JACKSON — I drove 34 hours in seven days last week, all the way to Midland, Texas. That’s the most I’ve driven in 40 years.
Ginny and I drove to Utopia, Texas, 60 miles west of San Antonio, to visit my sister and see the eclipse. Turns out, my brother-in-law Steve Stringfellow lost his 94-year-old mother the day we arrived. So we all drove five hours further to Midland for the funeral. Fortunately, it was right in the path of the eclipse.
I had never seen that stretch of road before. People say it’s flat, dry and boring, but I found it beautiful in its own way.
Midland itself has been booming with oil fracking. Our hotel room was $100 for Saturday night. If we had stayed on Monday, it would have been $450. That’s when the oil workers come in.
I’ve never seen oil jacks in the middle of cotton fields. Most of the cotton isn’t irrigated. No rain. No cotton.
We also saw hundreds of wind turbines, as far as the eye could see. Wind, oil and cotton.
The funeral was small, just close family. That’s what happens when you outlive most of your contemporaries. I had never met Geraldine Stringfellow. She raised four successful children, three sons and a daughter. I can only imagine all the trials and tribulations and moments of joy.
One nice benefit of the digital age: A digital slideshow at funerals so you can get a feel for the person’s life. I have never gotten over the awe of how God makes us all unique and different. Every life is precious. Each journey infinitely meaningful.
After the funeral, the family went to a nice Midland steak house. I saw Steve’s siblings for the first time since their wedding. All retired now, having lived interesting lives. It’s fascinating to watch the passage of time.
The eclipse was a bit of a letdown. We were in the direct path, but the moon was farther away than normal and didn’t cover up the whole sun. The tiny “ring of fire” was still bright enough to keep the daylight. This surprised me.
In 2017, I traveled to Kentucky to see an eclipse when the moon was closer and covered up the entire sun. It got dark. That was mesmerizing. I plan to return to Utopia on April 8 for such a total eclipse. Never in U.S. history have back-to-back eclipses occurred on the mainland within a year.
Having been a private pilot with a small airplane, I haven’t made a lot of long drives over the last few decades. But advancing age, increasing costs and golf ended my flying hobby.
I hate long boring drives. I get sleepy. Having to make hundreds of tiny corrections and constantly watching the road is exhausting. But this trip was different. I had an autopilot that actually worked.
When Ginny’s Mercedes died after 15 years, I was hoping to get her a plug-in hybrid. I love this concept. The battery gives you the first 30 miles, after that the gas engine kicks in. The low cost of charging the battery makes the effective mileage on the electric miles about 150 miles per gallon.
Ginny balked. “I can’t remember to charge my phone, how am I going to remember to charge the battery?” she said,
No worries, I responded, I’ll remember.
Then she said, “Well what happens when I forget to unplug the charger and back out and rip the whole thing out of the garage wall?” That effectively ended my dalliance with plug-in hybrids.
Ginny wanted style. I wanted an autopilot. I knew my cause was lost.
She found a year-old Genesis, the top-end brand from Hyundai. She loved this car’s looks. To me, all cars look pretty much alike. But as it turns out, it’s got one of the best autopilots out there. Thank you, Lord!
So my trip to Texas and back was the first real test of the autopilot.
Point one: I never got sleepy. That is huge. Using the autopilot reduced my workload, allowing me to stay alert. We listened to music. We listened to the Mississippi Department of Archives “History Is Lunch” on YouTube. We even talked.
The autopilot does two main things: It keeps the car in the middle of the lane. And the cruise control maintains appropriate separation from other vehicles.
I liken this to riding a horse on a trail ride. The horse more or less knows where to go and what to do, but you still have to stay in control and make corrections from time to time. Just like a horse can get spooked and confused by something it sees, so does the autopilot.
Let me put it this way: I wouldn’t even begin thinking about crawling in the back seat and taking a nap. We’re a long way from that.
But for interstates especially, the car pretty much drives itself. The newer version will actually pass slower cars, but I had to do that manually.
I must admit, I was too optimistic in my predictions of driverless cars. Five years ago, I thought we’d be there by now. We are at least five, maybe 10 years out. Maybe never. There is just too much complexity, especially in the never-ending area of interstate road construction in Texas.
But what the autopilot does do is drive well on long stretches of interstate, allowing me to choose a song, pick a podcast, talk on the phone, look at the signs and gaze at the landscape. This is really changing my attitude about long drives.
They say that flying is 99 percent boredom and 1 percent terror. The car autopilot is the same. When it gets confused, it’s scary and requires quick intervention.
I can drive hands-free for about a minute or two before it warns me to get my hands on the wheel. If I jiggle the steering wheel, the countdown starts over. I just keep a thumb on the bottom of the wheel the whole time and let the autopilot do its thing.
It stays in the center of the lane. This can be disconcerting when you are close to an 18-wheeler. I would naturally scoot over to the far side of the lane. Same on turns.
Speaking of 18-wheelers, these beasts dominated the Texas interstates. Sometimes I was surrounded by six or seven. Passenger cars are getting pushed off the interstates. If this continues, something will have to give. Maybe an 18-wheeler interstate tax would get more of these containers off the roads and onto the rails.
All and all, a great trip. Driving through the endless Texas megalopoli made me happy to return to my more rural state of Mississippi. Not everything about growth is good.
