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THURSDAY
got a call from Billy Craig at 7:30. it was the timing belt. i was right. 330 dollars worth of right. he said it would be ready by 2:00 but he called again at 12:00 and said we could pick it up. checked out. picked up the car and set a totally unreasonable goal of making it to El Paso. i took first shift on the truck again. Texas roads are much nicer than Arkansas’s and we made a lot better time. i had that truck cranking up to 75+ on the straight stretches. landscape was starting to flatten out and the under brush began to turn to scrub. still a bit hilly but moving into big sky country. blew thru Dallas...looks like a nice town but no time to stop. 
drove and drove and drove some more until we were about an hour outside of Abeline. went to a country/western store and bought belt buckles and bandannas and sheriff stars...not really sure why... just caught up in the moment i guess. almost bought cowboy hats but im glad we didnt. ate at the Bell and hit the road again. ten minutes down the road a weird light came on in the truck and we pulled over. johnny didnt see us and kept going. the light turned out to be for the exhaust brake. tried to call the Budget place to see what to do about it but joey’s phone was out of juice. since we didnt know what the light was for we just decided to keep going and try to catch up to johnny. got treated to an exceptional Texas sunset... quite nice. 
finally caught up to johnny who was waiting for us on the side of the road. pulled over to use his phone to call the truck place at some creepy, deserted little exit off 20 w/ an abandoned gas station (complete with skeletal cars and piles of discarded tires) and the Gym Diner (complete with wooden cut outs of ice cream cones and giant sneakers and some guy sleeping on the front stoop). other than that... nothing for miles and miles. 
the sun went down and we could see a horrendous thunder storm tearing shit up in the distance. looking out over the darkened desert i could just have easily believed i was looking out over the ocean w/ the few lights on the sparse buildings easily mistaken for ships. we did hit two patches of really severe downpour. luckily both only lasted about 60-90 seconds. still it was pretty intense with the wind whipping the truck around and huge tractor trailers blowing past us kicking up spray. the roads were bone dry only a few miles down the road and the driving was fine again. blew thru Big Springs and Midland (hometown of George W... we also passed thru Hope AK a few days prior, birthplace of Bill Clinton...whee!) and finally stopped in Odessa, the last big spot on the map before the vast expanse. not much between there and El Paso. gonna try to make it to Johnny’s G’ma’s house in Bisbee tomorrow. Odessa smalls like an ass and the water tastes really bad... lots of factories and big industry around here so that’s probably why. |