What is it about driving at night? The cool air? No bugs? No glare? Sparse traffic? Calmness? Ahhh, I think it's more than that.

In Michael Mann's superb film Collateral, Max, a simple cab driver, relates to Vincent, an infamous customer, why he likes driving at night. "People are more relaxed," says Max. Is relaxation the thing that makes night driving so sumptiously cool? The fact that when we are relaxed, we can feel more? Remember more? Enjoy more of our driving?

Our brains disperse a neurological chemical immediately after we experience something truly memorable. It's called gamma-aminobutyric acid, or GABA. GABA is sent to the place of immediate memory, and encapsulates that memory into the long term, but in a different sort of long term. It's a long term that makes itself known more often. GABA-encapsulated memories come up in dreams, in random thoughts, or in similar situations. I've used a lot of GABA when I drive at night, especially in big cities. Why in big cities? I'm not sure. Maybe it's because my stomping grounds with cars are mainly on wide-open country roads, where, at night, the only light there is is the light of your xenons spread out before you. It's almost claustrophobic. But in a big city, you're never in the dark. You're never alone, yet you feel like you own the highway.

I once found myself being driven through New York City during a winter blizzard. We were driving south on the NJ Turnpike, west of Manhattan, from a trip through Vermont. It was late at night, and the traffic was so sparse that it seemed the city had evacuated. The snowflakes were thick, but fell in low-density sheets. You could still clearly see your surroundings. Surreal could not describe it. It was as if we had just entered the world of Blade Runner, and the cool, blue winter world stayed behind. We hardly needed our headlights, since the city lights reflected off the snowy cloud cover above, and acted as one huge sodium street lamp. Everything was orange. The snow falling was orange. The few cars that accompanied us were orange. The world was different. Yet from the comfort of our beloved automobile, we could observe this wonder without feeling attached to it. It was as if we had hopped onto a Disney ride, zooming through weird, alternate, frightful worlds, all the while knowing that it was transitory, and that this risky thrill would, in fact end with our return to the real world.

Such is the thrill of night driving.