Happy times on the north side of Chicago these days for baseball fans!
They gave me my first true heartbreak at age 10 in 1969.
2.
John O
(And my favorite roads are tree covered or cliff sided.)
3.
east is east
That is a good looking dirt road. I hope no one ever takes a mind to pave it.
4.
FoxinSocks
Love the ones with canopies too. So much so that I have countless photos of roads and paths sheltered by trees.
Since this is an open thread, there’s a GoFundMe for my neighbor and fellow Democratic volunteer. If anyone has some change to spare, he could use the help and I’d be eternally grateful.
Actually, to call him a volunteer doesn’t do the guy justice. He’s worked tirelessly on multiple campaigns. First guy to show up, last to leave. Brilliant on the phone, always willing to give the new volunteers a hand. He’s given so much of himself. We’re now trying to give back to him.
5.
jl
Beautiful photo. thanks. Does it lead to an elegant Southern manse? With ladies exclaiming ‘Ahh do declayah’ from the great lawn?
6.
Steeplejack
I love getting out on the road—any road—and driving. Least favorite is boring, featureless interstate—looking at you, I-65 from Montgomery to Mobile—but I even like that when I’ve been cooped up too long.
I haven’t done it in a long time, but I used to love driving through rural north Tennessee on the way to my grandparents’ farm. Two-lane roads, hills and curves, interesting scenery.
The last few years my long drives have been from NoVA to Philadelphia or to Rehoboth Beach. The Philly run is hectic and semi-interesting because of the high speeds and high percentage of crazy drivers. Delaware is all flat farmland with tiny towns every so often, but there is a sort of “rally racing” feel to it, because there are five or six routes you can take, depending on the time of the week and what all the other idiot drivers are doing. (The object being to avoid them, of course.) I’m still getting the hang of all that, whereas my brother, who has been going to Rehoboth for 20 years, can sniff out the least busy route and hit some local volunteer fire department’s barbecue cookout on the way.
I also like driving in and around Las Vegas. My mother and my other brother live there, and I go out once or twice a year. The city is strange, because the infrastructure is surprisingly excellent, and it’s mildly trippy to drive down wide, well-lighted streets (off the Strip) late in the night. And then just a few miles out of town the night sky starts to open up as the light pollution diminishes.
working on a paper about bronze age wayfaring right now. How do you follow routes when there are no roads? How do you go on a journey when you don’t know the location of the endpoint? Fun stuff that brings together high theory and cognition/mental mapping with pretty pictures of ancient monuments
Yeah, it’s basically down in a (big) bowl. I was going to add that to my previous comment. When you’re driving away and you get over the rim, the light goes way down and the night sky opens up. It’s yooge! Heading toward Las Vegas, you can see this glow building on the horizon, and then when you cross the rim you’re almost blinded by the eruption of light on the valley floor. It’s cool.
I used to go out to Las Vegas in the ’80s for the COMDEX show. Drove out to the Hoover Dam and back one night with a very pretty, amiable woman, and that led to the Eagles song “Peaceful Easy Feeling” being fused in my mind.
And I want to sleep with you in the desert tonight
With a billion stars all around
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Angeles Crest is one of the best in California, as is the Coast Road.
My favorites are still the ones I grew up with in South PA, throwing a Bugeye Sprite around the rural roads (948 thrashing CC, 43 HP!… at least after we got all the cylinders firing).
Especially the little 2-laners with no stripes on the hills and in the hollers. The Piedmont is beautiful country.
19.
Steeplejack
Damn it. I went to YouTube for material and now can’t escape the gravitational field.
Time was there were a goodly number of meandering two lane roads here which had shady canopies of mature monkeypod trees, but widening and reconstruction have eliminated practically all of them. Some of the trees were pruned back to maybe 1/10 their size and transplanted, but the vast majority were just cut down.
I’ve spent the day trying to update Ubuntu from 14.10 to 15.04, it hasn’t gone well.
26.
magurakurin
The video of Trump’s bouncer throwing Jorge Ramos out of the presser is stunning. I can’t believe there isn’t more chatter on the tubes about this. Trump is basically going to war with everyone of Hispanic decent in the country now. Ramos is as famous and as respected as Walter frickin Cronkite for chrissake. Trump is goddamn wild man. If he gets the GOP nod it will be very, very difficult for him to win with no votes from the Hispanic community. And that’s basically what this little episode has just ensured.
27.
Amir Khalid
A Malay pop classic for the enjoyment of all: Sudirman’s Hujan (Rain).
28.
SoupCatcher
I love driving back roads over to the coast. The Nacimiento-Ferguson road from Fort Hunter Liggett to just south of Big Sur is one of my favorites. It’s a nice run through central California terrain – lots of oak trees – and then you come out to a gorgeous view of the Pacific with Highway 1 way down below. Just don’t do it anytime close to sunset or you’ll be blinded all the way down the hill. And cross your fingers that they aren’t doing training at the Fort since part of the road goes through the artillery range. (almost down to the bottom)
Another one I like is to start out in Woodside and head over the hill on Kings Mountain Road, then cross over Skyline and continue west on Tunitas Creek Road. Great if you love canopies – dryer trees east of the ridge and wetter trees, mostly coast Redwoods, on the western side. (Tunitas switchback)
29.
BillinGlendaleCA
@magurakurin: And jeb!’s pretty much forfeited the Asian vote.
30.
Amir Khalid
@magurakurin:
If Donald Trump is going to waste energy and goodwill feuding with the media, whether it’s a Fox news hack like Megyn Kelly or the Cronkite-like Jorge Ramos, he’s going to make a poor president indeed. But it seems his support doesn’t stop to consider that.
31.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid: Reminds me of the Korean music my wife sometimes listens to.
32.
Botsplainer
Trump’s security thug needs outing. If someone were to visit him for a little street justice, I’d be OK with it, as a lesson to other security thugs. If he failed to survive the encounter, I’d be OK with that, too.
There should be a cost to act as a minion.
33.
Amir Khalid
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I don’t understand the Republican party’s willingness to piss off socially conservative minority communities who want to vote Republican, which is most of them, to consolidate its hold on a white majority which is slowly dwindling into a plurality.
34.
Amir Khalid
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Do put some up. They must have it on YouTube.
There’s a block near my apartment with lovely old homes and huge old trees creating this same kind of canopy. At some point in spring, the trees all bloom white and driving that block is like driving in the clouds.
The last couple of winters have killed off the buds, but I’m hoping they’ll be back soon.
49.
SFAW
The photo – beautiful, by the way, thanks for posting it – reminded me of the end of An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, but with more trees.
My grandparents lived in a holler in rural West Virginia and their house was settled back against the foot of a mountain. The road in was a dirt road and a smaller dirt road led to their house.
There was a creek that ran along the bottom of the holler and all of the stones in it were smooth, flat and rounded. With creek floods, those rocks and stones ended up on the dirt road, along with gritty sand. When I was a kid, we would walk along that dirt road in the hot summer sun, little puffs of dirt kicking up with every step.
That’s my favorite kind of road.
52.
boatboy_srq
Late to this, but:
Roads: PCH, anything in the Marin Headlands, and the shore highway from York to Freeport. IOW small, curvy, with serious elevation changes and lots of good scenery. Making do these days with Hwy 9 from Leesburg to Charles Town and US 15 from Leesburg to Frederick, although driving from DC to Charleston via the back roads did come pretty close.
Driving music: Vanbot, Florrie and Ellie Goulding are on high rotation these days, though Chris Franke’s Pacific Coast Highway is good for not-so-fast back roads.
@Betty Cracker @top: That’s a lovely photo.
53.
A Ghost To Most
Any road above treeline (11,500 here)
54.
Just One More Canuck
My street is lined with mature maple trees – the trees are usually fully leafed (?) by late May or early June, and from then until October, it is stunning, especially around sunset
@PaulW: I left a comment for you. That is a beautiful memorial.
57.
shell
One that runs along the seaside.
Or along a row of wild raspberry bushes.
58.
J R in WV
I like twisty little country roads, with decent pavement, little to no traffic, going up and down little hills and hollows.
Southern Indiana and Ohio, the bluegrass section of Kentucky (north and west of the mountains), Blue Ridge country, around Asheville NC and east Tennessee where you can drive as fast as the road will allow, like 45 or so.
With trees and shade, and good music, and BBQ places with cold cheap beer. I’ve had good BBQ in Missouri, NC, TN, KY, KS and Arkansas – I’ve also had BBQ in TX, but it isn’t on the list of Good BBQ, because it’s always dry smoked, with bad sauce.
There are good country roads in WV too, but usually too twisty for fast driving, just fun to drive for the views.
59.
piratedan
@BillinGlendaleCA: you outta to try coming into Tahoe from the west on US 50, you crest the Sierra Nevada and drop into the valley where the lake is from on high with the casino’s lining the Nevada side of the lake. Kinda awesome imho.
Gorgeous road. The road I grew up on in New England was a little wider but basically canopy for a mile down to the next house. When I first started riding bikes I managed to convince myself that it was a scary stretch of woods and I needed to cross it at top speed if I was to survive the imaginary bears and/or killers lurking behind the huge trees.
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John O
Happy times on the north side of Chicago these days for baseball fans!
They gave me my first true heartbreak at age 10 in 1969.
John O
(And my favorite roads are tree covered or cliff sided.)
east is east
That is a good looking dirt road. I hope no one ever takes a mind to pave it.
FoxinSocks
Love the ones with canopies too. So much so that I have countless photos of roads and paths sheltered by trees.
Since this is an open thread, there’s a GoFundMe for my neighbor and fellow Democratic volunteer. If anyone has some change to spare, he could use the help and I’d be eternally grateful.
http://www.gofundme.com/helpstevefine
Actually, to call him a volunteer doesn’t do the guy justice. He’s worked tirelessly on multiple campaigns. First guy to show up, last to leave. Brilliant on the phone, always willing to give the new volunteers a hand. He’s given so much of himself. We’re now trying to give back to him.
jl
Beautiful photo. thanks. Does it lead to an elegant Southern manse? With ladies exclaiming ‘Ahh do declayah’ from the great lawn?
Steeplejack
I love getting out on the road—any road—and driving. Least favorite is boring, featureless interstate—looking at you, I-65 from Montgomery to Mobile—but I even like that when I’ve been cooped up too long.
I haven’t done it in a long time, but I used to love driving through rural north Tennessee on the way to my grandparents’ farm. Two-lane roads, hills and curves, interesting scenery.
The last few years my long drives have been from NoVA to Philadelphia or to Rehoboth Beach. The Philly run is hectic and semi-interesting because of the high speeds and high percentage of crazy drivers. Delaware is all flat farmland with tiny towns every so often, but there is a sort of “rally racing” feel to it, because there are five or six routes you can take, depending on the time of the week and what all the other idiot drivers are doing. (The object being to avoid them, of course.) I’m still getting the hang of all that, whereas my brother, who has been going to Rehoboth for 20 years, can sniff out the least busy route and hit some local volunteer fire department’s barbecue cookout on the way.
wasabi gasp
Anything wrong turny. The wronger, the better.
Steeplejack
@wasabi gasp:
You reminded me we need some music. “Driving Away from Home.”
BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack: I like Angeles Crest in the winter, after they’ve plowed it(so you don’t need chains).
Steeplejack
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I also like driving in and around Las Vegas. My mother and my other brother live there, and I go out once or twice a year. The city is strange, because the infrastructure is surprisingly excellent, and it’s mildly trippy to drive down wide, well-lighted streets (off the Strip) late in the night. And then just a few miles out of town the night sky starts to open up as the light pollution diminishes.
Steeplejack
“Everybody Wants to Rule the World” has some good driving visuals.
TheMightyTrowel
working on a paper about bronze age wayfaring right now. How do you follow routes when there are no roads? How do you go on a journey when you don’t know the location of the endpoint? Fun stuff that brings together high theory and cognition/mental mapping with pretty pictures of ancient monuments
Steeplejack
Nelson Riddle, “Theme from Route 66.”
BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack: We’ve driven into Vegas at night, really surreal, it suddenly appears right behind a hill.
BGinCHI
I like a road paved with good intentions.
Steeplejack
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Yeah, it’s basically down in a (big) bowl. I was going to add that to my previous comment. When you’re driving away and you get over the rim, the light goes way down and the night sky opens up. It’s yooge! Heading toward Las Vegas, you can see this glow building on the horizon, and then when you cross the rim you’re almost blinded by the eruption of light on the valley floor. It’s cool.
I used to go out to Las Vegas in the ’80s for the COMDEX show. Drove out to the Hoover Dam and back one night with a very pretty, amiable woman, and that led to the Eagles song “Peaceful Easy Feeling” being fused in my mind.
BillinGlendaleCA
@BGinCHI: My mom warned me about that road.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Angeles Crest is one of the best in California, as is the Coast Road.
My favorites are still the ones I grew up with in South PA, throwing a Bugeye Sprite around the rural roads (948 thrashing CC, 43 HP!… at least after we got all the cylinders firing).
Especially the little 2-laners with no stripes on the hills and in the hollers. The Piedmont is beautiful country.
Steeplejack
Damn it. I went to YouTube for material and now can’t escape the gravitational field.
A matched pair of desert songs:
The Eagles, “Bitter Creek.”
America: “Donkey Jaw.”
NotMax
Time was there were a goodly number of meandering two lane roads here which had shady canopies of mature monkeypod trees, but widening and reconstruction have eliminated practically all of them. Some of the trees were pruned back to maybe 1/10 their size and transplanted, but the vast majority were just cut down.
The one over the next rise.
Steeplejack
The Allman Brothers Band, “Melissa.”
Steeplejack
Argent, “Lonely Hard Road.”
seaboogie
@Steeplejack: You do be missing your former musical companion some, don’t you?
BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack: Sniff ‘n the Tears: Driver’s Seat
BillinGlendaleCA
I’ve spent the day trying to update Ubuntu from 14.10 to 15.04, it hasn’t gone well.
magurakurin
The video of Trump’s bouncer throwing Jorge Ramos out of the presser is stunning. I can’t believe there isn’t more chatter on the tubes about this. Trump is basically going to war with everyone of Hispanic decent in the country now. Ramos is as famous and as respected as Walter frickin Cronkite for chrissake. Trump is goddamn wild man. If he gets the GOP nod it will be very, very difficult for him to win with no votes from the Hispanic community. And that’s basically what this little episode has just ensured.
Amir Khalid
A Malay pop classic for the enjoyment of all: Sudirman’s Hujan (Rain).
SoupCatcher
I love driving back roads over to the coast. The Nacimiento-Ferguson road from Fort Hunter Liggett to just south of Big Sur is one of my favorites. It’s a nice run through central California terrain – lots of oak trees – and then you come out to a gorgeous view of the Pacific with Highway 1 way down below. Just don’t do it anytime close to sunset or you’ll be blinded all the way down the hill. And cross your fingers that they aren’t doing training at the Fort since part of the road goes through the artillery range.
(almost down to the bottom)
Another one I like is to start out in Woodside and head over the hill on Kings Mountain Road, then cross over Skyline and continue west on Tunitas Creek Road. Great if you love canopies – dryer trees east of the ridge and wetter trees, mostly coast Redwoods, on the western side.
(Tunitas switchback)
BillinGlendaleCA
@magurakurin: And jeb!’s pretty much forfeited the Asian vote.
Amir Khalid
@magurakurin:
If Donald Trump is going to waste energy and goodwill feuding with the media, whether it’s a Fox news hack like Megyn Kelly or the Cronkite-like Jorge Ramos, he’s going to make a poor president indeed. But it seems his support doesn’t stop to consider that.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid: Reminds me of the Korean music my wife sometimes listens to.
Botsplainer
Trump’s security thug needs outing. If someone were to visit him for a little street justice, I’d be OK with it, as a lesson to other security thugs. If he failed to survive the encounter, I’d be OK with that, too.
There should be a cost to act as a minion.
Amir Khalid
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I don’t understand the Republican party’s willingness to piss off socially conservative minority communities who want to vote Republican, which is most of them, to consolidate its hold on a white majority which is slowly dwindling into a plurality.
Amir Khalid
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Do put some up. They must have it on YouTube.
Steeplejack
@seaboogie:
Yes and no. Sorry to see him banned, but I don’t need him to wax
maudlinmusical in the deep of the night.@BillinGlendaleCA:
Eek! That’s one of his favorite songs.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid: I don’t know the names, I just see it on when she watches the TVmachine.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack: Hehe, I know, that’s why I chose it. I really liked it when I was in college.
Steeplejack
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I feel the same way about “Heard It in a Love Song.” (Really like it, appropriated by L.B.)
BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack: Here’s another from my freshman year of college(also a LB favorite): Jigsaw: Sky High.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid: Though when I was in grad school, this song kind of reminded the gf of Malay music(at least that’s what she said).
BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack: Another classic from freshman year: Sweet: Love is Like Oxygen.
BillinGlendaleCA
and Sweet: Fox on the Run.
Amir Khalid
@BillinGlendaleCA:
That sound was pretty much all over the planet back in the 1980s.
Betty Cracker
@Botsplainer: Nope. It was a shitty thing to do, but no one was hurt. Trump deserves the blame, not his minion.
Mustang Bobby
Two favorite roads: Highway 7 south of Estes Park, Colorado, towards Allenspark, and the Overseas Highway from Key Largo to No Name Key in Florida.
kc
@Steeplejack:
He got banned for good? What was the final straw?
kc
@NotMax:
What a cool tree!
debbie
There’s a block near my apartment with lovely old homes and huge old trees creating this same kind of canopy. At some point in spring, the trees all bloom white and driving that block is like driving in the clouds.
The last couple of winters have killed off the buds, but I’m hoping they’ll be back soon.
SFAW
The photo – beautiful, by the way, thanks for posting it – reminded me of the end of An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, but with more trees.
Yes, I’m not normal.
SFAW
@Steeplejack:
I missed all this – who are you talking about?
donnah
My grandparents lived in a holler in rural West Virginia and their house was settled back against the foot of a mountain. The road in was a dirt road and a smaller dirt road led to their house.
There was a creek that ran along the bottom of the holler and all of the stones in it were smooth, flat and rounded. With creek floods, those rocks and stones ended up on the dirt road, along with gritty sand. When I was a kid, we would walk along that dirt road in the hot summer sun, little puffs of dirt kicking up with every step.
That’s my favorite kind of road.
boatboy_srq
Late to this, but:
Roads: PCH, anything in the Marin Headlands, and the shore highway from York to Freeport. IOW small, curvy, with serious elevation changes and lots of good scenery. Making do these days with Hwy 9 from Leesburg to Charles Town and US 15 from Leesburg to Frederick, although driving from DC to Charleston via the back roads did come pretty close.
Driving music: Vanbot, Florrie and Ellie Goulding are on high rotation these days, though Chris Franke’s Pacific Coast Highway is good for not-so-fast back roads.
@Betty Cracker @top: That’s a lovely photo.
A Ghost To Most
Any road above treeline (11,500 here)
Just One More Canuck
My street is lined with mature maple trees – the trees are usually fully leafed (?) by late May or early June, and from then until October, it is stunning, especially around sunset
PaulW
In memoriam, from Florida, when I was a student in Gainesville in 1990… http://noticeatrend.blogspot.com/2015/08/in-memoriam-gainesville-1990.html
PurpleGirl
@PaulW: I left a comment for you. That is a beautiful memorial.
shell
One that runs along the seaside.
Or along a row of wild raspberry bushes.
J R in WV
I like twisty little country roads, with decent pavement, little to no traffic, going up and down little hills and hollows.
Southern Indiana and Ohio, the bluegrass section of Kentucky (north and west of the mountains), Blue Ridge country, around Asheville NC and east Tennessee where you can drive as fast as the road will allow, like 45 or so.
With trees and shade, and good music, and BBQ places with cold cheap beer. I’ve had good BBQ in Missouri, NC, TN, KY, KS and Arkansas – I’ve also had BBQ in TX, but it isn’t on the list of Good BBQ, because it’s always dry smoked, with bad sauce.
There are good country roads in WV too, but usually too twisty for fast driving, just fun to drive for the views.
piratedan
@BillinGlendaleCA: you outta to try coming into Tahoe from the west on US 50, you crest the Sierra Nevada and drop into the valley where the lake is from on high with the casino’s lining the Nevada side of the lake. Kinda awesome imho.
Steeplejack (phone)
@kc:
No, he got a second one-week ban.
@SFAW:
Talking about Little Boots, who went over the line about a month ago and has not been making a successful comeback.
Steeplejack
@kc:
No, he got a second one-week ban (about a week ago, I think).
@SFAW:
Little Boots. He got a one-week ban about a month ago and has not been making a good comeback.
schrodinger's cat
I like the road less traveled.
Park Loop road in the Acadia National Park.
smintheus
Gorgeous road. The road I grew up on in New England was a little wider but basically canopy for a mile down to the next house. When I first started riding bikes I managed to convince myself that it was a scary stretch of woods and I needed to cross it at top speed if I was to survive the imaginary bears and/or killers lurking behind the huge trees.