I enjoy a road trip. Which is good, because Wyoming offers many opportunities for travel. Actually, visiting nearly any town outside of Lander can count as a road trip, but the lengthy, daylong trips are my favorite. Hitting the road with a handful of CDs and the excitement of travelling to another destination combined with the joy of getting away for awhile tends to be a heady experience for me.
After the first hour, when conversation begins to wane and my buddy and I settle into the trip with our drinks and our snacks and our tunes, I’m perfectly content to let him drive while I let my thoughts wander.
I work with computers, and have taken to them in my life like some guys have with cars and engines. I love ripping them apart, tuning them up, putting them back together again, taking them apart to fix what I broke, smacking them with my hand until they turn on, getting lost in a maze of wires … my thoughts frequently randomly wander into computer guts and software.
As the endless fields go by off the highway to my right, it comes to mind how nice it would be if I were able to backup my memories like a hard drive. How much easier it would be if brains could be defragged and if there was a Norton Disk Doctor for emotions. How nifty it could be to upgrade my personal memory like RAM when it seems like my aging brain is getting sluggish and less speedy than it was when it was new and first being programmed …
Did I really just see a statue of a monkey riding a dinosaur?
The CD is changed, and I watch the occasional car speed past in either direction; sometimes the driver is texting and I wonder if that causes me more of a distraction than it does him. I continually scan the side of the highway, watching for the possible movement of depressed deer waiting to leap in front of the vehicle, or a rabbit wandering onto the road after being distracted by a texting motorist. I think a lot of things are better with cheese …
Huh. Yes, that really is a pair of testicles hanging off the trailer hitch of the truck in front of us. Sensible, I suppose, because the massive dually with its matching exhaust pipes and silhouetted shapely women on the mud flaps desperately cries out for that final ornament that will truly show the world just how masculine it really is.
How exactly would one go about putting a pair of underpants on a truck, anyway?
My butt hurts; my legs are stiff. After the driver grudgingly makes yet another stop at a rest area (Camel Kidneys, we call him- he can drive all day without a pit stop) the open road beckons me to lose myself in my thoughts once more.
Of course, once the sun goes down and there’s nothing more to watch than the light from the roadside reflectors streaming past, singing along with the current song is always an option for me. Actually, as it turns out, it is not an option according to the driver. His car; his rules; but for a few more hours, the road at least is mine, along with whatever thoughts or misdirected jack rabbits it may bring my way.
The Staff Curmudgeon 