The long ride home
When traveling by car, here are some rules by which you should abide:
Rule #1: Do not try to drive out of town during early rush hour at the beginning of a long holiday weekend. I made it as far as Gilroy at around 3:30pm on Friday, saw traffic backed up from the Gilroy pass to 101, and headed back home. Not as bad as Thanksgiving 2000, but that's not saying much, right G?
Rule #2: Do not drive when sleepy. I made it back on the road around 2:30am, after napping a few hours, and the roads were thankfully empty. There would have been another car to keep me company, but it ran itself off the road going through Gilroy, missing a left curve and shooting into a grassy ditch. I only saw the aftermath, but at three in the morning, I assumed it was a sleepy driver. Yikes. I had my own bouts of sleepiness, but they were overcome by...
Rule #3: Load up the I-Pod. A not-so-well-kept secret (and now the cat is really out of the bag) is that the Backstreet Boys' I Want It That Way is the best song at helping me stay awake on road trips. I have no idea why that is. Any theories? It is the custom ring tone for Gina's phone calls, so maybe there's something to that... Number two on my list of wake-up songs is DMB's Ants Marching.
I also listened to a healthy dose of Linkin Park (courtesy of Andrew, thanks very much), Live, The Offspring, and Guns N Roses. The Offspring is considerably more dangerous to listen to than any other band, because not only are their high-adrenaline songs set at a much higher volume than any other, but they are also the soundtrack for Crazy Taxi, a game for which I've logged a large chunk of time, and which is therefore responsible for the Pavlovian response I have to The Offspring's signature riffs: put the pedal to the metal. Kinda like when I hear the Star Wars theme, and I suddenly imagine myself in a bright red Ferrari, flying through the hilly streets of Chicago (man, we got to do that again!).
As a result, I got home in five hours, just an hour and a half longer than it took me to get to John Wayne Airport from LA last Friday (365 miles vs. 45 miles). Good thing my I-Pod is up to 800 songs, amounting to just over 3GB's. I still have 17 more GB's to fill up, so send me your music files!
Rule #1: Do not try to drive out of town during early rush hour at the beginning of a long holiday weekend. I made it as far as Gilroy at around 3:30pm on Friday, saw traffic backed up from the Gilroy pass to 101, and headed back home. Not as bad as Thanksgiving 2000, but that's not saying much, right G?
Rule #2: Do not drive when sleepy. I made it back on the road around 2:30am, after napping a few hours, and the roads were thankfully empty. There would have been another car to keep me company, but it ran itself off the road going through Gilroy, missing a left curve and shooting into a grassy ditch. I only saw the aftermath, but at three in the morning, I assumed it was a sleepy driver. Yikes. I had my own bouts of sleepiness, but they were overcome by...
Rule #3: Load up the I-Pod. A not-so-well-kept secret (and now the cat is really out of the bag) is that the Backstreet Boys' I Want It That Way is the best song at helping me stay awake on road trips. I have no idea why that is. Any theories? It is the custom ring tone for Gina's phone calls, so maybe there's something to that... Number two on my list of wake-up songs is DMB's Ants Marching.
I also listened to a healthy dose of Linkin Park (courtesy of Andrew, thanks very much), Live, The Offspring, and Guns N Roses. The Offspring is considerably more dangerous to listen to than any other band, because not only are their high-adrenaline songs set at a much higher volume than any other, but they are also the soundtrack for Crazy Taxi, a game for which I've logged a large chunk of time, and which is therefore responsible for the Pavlovian response I have to The Offspring's signature riffs: put the pedal to the metal. Kinda like when I hear the Star Wars theme, and I suddenly imagine myself in a bright red Ferrari, flying through the hilly streets of Chicago (man, we got to do that again!).
As a result, I got home in five hours, just an hour and a half longer than it took me to get to John Wayne Airport from LA last Friday (365 miles vs. 45 miles). Good thing my I-Pod is up to 800 songs, amounting to just over 3GB's. I still have 17 more GB's to fill up, so send me your music files!
posted by Chang Kim at Saturday, May 28, 2005
10 Comments:
hm...should i get an mp3 player? i don't really get that many opportunities to use it but they are so cool. I Want It That Way is a good song. hehe. i think my favorite long-car-drive music is S.E.S.'s first CD...its mindless and i don't understand it, which would make you think it'd make me fall asleep, but for some reason it keeps me entertained endlessly. of course, Ruckus is also tops on the list
I love my I-Pod, even though I don't use it that often, simply because it is an aggregation of every song I own, so when I do need it, I have all my music accessible to me. Thus the 20GB I-Pod, even though I don't have nearly that much music. But as my collection grows, I want to be able to store it all in one place, as opposed to having to choose what to take with me, since I never really know what I'll be in the mood for until I'm actually ready to listen to it.
I Want It That Way is a good song, but I own lots of good songs, and yet that's the one that keeps me awake the best.
Ruckus, nice. I had forgotten about them. I still remember when you and Ravi brought them to Castano. My ears have yet to recover fully.
it's also nice to have a multi-functional storage device. I can have mp3s and use it as an external hard drive =D my ipod has more gigs than my actual hard drive =D. I use it all the time when i walk in between classes and when i read and yea i'm basically married to it. So yea...get one! Ipods > Napster (stupid advertisement)
napster?
this player looks pretty sweet
Cowon iAudio X5
so BSB has a new song out these days...are you still a fan, gina?
Right, Chang!
I find that the songs that keep me awake best are the ones I know all the words to and enjoy singing along with, wouldn't you agree Chang?
That Cowon players look sweet. I like my iPod Photo (credit to gimp :p). It's nice being able to not only back up your pics on a separate device, but being able to view em too, and even share em. I just need to get around to loading my ipod up. I'll do it right after I finish my webpage.
I know all the words. :)
Hmm, right after you finish your web page? Your I-Pod will be badly outdated by then.
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