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.
