freeways

I remember one of the guys living in my dorm hall was obsessed with freeways. He studied freeways. He would’ve been a freeway major if such a thing existed. I found all this out because his email address was freeway@ucla.edu(I kid you not). In college, everyone had the freedom to create their own email addresses, which usually consisted of the first initial of your first name along with your last name (e.g. jhong@ucla.edu) or something similar to that standard format. So I was almost convinced his last name was Freeway or Reeway. But I found out it was Campbell. And being the naturally inquisitive person that I am, I had to ask him why. I figured maybe he really liked a band called Freeway or maybe he was in a humanitarian group called “Free Way.” But he dispelled all my assumptions by simply saying, “I just love freeways.”

I guess after giving it some thought, I could somewhat understand why he would be fascinated by the highway scene. As a young kid, I was quite entranced by freeways too. I hated (and still hate) freeways during the daytime though. There’s nothing more depressing than passing through the 10 fwy and gazing at the dreary industrial landscape of downtown Los Angeles (Same goes for splotchy mountainside of the 57 fwy that looks like miles of nothingness and makes my nose hurt from just imagining the dry air). But I have always loved freeways at night. Whenever I would ride along in the backseat of my mom’s Mazda MPV I would just imagine being in a videogame of some sort. In the beginning, I would think of that Mario Kart round with the rainbow-bright highways (I loved those candy-colored roads, but I would always get so irritated when I constantly fell off into the black abyss). And then, I’d imagine myself in a game where the cars would transform into spaceships and the vehicles with the yellow lights (the cars behind us) were the bad guys, and the ones with the red lights (cars ahead of us) were the good guys. And that our car was running away from the bad guys. But the funny thing was whenever one of the bad guys would be catching up to us, he would turn into a good guy. It always seemed to work out that way, and the game eventually wasn’t as exciting anymore.

For some reason, once I’m on the freeway, I stop thinking of the people in other cars as human beings and consider them soulless, brainless automatons that are just steering their vehicles. That’s why whenever a car cuts me off, I think in my head “Fuck that Lexus!” instead of “Fuck that bald man who’s driving the Lexus!” Drivers seem to feel like there is an iron wall shielding them from the scope and view of other drivers, but the reality is that the iron wall is actually transparent and made out of glass. People seem to forget this factor and feel comfortable dancing or picking their noses in their cars. Or maybe they’re aware but just feel that they will never stumble across that anonymous being in the neighboring car so “who gives a shit?” Either way, the freeway is this liberating speed zone that allows us to free ourselves from the usual inhibitions that we face in a stagnant space or even in slower-paced local streets where we still have that slim chance of seeing someone we know or spending an awkward length of time next to someone at a stoplight.

This past year, my friend Jessica got in a car accident on the freeway. It was pouring and her car started hydroplaning and ended up crashing into the middle divider. We both had to get out of our cars, and we stood there in the rain on the left-most lane. It was a surreal experience. Standing there like small, vulnerable creatures as cars were just whizzing by carelessly. Standing outside of one’s car on the freeway is an experience that seems almost equivalent to flying through the sky. You're all of a sudden flung out in this high-speed wilderness without the protection of your car- the safe little space that brought normalcy to this larger-than-life terrain. You feel as though time is going by at an insane speed yet it’s standing still at the same time.


So yeah I agree with my fellow dorm resident that I initially scoffed at. Freeways aren’t just paved roads that take us from point A to point B. They are this boundless, almost intangible place. As silly as it sounds, they are like a magical labyrinth that transcends the passage of time, somewhere stuck far and in-between worldly dimensions and our logical frames of thought. Well, unless you're stuck in traffic. That just kills it.