I moved to California recently and due to my automotive obsession, I had to locate the best and closest driver’s road before setting up the utilities for my house. I was drawn to it like an overweight child is to a candy store; It’s called State Route 74, Highway 74 for the locals or Pines to Palms Highway for the more poetically inclined. It starts from Palm Desert and takes you 4,300 feet higher, to Mountain Centre, then back down to Hemet – all that in a little under 60 miles. 
It’s a truly fantastic road. 
But it’s not my favourite road.

To find my favourite road, we need to travel all the way back to Europe.

Until very recently, my wife and I lived in a village called Servoz, in France. It’s located at the very end of the Chamonix Mont-Blanc valley; right before it funnels into an extremely narrow area, wide enough only for a road and a train track. That road is called La Route Blanche, with its four lanes it’s the biggest road in the valley and therefore it’s the fastest way in and out. If it wasn’t for the traffic, it’d be a fantastic road, too.
Beside La Route Blanche the only other way out of the West side of the valley is through a departmental road called D-13, locally known as The Old Road of Servoz. Now that… That’s my favourite road.

I asked my wife, who’s my co-pilot, what her favourite road is. She went on and on citing all the absolutely stunning departmental roads, regional roads, mountain passes and cols we have taken on our adventures. I mentioned that mine is The Old Road of Servoz and she asked me why, claiming that her picks were better. If I put my emotions aside, I would agree with her. The Old Road is nowhere near as exciting as the Grand Saint Bernard Pass, which joins Switzerland to Italy. It’s nowhere near as adrenaline-inducing as Les Gorges de l’Arly, one of the most dangerous roads in the French Alps. And It’s not as scenic as the Col de l’Iseran which is the highest paved pass in the Alps. I’d recommend driving all three if you have the chance so that I can keep the Old Road of Servoz for me. 
Rest assured, I’m not as selfish as that statement may imply. 

Let me explain:

In July of 2022, I had my first day of work as a sales associate in a toy store. To say it wasn’t my dream job would be an understatement. But we were trying to save as much money as possible at the time, and when money needs to be made you have to work, no matter what the job is.
Margot got herself a job in Geneva, Switzerland, a little more than 50 minutes away from home on the Autoroute or an hour and a half on the train. We only had one car at the time so one of us had to take public transport, and for logistical reasons, Margot would take the train to work and I would take the car. Or that was the plan, at least.

The French Railway system has a reputation of never being on time, or not being here at all, and we can confirm that it’s a reputation based on facts. The SNCF has had a strike every year since 1947. That’s yearly strikes for the past 77 years. Needless to say, I ended up driving to and from Geneva more times than we had planned. About 3 or 4 times a week, I’d say. Kurt, our Seat Ibiza, and I were racking hundreds of miles a week and most of them were mind-numbing highway miles.

That’s where departmental road 13 comes into play. As previously mentioned, we lived in a hard-to-access valley; the main road was the fastest way up and had obviously quite a lot of traffic, the only other way home was through The Old Road. It was a detour, but with a bit of spirited driving, the time loss was negligible.

For the unfamiliar, it comes off as too narrow, not well maintained enough, too bumpy at times, with too many liabilities to be enjoyable and, with all those complications, not worth the extra time. But after many, many, many attempts to find joy out of what would otherwise be a miserable highway commute to work, you learn and remember all the quirks that road possesses. You know where the potholes and imperfections are, so you align your trajectory accordingly. By doing so, you realise that you have enough space to avoid the manhole cover at the apex without hitting the car on the opposite lane, even though it’s a very narrow road because it was originally built to accommodate horses. You know where you can and cannot overtake, because you’ve learned to look ahead through the trees mid-corner. You remember what is waiting for you behind the barn wall that creates a blind right-hander, so you don’t need to lift the throttle as much and you go into that corner with vigour. 
It’s a tricky road, with reversed banked corners that lead into tight switchbacks, extreme change of altitude through a series of three or four sharp corners, some of them are blind corners, certain areas are always damp and slippery due to small streams of water created from the melting snow.  If it’s not water that’s trying to kill you, it will be the gravel left by the tractors that go in and out of the forest. If all of that fails to raise your adrenaline levels, the ice during the winter months that will leave a zone even Mario wouldn’t be able to replicate with his bananas might do. 
Once you know all this… Once you’re familiar enough to know what to expect from this road… That’s when the fun begins. 

The more familiar I became with the road, the deeper the emotional attachment was. Because deep inside I knew that no matter where I drove, no matter how beautiful the scenery or the view was from another carpet of asphalt, it would never compare to the complicity created through hundreds of hours of perfecting driving up and down D-13. 
Because ultimately, that’s how you fall in love. Look at me, for example, my wife says she loves me more than anything on earth and that I’m the most handsome man she’s ever seen. But I know that’s not true because we watched Batman Begins a couple days ago and Christian Bale is a considerably better-looking man than I am. She doesn’t know Christian Bale personally, he might be a dick for all we know. Me, on the other hand, she knows me. She knows my terrible sixteen-year-old sense of humour, my ability to deliver those jokes at the wrong time, my addiction to automobiles, and my grumpy attitude. She peeled enough layers of the onion and still thought ‘You know what? This is it. I like this.’ 
To bring it back to car-related stuff, that’s what I have done with D-13; I’ve gotten so familiar with the ins and outs of the Old Road that, despite its flaws, I love it. 

Max.