Exploration #40

This was something I did once in a while when I was heading home from my previous school last year all the way in Mankato, MN. It's a nice 3 and a half hour drive, not counting pit stops. So it gives me some nice time to myself, which is usually spent blaring music and singing along. However, it's towards the edge of Minnesota, but not quite South Dakota, that there's what I like to call a 'purgatory' in radio waves. There's only one station that I listen to that would receive a connection so I was completely reliant on them playing music I wanted to hear, or could at least tolerate. That hardly ever happened, so I wound up stopping at the nearest rest stop to plug in my headphones and figure out some good 'tunage'. Once I was back on the road I'd pop one out, you really shouldn't drive with headphones in, it's a huge distraction, but hey there's still another hour to go until I'm back in South Dakota so what's a girl got to do?
It's been a while since I've made that journey, but the feeling is surreal, going 70 mph at 2AM with one earbud in.
You can't really hear the sounds of the road with earbuds in, even if it's only one, but after a while it starts to feel like you're just floating and there's no one on the road except for the glare of the red lights coming from the car in front  and the headlights coming from the car hiding in your blind spot.
Aside from that though it's just calm, empty space even with energetic dance beats playing to keep myself awake for the final leg of the trip. It's surreal because I couldn't even block out my own thoughts, like I typically can with a blaring radio.
Just a little change in my daily driving habits really altered the way I experienced something I had done many times before hand. That's probably why I can remember some of those late Friday nights on the road which occurred almost an entire year ago now.