The world may feel like it is getting smaller but it doesn?t mean I have to drive any less. I checked the highway hotline after this week?s unexpected snowfall and on the online homepage was the fact ?Saskatchewan's total road surface would circle the Equator four times (the Equator has a circumference of 40,000 km).? Wow, that is a lot of asphalt and I feel like I?ve driven down most of those roads.
My old car is for sale and as I prepared an ad I looked closely at the odometer. It has a lot of kilometres on it, almost 275,000. It had 42,000 kilometres on it when I bought it about eight years ago. It doesn?t really feel as if I?ve driven it more than 230,000 km or an average of 28,750 per year but the numbers don?t lie.
I?ve been behind the wheel for almost all of the kilometres on that particular vehicle as well as thousands in the little four-by-four I take on the streets and highways during more difficult winter trips and when I need the cargo space. It is a way of life for me to be on the road.
Living in a small town has its perks, but I still have family, friends, responsibilities and interests in the province?s major cities and other small communities. I know urban dwellers who don?t own a car and don?t even have licenses, but everyone I know in the rural areas has had behind the wheel responsibilities since they turned 16.
Until being reminded of the numbers on the highway website this morning it hadn?t occurred to me how small the world really was. With an equator of only 40,000 kilometres, I could have lapped the planet almost six times with my old compact car.
I sometimes feel I don?t have the opportunity to travel to all of the exotic places I dream of because they are too far away. The truth is I could have driven to many of them if the car had been faced in the right direction.
The driving distance from Maidstone to Phoenix, Ariz. where my mom and her husband have a winter property is 2,842 kilometres. It isn?t really much further than I drive in an average month.
A beach in Mexico is waiting about 4,600 kilometres away, while I spend my time driving back and forth across Saskatchewan crawling along to keep from sliding into the ditch hoping the semis won?t be passing too often blinding me for the scary seconds in their wake.
It is a small world after all, just a really big beautiful province with lots of roads worth driving down.
