Morning Zen

I’ve been backing up early morning domestic trips to my long haul International trips. I’m up anyway with jetlag and my theory is if I travel six to seven hours one way, traveling three hours the other way ought to even things out somewhat. Wrong. .

Sunday morning around 6am is the only time to drive in NYC. Most road construction workers heard the quitting whistle around 5am, the drunks are safely at home parked on someone else’s lawn and Grandma is just finishing up her coffee before heading out to see the grandkids. It is time to stretch the legs of the Honda, having been confined to third gear or lower for over a month.

With the sunroof open, windows down and a oddly cool early summer morning my moment of Zen arrived as I roared to ninety-five, just when the VTEC cam switches over and sings. The LIE may be newly paved, but that means nothing to people paving roads during the midnight hours.

Astonishingly, there was no jitter in the steering, no pulling and no vibration of note from what has to be some seriously misaligned alignment down below. After three months of NYC roads I was expecting a tug of war and massaged hands from the steering wheel. None of that was apparent and the Honda certainly isn’t known for lack of feel.

This moment of Zen is courtesy of the NYPD without radar guns and all those off the road at 6am. I’d also like to thank the NY State road crew for a reasonable one mile stretch of the LIE between Queens Boulevard and the VWE. Yes, one mile of Zen but I’ll take what I can get.