DanOCan

All great road trips start with great music.  I’ve had a number of jobs which have given me hours and hours behind the wheel, sometimes driving all across North America, other times just driving around the province or the city.  My current job doesn’t offer me the chance to travel so my driving is now recreational.  Whether it’s commuting to work or just wasting fossil fuels with no destination in mind you can bet my iPod is there.

My method for determining the songs to write about was simple.  Select the playlist from the iPod, put it on shuffle and write down the first ten songs to come up.

The playlist currently has 80 songs, totally about 5.5 hours.  The random selection shows how varied my driving musical selections can be.  We’ve got pop, rock, country.  We’ve got Canadian, American and British bands.  The songs represent five different decades.  We’ve got songs that are completely road-related and others that have nothing to do with road trips.

On with the list!

1)  Pour Some Sugar on Me – Def Leppard (1987)

Sure, it’s not a classic driving tune because it lacks any sort of road or traveling theme but the drum beat on this one means I need the cruise control set so I can keep both feet stomping along.  Besides, it comes from the era where I was just starting high school and everyone knows songs from that era of your life are always the best.  And, for good measure, in 2006 VH1 rated it as the second greatest song on the 80’s.

2)  Take it Easy – The Eagles (1972)

In contrast to “Pour Some Sugar on Me”, this IS a classic driving tune with all the themes there. It starts with the great opening lyric “Well I’m running down the road trying to loosen my load, I’ve got seven women on my mind.” and carries on through the chorus with “Don’t let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy.”  It represents the driving you do when you’re driving to clear your mind (“Lighten up while you still can, don’t even try to understand”) and the freedom you experience when you’re out in the world and anything is possible.  Which guy hasn’t wanted to stand on a corner in Winslow, Arizona just to see if there is a girl in a flatbed Ford there to take a look at you?

It also contains one of the lines which defines how I live my life:  “We may lose or we may win but we will never be here again.”

3)  Head Over Heels – Blue Rodeo (1993)

This needs to be the first song on the playlist when you head out early in the morning.  “The sun breaks and I can’t wait ‘til I get on my way again.”  It also works really great if you’re on the road and missing that someone special –- “Watching the rain through a crack in the window, it’s the little things that get you through, like the same sun rising on me is rising over you.” 

Add the memorable lyrics and a tune that’s easy to sing with and you’ve got the makings of a great road trip song.

4)  Drive My Car – The Beatles (1965)

Rubber Soul is one of the best albums The Beatles ever put together, and I’m not forgetting Sgt. Pepper when I say that.  That opening riff hooks you and the cowbell drives the song forward throughout the course of the 2.5 minutes.  It’s a catchy pop tune and the fact that it mentions cars and driving is merely a bonus.  When I owned by old six-string guitar I would just sit and play the opening over and over again.

5)  Animal Heart – Glass Tiger (1991)

Another song that has nothing to do with road trippin’ – it’s on the playlist purely because of the thundering guitar opening and the chorus is a lot of fun to scream along to – as long as no one is sitting next to you at a stoplight watching and mocking you, that is…

6)  You Wreck Me – Tom Petty (1994)

When we saw Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in 2009 this is the song they opened with and it’s been on my list of favourites ever since.  It was one of those songs which I somehow managed to miss when it was first released and only discovered years later.  The drum beat reminds me of a locomotive driving down the tracks and this one is always good for getting above the posted speed limit.  “Tonight we ride, right or wrong.” 

Also, no matter what is happening in your life you can’t help but feel better when you think “Now and again, I get the feeling, well if I don’t win I’m a gonna break even.”

I also have to admit that I really like the line about “I’ll be the boy in the corduroy pants.  You’ll be the girl at the high school dance.” even though it just seems really odd.  I guess it takes me back to my younger days and school dances, much the same way driving makes me feel young again too.

7)  Behind These Hazel Eyes – Kelly Clarkson (2004)

Don’t judge me for this one.  I’ve never even watched a full episode of American Idol.  It’s a catchy tune, it has a good beat and it’s great to drive to.  What more can I say?

8)  The Kid is Hot Tonight – Loverboy (1980)

Another one where the guitar and drums just hit you smack in the face from the opening notes and just keep driving the whole time.  This is a great song for driving in heavier traffic that is flowing fast such as an Interstate – passing cars, changing lanes you can’t help but think “Damn, I’m hot tonight!”

9) Jet Airliner – The Steve Miller Band (1977)

Sure, it’s about traveling by plane not car, but who says road trippin’ is limited to land-based modes of transportation?  This one is all about getting away from your home and how, even when you leave, you never forget where it is you came from.  Life’s an adventure and you have to get out there and experience it.

“Goodbye to all my friends at home

Goodbye to people I’ve trusted.

I’ve got to go out and make my way

I might get rich, you know I might get busted.”

10) On The Road – Lee Roy Parnell (1993)

My playlist has a fair amount of country music, but this was the only pure country song to show up in this random selection.  There are great stories contained in this one, from the “sad young wife who never had a life” to the teenager in the hotrod Chevy to the retired couple in the Airstream.  They’re all on the road for different reasons just as everyone in life has their own story and their own road to follow.

Whenever I think about the teenager putting his favourite cassette it makes me think how we lost something when we switched to digital songs from physical media.  There was something magical about sliding a cassette into your dashboard and hearing those few seconds of hissing before the music would start.

For the full effect of this one, you need to be driving a highway at night.  Then just sit back in the seat and let Lee Roy’s amazing slide guitar work carry you to your destination.  The chorus sums up my road trip experience perfectly:

“On the road where the night is black,

On the road where you don’t look back.

There’s a white line in the distance,

Where’s it’s going nobody knows.

If it’s anywhere you’ll find it

On the road.”

It’s one thing to look back at old times and think about how great it was back then.  It’s another thing to realize, right as you are living in the moment, how great usythose times are. 

That happened to me tonight.  I realized these are the days that I am going to look back on with fondess in the decades to come.  I’m happily married, I have a good job.  I have my health — in fact, I don’t think it is a stretch to say that physically I feel better now than I have at any other time in my life.  I have a happy work/life balance.  I get to RV and hike.  I have reconnected with friends from years ago while keeping the ones I have currently.  My weekends are full of hockey, Geocaching and road trips.   I have my photography, my ghost towning, my BBQ.  Multiple times each week I get to gather with good people and share a drink or two and many more laughs.

I wish I could take credit for my success, to say it was some sort of master plan that I put into motion years ago but I can’t.  It was a series of individual decisions, made with the best information available at the time and some lucky coincidences that brought me to this spot.

I just thought I should take a moment and thank everyone of you for being a part of it in some way.  Whether we meet for beers or play hockey together or you are just some anonymous hit on my website, you make it happen for me.

Isn’t this a great time to be alive?  This is our golden age, so let’s make sure we really enjoy it before it becomes just another memory.

I walked into the office a little after 7am and noticed all the lights were off.  Our office space is lined with windows along two of the walls and there was enough sun starting to stream in that I debated whether the lights were really needed or not.  I hesitated, not long enough that anyone watching me would have noticed anything, but certainly long enough for my mind to race back more than a decade.

In 2000 the office looked very different.  It was a newly renovated space and we were the first occupants to move in.  The cubicles were open, spacious and uniform except for one in the corner, just outside the manager’s office.  “Bill’s cube” is how it was known to all of us who called this little corner of the University home.  It had walls on three sides and was the most private spot on the floor that didn’t actually have a door.

Bill was our senior system administrator.  He was known around the department as being one of the smartest people you would ever meet.  Bill had the uncanny ability to read a book and be able to recall the information instantaneously.  Whereas most of us mere mortals would remember we “had read something about that somewhere”, Bill would have the information readily available in his encyclopedia-like mind. 

Bill was *the* source for information on our systems.  You needed to know anything about how a system had been built, how it had been configured, what it did, or who used it?  Bill was your guy.  “Talk to Bill” was the most common answer heard around our area.

Bill and I both started our work days around the same time.  We were always the first two into the office.  We had a system worked out with the office lights.  Now, I call it a system, but “unspoken” system is more accurate.  We never talked about it, we never planned it, and we both probably would have ever denied such a thing existed.  In a weak moment we may have admitted it was a “routine”.  You see, Bill’s cube was in the northeast corner of the floor and my space was in the northwest corner.  The office lights were controlled by a bank of four switches near the main door, one for each quadrant of the office.

Whether Bill or I were the first to arrive in the morning, we would only turn on the bank of lights for our area of the floor.  It was a subtle way of signalling the other whether or not we had arrived yet.  A decade ago I was a young Desktop Support tech, still very wet behind the ears and nervous about my role.  I can still recall the distinct feeling of comfort I would get when I would be walking across campus in the morning and I would look up to our floor and I would see the lights on in the northeast corner.  It was like a beacon in the fog.  There was a air of calm knowing that no matter what the day had in store for us we would be OK because we had Bill.

It’s been a long time since Bill worked with us.  He moved down east with his wife and family in May of 2001.  I know the exact month and year because once he knew he was leaving he started putting as much of his institutional knowledge as possible down on paper.  That black binder, labeled “Bill’s Docs – May 2010” on the spine still occupies a place in my office.  The information it contains is now obsolete and only of interest to the current generation of system administrators as a historic antiquity, an object of curiosity rather than the sum of all knowledge it was for us all those years ago.

That plain black binder servers as a reminder.  In the most tangible sense it manifests itself in my constant reminders to the team that “If it isn’t documented it doesn’t actually exist.”  But in a more important way it transcends our systems and stands as a metaphor for our entire lives.  At some point all of us will move on to some other place and the things we leave behind will carry on without us.

That first Monday, coming into work I remember looking up at the northeast corner of our floor and seeing it dark.  There was no Bill.   I walked in that day and sat down to work.  There was no Bill coming in a few minutes behind me to flip on the light in his quadrant.  Half an hour would pass before someone else walked in and, unaware of the symbolism, turned on the lights for all three remaining quadrants.  A new era had begun.

Many things have changed in the decade since Bill left.  The office is no longer the sparkling new area it once was.  More cubes have been moved in over the years and they don’t match the old cubes in colour nor style.  The carpet is worn from the years of desk chairs being rolled over it.  All the people who were on that floor with me ten years ago have moved to different locations.  I no longer occupy a spot in the northwest corner and I am no longer that raw rookie.

I snapped back to the present.  The brief moment of hesitation behind me, I flipped the switch for the southeast quadrant into the “On” position.  I chuckle to myself, wondering if somewhere out there, walking across campus is one of our younger staff members thinking “Oh good, Dan is here today.”