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Comment by Ambroos | Hacker News Reader

I do this a lot, it's very relaxing and a good way to take time to just think. When I lived in Seattle I'd often extend my drive home from work by an hour or two. It really helps to turn off work mode. All my holidays are road trips.

The longest one has been a 4400 mile EV (CCS) roadtrip in 2 weeks in July 2021, taking me from Seattle to Yellowstone to Arches to Big Sur and back.

Now that I'm back in Europe and no longer own a car it's probably the one thing I miss most about living in the US, the amount of unseen roads available to go drive on.

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There are tons of "unseen roads" in Europe, you just have to get out of the populated bits.

Northern Scandinavia and Scotland are two good examples.

I agree that nothing quite compares to middle-of-nowhere USA or Canada, though.

Scotland feels positively crowded in the tourist season. There aren't many roads but each of them is the only way in or out of a settlement without a massive detour. Especially if you're anywhere near the "North Coast 500".

I think my greatest empty road experience was, oddly, on the A1; it was shortly after dawn, and for a brief period there were four empty lanes ahead of and behind me. The experience of being the only person in a space designed to be crowded.

Oh yeah. I try to drive at night as often as possible for that reason.

Driving in or around London at 4am is magnificent. Huge roads with no-one to use them.

I remember being in Chicago on a Sunday morning. No traffic. No pedestrians. No sound other than the wind. I was the only person in sight for a few minutes. It was eerie but cool being somewhere that would be a parking lot in 24 hours.

It's a similar feeling to being the only person in a hotel other than the employee at the front desk.

True, I should have phrased that differently. I was spoiled with variety in Seattle. In a day of driving I could do mountains or desert or water or urban or ocean. Around Stockholm, where I live now, things are a lot more uniform. And it hurts going far with car sharing price per km. In Seattle I had the benefit of free Electrify America charging and flat monthly rate charging in my apartment building so driving was essentially free.

So yeah, circumstances.

I didn't realise how much I'd miss the driving when I moved back to Europe and switched back to a not-insane income level.

I used car sharing a lot during COVID lockdowns but now that I go to work once a week it is no longer financially sensible for me. I was spending over 250 euro per month for commuting once a week plus one weekend trip per month.

The biggest cost of car sharing was having to park the car in front of the office for 9 hours at €3,75 per hour. Or, during weekend trips, spending €75 just for having the car idle in front of the cabin, that price excludes any kilometers driven.

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