Road trip! This weekend. I’m excited. It’ll be nice to get away, and road trips are the best kind of getting away — there’s all that open road, good music, and your own thoughts to keep you company. While I’m packing the Pringles chips and Jack Links beef jerky, my husband works on oil changes and the all-important playlist.
We’ve come to realize how critical the playlists are to our trips. Whatever songs we choose seem to become the soundtrack for that moment – the background to all our memories of that certain stretch of road – so we choose wisely.
To this day, Van Morrison’s “Madame George” instantly brings me back to a certain curvy road (and heavy pine scent) of Tahoe. James Taylor’s “Carolina on My Mind” flashes me right to the highway near Oak Glen, and coming back with bagloads of fresh-picked apples, saltwater taffies, and three wiped-out kids in the back seat.
Some of the memories aren’t so great – Jason Mraz’s first album, unfortunately, now makes me think of the bridge and harbor leading to the oceanside hospital where I took my mother-in-law for chemo treatments for a year. But, on a brighter note, the Black Crowes make me think of her and my husband’s second-youngest brother when we caravanned to Vegas; my young brother-in-law had had a lucky winning streak at the blackjack tables, and whenever I hear “She Talks to Angels” I can see him slouched in the back seat with a big grin on his face, that desert horizon zipping past. …
So take me on a road trip down your memory lane – what songs do you associate with certain roads?