"Place"

My experience of "place" is most shaped by the traveling I do, more specifically the driving to get from place to place. I love traveling and I have put well over 30,000 miles on my car since I got it in the Spring of 2008. This is significantly more ridiculous if you account for the fact that I didn't put a single mile on it in the summer months of the past two summers and rarely drive during weekdays. I participate in drumline activities that have made me drive long trips beginning when I was barely old enough at the age of sixteen. I have become so familiar with driving out on the open road and similarly grown to love experiencing places while driving through or to them. Through this, I have grown to severly dislike the winter driving season in the North that makes up a large portion of my reasons for wanting to move south after graduation. Much of my opinion toward places is associated with my experiences driving to them, through them, or even from them in the case of my hometown, Des Moines. Don't get me wrong, I'm a full supporter of Des Moines, and would love nothing more than to see it continue to grow and maintain it's status as the "Hippest city in America" according to fastcompany.com (http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/75/desmoines.html) However, during the season of snowy, icy, slippery, and often extremely dangerous roads I would much rather be in my family's favorite vacation location, Saratota, Florida. My experience with Sarasota includes a few times that we have deceded to make the trip by car rather than air. The most recent driving trip was my Dad and I road-tripping it down there after Christmas 2008. Along with being my first experience with 5 Hour Energy, this was a great defining moment in my driving history. I took the graveyard shift while my dad slept. Around our 15th hour of driving, I re-took the wheel. It was around 1am and I had just taken the aformentioned 5 Hour Energy, which surprisingly really kept me awake, focused, and not jittery. I was listening to a CD by Cartel which was on my iPod but I hadn't really dug into it yet. This experience still comes up in my mind when I listen to that CD, and it has become one of my favorite CDs that I own. This experience exemplifies the significance of music and travel in my life as passions.