Pace Car

My companion for a good 120 miles of yesterday's trip was a gray Ford Focus with Ohio plates. The driver was a young woman, about the age of my daughters, I think. She was careful. She allowed herself to go five miles over the speed limit, maybe seven or eight on a steep grade, but she never nudged up to 80.

I first became aware of the car when it passed me a minute or two after I passed it. Not good, I thought. We're going to have a competition. But she didn't venture far ahead of me, and I was content to follow her. So this early skirmish morphed into a steady companionship as we took the ups and downs of I-64 from Beckley to Lexington in tandem. When she passed, I passed. When she slowed, I slowed.

It's a lovely stretch of road, high country with rows of blue mountains receding in the distance. But it's also lonesome; I appreciated the vehicular companionship.

I often do this when I'm driving alone. Pick a car and stick with it. That automobile becomes my  personal pace car. I keep it in my sights, use it to measure my speed. And I make up stories for the driver. In my white-line-fever-addled brain, my car and the pace car become friends.

Personification makes the miles melt away, and we reached I-81 in no time. I pulled into the left lane to head north. Somehow I knew the Focus would travel south.

I drove three more hours to get home — but I never found another pace car. I missed the Focus.