And then as if the dust storms weren’t enough – check out what’s piling down on those mountains! The weather out west matches the Earth and is trying to smack down the upstart terrain.
We’re traveling through Wyoming, driving hard for Cheyenne… where we turn right. Heather’s a monster – iron-assed and steely-eyed she’s been going for eyes and rarely turns the driving over. I have no complaints… I’ve learned to hate driving. My brain just clamours about all the things I COULD be doing, and spits genius lyrics out that are remembered for miles and then forgotten the moment the emergency brake is pulled.
I’ve had weird dreams recently – specifically I dreamt that a beautiful woman was pursuing me – weird enough – but even weirder, I was working in a zoo at the time, and in order to get close to me she’d disguised herself as a wombat. No costume or anything, just apparently very effective acting, and one day as I was feeding her stalks of grass she nibbled past my hand and kissed me full on the mouth!
Weird dream.
My nightmares are worse. I don’t like the way the car is packed right now, not that there’s really much of a choice. I hate having both PA speakers stacked behind the driver’s seat, and I have nightmarish visions of crashing headlong into something and 150lbs of speakers pulping Heather – the screeching of the tires and my turning to say goodbye… I don’t like to think about it.
I do tend to think, what with the mileage and the distance and the time we spend on the road, we’re fortunate creatures – and that the good wishes and all those “drive safe” farewells from friends and fans somehow provide us with that little exra edge of positivity… they’re like prayers keeping us safe.
Thank you for that.
After two hours of me driving I take all that stuff back about Heather and her steely-eyed perseverence. Of course, she’s driving again now…
One of the reasons I don’t like driving as much anymore is that my mind wanders too much. Today we’ve been driving through Wyoming which for all intents and purposes has three radio stations: One National Public Radio Station – but the news gets old after an hour or two, and the “special interest” stories are kind of crap today. Station two is the classic rock station… or maybe a Generic Rock station? I’m not sure – they were doing okay for a while, but then kept playing the SAME “get new windshield wipers and don’t do drugs” commercials over and over again to the point of me wanting to jam my dip stick in one ear and out the other… and then the third station was a Christian talk show that was interesting for a while but eventually infuriated Heather.
Oh, and apparently Heather got her hands on my camera while I wasn’t looking…
In any case, for some reason the topic of my interior dialog today centered around my father – remembering positive things to a certain extent, but also focusing an awful lot on his last couple of weeks – how I just couldn’t get anything right and he was just telling me I was a good son, even though everything I did to help him hurt and I couldn’t give him water and I didn’t understand how to help – he just kept telling me that I was doing a good job and that I was a good son.
But I don’t want to think anymore.
