Route 28 is a Toll-free Road, Change Is Not Necessary.

The Oddi photography job complete and my family visited, I'm on my way back to NYC, driving Route 28 to 80. The weather's clear, I'm in no rush, and, well, it's been a while since I've taken ol' scenic 28. I like that there are winding stretches and that I can drive fast on them. I appreciate the excitement of those streches because, no matter how many podcasts I try to have a conversation with, this drive gets boring after a few hundred miles on Route 80. Coming back to Pittsburgh late at night this way, stretches like those keep you awake in the final hours of the drive, when Ira Glass just annoys instead of informing your worldview through empathy-conjuring tales of our American connectedness.  

I still drive without a map, but it's unlike the automatic driving I do everyday. While I'm driving through, I'm aware of how I've been here before. The turns and landmarks are still there, just where they've always been. They're still mapped out deep in my brain, but digging them up takes effort. I don't drive back and forth like I did when I first moved to NYC. If you don't use it, you lose it, right? 

The road is the same. The people and places along the road are the same. The drive up 28 is still familiar but becoming increasingly not. Nothing's really changed here but it feels different. Maybe living in NYC has changed me. Maybe I just like to think living in NYC has changed me. Maybe it's reshaped my understanding on the people and culture of rural western Pennsylvania, put them in a context, framed them as living in a "here" while I live in a "there." Maybe I just like to think I'm so clever to think that way. Maybe it helps me feel like I've been successful in trying to become some better version of myself by the move to NYC if I can point out to myself how different I am from people who are so similar to me.

I dwell on our differences after stopping at a Sheetz to order a familiar MTO. I'm dressed mostly in black, they're dressed mostly in camo. We're all about to eat some tasty made-to-order garbage. We both have the same mixed ethnicities, the Eastern European features, but they're about 100lbs heavier on their similar bones because they're doubing up the meat on their MTOs on the daily. To blend in here, I use a light Pittsburgh accent when I have to talk to anyone in the store. I revert the clear and steady diction I've developed in trying not to sound identifiably regional in NYC. And there I am, mangling my vowels, not being so different after all.