New Mexico tonight

I’m staying at the Sheraton in Albuquerque. I’m pooped. New Mexico is beautiful. Texas, or at least the part I drove through, is mind bogglingly flat. I heard some truckers talking about lawn mowers. On my handheld CB. They must have been near me, going the same direction. It was a long conversation. Like twenty minutes. It was amusing. And surprisingly informative. “My wife got on my new John Deer and took out all the sprinkler heads quicker n’ snot.” And that’s an exact quote. I also heard a lot of m.f. swearing, kids screaming, and and long rambling soliloquies in southern accents blasted over the air waves like a machine gun fire. I hear a lot of “sure nuff” and “ya’ll”. The citizens band truly is like internet chat rooms, geographically contrained, with static and southern accents. I heard some insanity, let me tell you.

Tomorrow I’m aiming for Barstow. But I might make it as far as Bakersfield. Today I wasted a lot of time futzing with my gear instead of driving. I hooked my new 60gig iPod up to the car, which has an audio aux input right on the dashboard. Learned how to use my Valentine One radar detector (and it saved my frickin’ ass twice). I hooked up the cb ( I’ve this had for a few years now). I also spent some time pulled over figuring out how to use the truck’s navigation system and other stuff like the sunroof and neck massager. Ok I made that last one up. My point is tomorrow I expect to spend less time futzing and more time driving.

Don’t think I’ll post any pictures tonight. Unless I get a second wind.

The truck is way cool. Drives great. Lot’s of power. It’s surprisingly quiet. My biggest complaint is that every time I stopped I managed to get a fly in the car that dive bombs my eyeball right when I’m merging between two semis at mach II. This was driving me nuts and I was weaving around the road trying to hit it with my map. But then I figured out that if I open all the windows, including the back window, and the sunroof, I experience the fly version of explosive decompression. Fly immediately sucked out.

But then it’d be back later. Landing on my eyelid. Either there’s an organized assault I’m barely noticing happening or it’s the same fly is back and mad as hell. Maybe when he got sucked out he was able to grab onto the radio antennae with one fly hand and haul himself backup into the cab hand over fly hand. Like Ripley at the end of Aliens, though she’s not particularly fly like.

Room service is here. Gotta go eat. Brain malfunctioning.