There are two ways to get anywhere: The first is by traveling from point A to point B in a straight line. This path is the fastest, most efficient and easiest on your patience. If given the choice, this is how most people travel.
The second is how my brother travels: I call it the route of the drunken badger. If drawn out on paper, it resembles a doctor signing his name to a prescription while being struck by lightning. If trying to get from A to B, it is the quickest way to end up at C, and insane. You will also visit all the other letters of the alphabet and never arrive at B. On the surface, this route appears to make no sense, but when examined more closely, it turns out it still doesn’t and you wasted $76 in gasoline.
These drunken badger routes of my brother are wild, rambling, meandering rides that zip over hill and dale, come back around hill, decide to rediscover dale and eventually run out of gas on a country highway that a mapmaker missed because he fell asleep due to boredom.
This is exactly my brother’s kind of place. “AHHHH YESSSS!!!” he says. “Isn’t it beautiful? There is literally nothing around for 263.7 miles.”
(He knows this exact number because we covered all 263.7 miles getting there.)
I was reminded of my brother’s traveling ways this past weekend. The two of us, along with my daughter (16) and his son (8, but a carbon copy of his father, only miniature-ized,) traveled down to Tampa to visit my dad and aunt. My brother also brought along a sewing machine so he could stitch together a homemade tarp for a homemade boat he is building with my dad. (I add this detail only because if I had to endure it, you should to.)
I decided on doing the driving. Even though the cost of gas required me to take out a second loan on my house, I did this for one simple reason: When you control the steering wheel, you control the narrative.
I thought: I can dictate the time we leave. The direction we head. The stops we make. The music we listen to. The ability to breathe fresh air, rather than whatever is festering in the cooler he forgot to empty after his last trip. And most importantly: If I see a drunken badger, I can run over it.
And all of these things would have been correct … if I hadn’t been up against the devious King of the Back Road Long-cut.
On the way to Palatka – via my Google Maps-approved route that promised an atomic clock-guaranteed arrival time – my brother struck.
“Quick!” he blurted out. “Turn left here! Down the river!”
I was mid-way through the intersection when he did this, and I jerked the wheel, jumping a curb and launching through a church parking lot where some kind of bake sale or wedding was underway.
“What was it?!?” I cried. “Sinkhole? Bandits?”
“No,” he replied. “Wait ‘til you see this. It’s so worth it. They’re demolishing an old sawmill, and the flywheel on the steam engine should be exposed. It’s a historical artifact! And besides, this route is kind of a shortcut.”
My brother is a blacksmith, a connoisseur of all things mechanical, and if something has been “lost” in Florida, he sees it as his legal duty to go explore until he finds it.
“Man, isn’t that cool!” he said as we passed it. His carbon-copy son pressed his nose tight up against the window and began asking about technical specifications and other words that hurt my brain.
“I bet you’ve never seen something like that,” my satisfied brother said to me.
“There are good reasons why,” I replied.
And on it went like this: “So, we could take the normal route from here. ORRRR we could take the bridge over the Cross Florida Barge Canal, go through the leaning forest, turn at Salt Springs, zip by Dead Cooter Hill and then drive over what is easily the most beautiful bridge ever built. I’m telling you, wait until you see this. Best part is it only adds an extra 10 minutes at most.”
“MOST BEAUTIFUL BRIDGE!” the voices in the backseat called out.
I turned when he told me and followed his instructions down the back road long-cut.
“Wait a minute,” I said at one point. “Is it me, or did this road just double back on itself and we’re now heading the same direction we came in?!?”
“Yeah,” he replied like this was obvious, “but only for like 20 or 30 minutes Don’t worry. We’ll turn west soon. But first we have to go north, and then south, and then a little jog east. Believe me: It’s worth it!”
He pointed out important sites along the way: a stand of trees that looked like a tornado had bent them westward; some tractor tires painted green and positioned to look like a frog; the place where his son needed an emergency bathroom break once, and ALMOST made it out of the car in time.
Then the pièce de résistance and the reason we had come all of this way: A giant ramp of a bridge that jutted 90 degrees straight up out of the woods and into the sky in order to forge this tiny section of the Ocklawaha River. At the top, your ears popped and you felt the effects of high-altitude oxygen deprivation.
“Isn’t it incredible!” he boomed. “We’re above the tree tops. Nothing but green in every direction. Where else can you see this anymore?!? Wasn’t that worth it?”
I hate to admit it, but he was right.
“I told you, ‘most beautiful bridge that’s ever been built,’” he said.
“Yeah!” his son in the back felt the need to second, before asking about technical specifications and other words that hurt my brain
On we drove. More twists and turns. More side treks and “short cuts.” More historical narratives and diatribes against suburbia and a complete explanation of every sinkhole within a 50-mile radius. (My brother is also a connoisseur of sink holes, things that most people have selectively forgotten and anything involving dirt or getting dirty.)
His son would nod along in agreement, and then ask him to Google random facts, like who holds the world record for longest hot dogs or holding their breath. Why waste Google on something as absurd as directions.
Twelve weeks later, we pulled in at my dad’s. We had time to say hello, let my nephew use the bathroom, sew together a homemade tarp and then get back in the car to head back to St. Augustine.
The wheels were already spinning in my brother’s brain as we backed out of the driveway: “You know, if we head up this road until we see what looks like a tractor, but is actually a sculpture made out of corn husks, there’s the most amazing limestone quarry you will ever see. It will only add 10 minutes to the trip back, but I am telling you, it’s so worth it!”