More Road

I write this in Kingman, AZ. When I set out this morning I asserted that today was about miles, gobbling up highway and not getting distracted by the little blue lines on the map. I even drove with the top up much of the day. To call the drive a success, however, I really should still be on the road, chewing up a few more miles. Tomorrow will be a long drive.

With the top up, it is still possible to have Road Trip Moments, and often music will play a larger role, due to reduced wind noise. As I hit the ramp from I-25 to I-40 the Who was playinig “Going Mobile”, and the Mountain Dew purchased at Santo Domingo was kicking in. Hell, yeah, baby, the po-lice and the tax man won’t catch me, I’m mobile.

Still, the freeway is a marvel of engineering designed to make travel boring, and it did its job admirably.

Somewhere around Gallup I was in the slow lane (being a fine, upright, law-abiding citizen), and I saw a white dog standing right in the middle of the fast lane, fairly well camouflaged. I was already aware of the BMW and the semi truck side-by-side behind me; things looked very bad for the dog. My plan: ease over closer to the dog and honk the horn, startling him into the median. Still not ideal, but better than where he was.

My plan had one major flaw: by the time I came up with it, I was well past the dog, and watching the drama unfold in my rear-view mirror. I didn’t really want to see a dog get smushed, but I couldn’t not look, either. The BMW driver didn’t see the dog until the last moment, and swerved toward the median to avoid it. The dog got a clue at last, and skipped away from the hurtling sport sedan — almost, but not quite, into the path of the truck. The last I saw, the dog was standing, straddling the white stripes as the truck blew past it. I do not know the end of that story.

I could have sworn there was a gas station just past Winslow that was relatively cheap. There isn’t. Yours truly was getting a little worried for a while. I turned off the Air Conditioning to improve mileage, and buy the time I found fuel I was One Sweaty Dude. I put the top down when I refueled, and turned off the music. It was having a tendency to drag me out of the story I have been playing with in my head.

Other than that, there’s not much to report from today’s travels. I now return to Mad Dog’s Dog House for dinner. I wonder if they’ll remember me from last winter.

7 thoughts on “More Road

  1. “On the way to Tacoma…Atlanta…”

    I have this stupid song about Winslow in my head now. I completely blame you.

    The white dog was a ghost. All is well now. I hope.

  2. I believe you are mixing your 70’s rock a bit. “…Tacoma, Philadelphia, Atlanta ,LA… Northern California where the girls are warm, so I can hear my sweet mbaby say…” is a Steve Miller lyric, while “Standin’ on the corner in Winslow Arizona, such a fine sight to see… It’s a girl, my lord, in a flat-bed Ford, slowin’ down to take a look at me” is from an Eagles song. But now that you mention it, the music seems pretty much interchangeable.

    I was listening to a radio station broadcasting out of Winslow today, and I’ll be dipped if they didn’t mention a girl in a flat-bed Ford.

  3. So there I was driving up 99 north of Bakersfield when I hear the DJ make a comment about Winslow and sure enough, they play the song. The surreal part was when, two songs later, they played the Steve Miller song mentioned above.

    Obviously the program director for that station reads this blog and the comments.

  4. Dude! Timely comments about the Steve Miller Band and Eagles tunes! We’ll add them to our set for this wedding we’re playing tomorrow. Classic rock for Finns and Czechs! We’ve got three songs by Fleetwood Mac already. The 70’s…..’sigh!’

  5. I forgot to mention: Monday Night Karaoke at The Blind Eye! We partook for the first time this passed Monday. Huge and diverse song selection, Budvar on tap, humongous fun.

    Read the review on our blog and start practicing your scales for when you return to this neck of the woods, Baby!

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