In general, I do not consider driving to be an intrinsically pleasing activity. To be sure, there are a great many pleasures that one can gain from driving, namely the beauties of the scenery or a greater understanding of where one is, along with the pleasant sensations of driving up and down gentle hills and around curves. Today I found myself needing to get to the Rite-Aid in Canby, which is about half an hour drive or so from where I am staying, in order to do a PCR Covid-19 test for my travels, and was told a pleasant way to get there that would take half an hour each way and manage to avoid OR-99E the whole way, which was an added benefit.

Yet although the trip did take an hour of my time, it was not an hour wasted by any means. My interactions with the pharmacy clerk were pleasant enough, and the drive itself was particularly gorgeous. It is always nice to see the small airfields that dot the area of rural Oregon and demonstrate the popularity of people knowing how to fly and being able to use a variety of small airfields, and I drove right by one of them that had an SUV driving on an airstrip that doubled as the road to a subdivision and by a sign that stated aircraft fly low overhead, although none of them were nearby when I was driving to and from.

One of the joys of driving is the exploration of new routes. There are some people I know who spend a lot more time than I do trying to find new routes from one place and another, but even someone like myself enjoys the novelty of knowing how to move from one place to another through back roads that offer less traffic. And the drive reminded me of something else as well, and that is that I find driving to be a lot more pleasant when traffic is nearly nonexistent and the views are gorgeous and when the driving is easy and comfortable. Perhaps that does not make driving intrinsically enjoyable but it does mean that driving in the country remains something I enjoy even if driving in traffic is often stressful.