
I’m typing this in the White Whoosh. Nothing new there — many a column has been typed from within my second home (my minivan).
Regular readers may recall that, in 2020, I had a snap with reality and traded in our first minivan for a Volvo. It was clean, fast, and had a lot of buttons.
I hated it.
For every space-age button, they took away one cup holder. For every ten miles faster it went, they removed a charging port. And don’t get me started about where exactly I was supposed to put anything or host my YouTube channel or house two giant dogs.
Enter the White Whoosh.
And here, four years later, I’ve hit 100,000 miles. That felt slow.
“Well, this is crazy! The average mileage per year is 13,500, that’s half of what I drive!” I said to my husband, who had lived through the Volvo-to-minivan reversal … and perhaps was not better for that experience.
“Who are those people? Do they have kids? Dogs? Where is their burning desire to crisscross New England like a migratory creature forever pushing towards one destination. only to turn around and return from whence they came?”
My husband volunteered that most people would think I drove a lot, but most people wouldn’t trade a Volvo for a minivan. So, really, who could know?
Well, besides me. I knew. But now that I’m typing from the twilight of my parental driving days, will my mileage hold? Our high school daughter’s second-to-last volleyball tournament was in Syracuse, N.Y., a mere 355 miles west. The tournament happened to be over the 48 hours leading up to, but not including, the big solar eclipse. The city was in the path of totality — and therefore in a frenzy.
Sadly, our tournament ended on Sunday night. That evening, we drove 355 miles back to Boston.
Road signs warned of wild traffic for people driving towards the eclipse. Not away, like us. I wanted to see totality! I’m a space nerd! I’d had it on my calendar for five years and kept eclipse glasses in my closet! But I was driving the wrong way.
When we got home that night, I had another snap with reality. But instead of trading in the White Whoosh, I realized it contained all I needed (once I loaded up the dogs). It had coffee creamer, a bottle of wine, and a bag of trail mix with all the M&Ms picked out. It was perfectly stocked for a mad dash back west.
And so the White Whoosh, dogs, and I headed back out on Monday morning across New Hampshire and Vermont on back roads I knew from decades of drives to our family camp in upstate New York.
While the mass of humanity went north up the highways, I zipped west through small towns I’d discovered back during the potty-training days. When the crowds insisted on being on the east side of Lake Champlain, I detoured into New York and hunkered down on the west side in a nearly abandoned trailer park located on the sandy shores of the lake with a wide-open view of the sunny sky.
And on that 200-mile drive, the day after we spent a weekend driving to Syracuse and back, racing both the sun and half the population of the eastern seaboard, the White Whoosh hit 100,000 miles.
At 3:26 p.m., I stood with a few other adventurous souls who knew their way around upstate New York in the surreal darkness of totality. The temperature plummeted, the loons called, the stars shone, and solar flares shot out of the suddenly visible corona. It was otherworldly, spectacular, and stunning.
That night, I slept at our camp a few towns south with no water or heat (but, obviously, trail mix, wine and dogs). The next morning, creamed coffee in hand, I drove the 200 miles home.
Yeah, my mileage will hold. I love each tournament, each college trip, each family visit, each North Shore loop, and each once-in-a-lifetime sprint to craziness and adventure.
As long as it’s in a minivan.