Picture this scenario: It’s your first visit to Mexico City, and you’ve rented a car for sightseeing side trips to Cuernavaca and San Miguel de Allende. You leave the airport and are immediately plunged into the mad chaos that is D.F. traffic. Stop-and-go congestion is rampant. Drivers aren’t obeying red lights. Of course everything is in Spanish. Every time the car comes to a stop you’re besieged by windshield washers, beggars and people trying to sell you newspapers, candy, flowers and Day of the Dead skeletons dressed like Che Guevara. You can’t consult your city map to pinpoint the location of your hotel because you don’t dare take your eyes off the street for even a second. Are you 1) exhilarated or 2) terrified?

Or this one: You’re touring Italy’s Amalfi coast in one of those little European convertibles. Ridiculously picturesque resort towns like Positano and Ravello cling to the rocks overlooking a stunningly beautiful coastline. They’re connected by the Statale 163, a fiendishly twisting, cliff-hugging roadway built in the 19th century that curves dizzyingly around mountains at heights from 50 to (gasp!) 400 feet above the sea. Is this 1) a glorious adventure, or 2) sheer hell?

Or how about this one: You’re lost, plain and simple. You mistakenly took a right instead of a left coming out of that ski village parking lot, and eventually it dawns on you that you should have been back on the main road 20 minutes ago. There’s no way to turn around, you’re ascending instead of descending, you have a 3 p.m. flight to catch and time is running short. Are you 1) laughing it off and enjoying the scenery, or 2) gnashing your teeth, pulling out your hair and on the verge of tears?

The height of the summer road trip season seems like a good time to pose this question: Does vacation driving turn you on or stress you out? I’d wager to say this is a question that probably won’t provoke a neutral response. I know people in both camps. I myself fall squarely into the “stress you out” category.

I still have vivid memories of a road trip in 1974 (yes, 1974!) from northern Virginia, where I lived at the time, to Fall River, Massachusetts. I was in the front passenger seat of my friend’s sporty little Datsun 280-Z. And instead of bypassing the New York City metro area—which would have been the sensible thing to do from a route standpoint—we headed straight into Manhattan. It was a Friday night, which meant gridlocked intersections and literally overflowing sidewalks. As we inched along at a snail’s pace, with an aural backdrop of blaring car horns and occasional catcalls hurled in our direction by rowdy New Yorkers, one thought ran repeatedly through my head: “I am so glad I’m not driving.”

Let me also say that I’m not particularly fond of driving to begin with. I put up with daily commutes and weekends spent running errands because I have to, but these all take place on short, fixed routes made well-worn by familiarity. I’d also rather not walk to the dry cleaners, the ATM, the grocery store or my absolutely necessary bagel-and-coffee run to Einstein’s. When I travel, the road can be relaxing in a hypnotically comforting way, although that feeling is greatly enhanced if there’s something interesting to look at.

But when I’m on business travel assignment, driving is a second job. I’m constantly thinking about what I’m going to write about, what the next stop on my itinerary is, how to get there and the fact that the rustic, weathered barn I just passed would have made a great photo. Let’s not even mention the notes I could—and should—be taking if both my hands weren’t occupied. And if I happen to be somewhere I love, like the Pacific Northwest or San Francisco or the English countryside, I want to be a total tourist, relax and look out the window rather than scouting for road signs or playing passing roulette with other vehicles on a 40-mile stretch of winding two-lane roadway.

My most enjoyable assignments are therefore the ones where I can cajole a good friend of mine to come along and oh, by the way, could you please do the driving? My fellow blogger Eli Ellison, on the other hand, is just the opposite; the crazier the conditions the better he likes it. Piloting a rented VW bug through the teeming alleyways of New Delhi with only a dog-eared copy of Let’s Go India & Nepal for guidance would be his idea of fun. A perilous mountain road with a sheer drop-off and no guardrail? Child’s play. The sudden appearance of livestock on a potholed stretch of asphalt snaking through Yucatecan jungle? No problema. Street signs in Sanskrit? Bring it on. How does everyone out there feel? Let’s hear some comments.