For sixteen years, the Golden Gate Bridge has been something of a secret code in our household. A symbol of unity, if you will, between Wife and me, a testament to our way of sticking together. Well, not the actual bridge – even though it is an impressive sight and an impressive piece of engineering as it is – but driving across it.

I love to drive. Ever since I was a baby, the car’s been my safe place, and my happy place. The backseat was my domain, back there, I’ve read comics and made scientific experiments – such as testing which brand of glue dries fastest. Back in the day, there were no seat belts, especially not in the back, and there were no boosters or baby seats, I’d just lie on the back seat and take a nap when we drove to Grandma’s place.

If I had buddies with me, we’d sometimes sit in the trunk of a station wagon, facing backwards, waving to the cars behind us.

On Xmas Eves, Dad would take Mom and me on a drive through downtown Helsinki, after he’d finished work but before it was time to have dinner, so that I might go scouting for Santas, to get an idea of what time he’d be paying a visit at our house. (Often, he just rushed by, leaving presents at the door).

When I got my driver’s license – a year later than I could have because for some reason, I thought I didn’t want to drive – Dad helped me find a good car. A Volkswagen Beetle. “That way you’ll learn to use the different gears,” he told me, as a reason for not letting me drive the family Seat.

I loved the Beetle. I loved the sound of the car, its smell, and I loved the car stereo. When I was a young adult, on my own in Helsinki, I used to drive around the city, listening to tunes. Sometimes a buddy of mine would call from work late at night, and ask me if I could give him a ride home. And since I loved to drive (and since he made the best pizza in town), I drove to his restaurant, and drove him home late at night.

I’ve sat in a car waiting for friends for hours, reading papers, reading books, eating burgers, tacos, pizza, hotdogs, and sandwiches, and when I drove around Scandinavia in my black BMW twenty years ago, I slept in the car on the Swedish-Norwegian border when I couldn’t get a hotel room in Oslo after a Bryan Adams concert.

In short: Driving is my favorite pastime.

Sixteen years ago, Wife and I drove across America as driveaway drivers, transporting other people’s cars from one place to another, paying nothing for the cars, only gas. Our plan was to get to California, but since we didn’t know where the cars should be drive, we only bought a return ticket to New York, and hoped for the best.

Wife navigated, I drove our three cars to Klamath Falls, Oregon, via Atlanta, Georgia. We had to take a train to San Jose, but from there, we did get our last ride to Orange County and we made it to LA.

In San Francisco, we had trouble finding a hotel again, and had to drive farter south than we had wanted until we just decided to keep on driving toward Los Angeles. But we did get to the park overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge.

We admired it for a while, and then tried to decide whether to drive across it.

“You wanna?” I asked Wife.

“Dunno. Do you?”

“Maybe. Although, it’s sort of late now.”

“We should probably find a hotel.”

“Probably.”

“But if you want to, of course we can do it,” Wife said.

“It’s fine. We can always just say that I’ve done it.”

And there you have it. Maybe you’ve had dinner with us, and we’ve talked about the Golden Gate Bridge, and I’ve said something like, “I remember when I drove across the bridge”, and you may have noticed the smile on my face, or how I’ve looked at Wife, but you didn’t know that while I was lying to you, the lie was also another way of saying “I love you” to Wife because we knew that we knew and that nobody else knew.

Yesterday, we were back in San Francisco, on this roadtrip, and the whole family got in the car in the morning because I wanted to give them as great a look of it as I had gotten the day before when I rode a bike all the way up and onto the bridge.

We drove up, made a quick stop at the visitor’s center right before the bridge, and then kept on driving across the bridge, all the way to Marin City.

And then back. I loved every second of it.

Tomorrow, we’ll drive into Hollywood. Honestly.