My Trip To Texas

Hello from sunny El Paso! Here are the highlights from the drive down:

1. So, I'm driving through Kanasas... and driving ... and driving ... and driving when suddenly I find myself on the outskirts of Spit-In-The-Road-Town #245. What's so great about this little town? It's the home of the Timeless Company. Not THE Timeless Company... simply Timeless Company. So what does that mean? Did they lose track of time? Or is it that time has no meaning there? Maybe they are never on time? No one owns a watch? They have no idea what time it is? What? Do they travel in time? Has time stopped in that little compound surrounded by haphazard fencing, a derelict Quonset hut, and dilapidated trailer? If I had stopped the car and walked through the gate would I have found myself "back" in time? "out" of time? "on" time? With "time on my hands"???

2. So the next big thing was the weather... Most of the afternoon, I found myself skirting the southeast corners of big thunderstorms... I did pretty good staying out of the way until just at dusk, I drove right into the tail end of a whopping storm. Right about then, a really nice person in oncoming traffic flashed their lights (universal signal that cops are up ahead). I slowed down, and sure enough, not far down the road there was a state trooper. I drove on, mindful of the speed limit, and got flashed again, and then again... and again... and I was thinking "OMG! This place is freakin' lousy with cops!" By this time, it's dark, raining, the wind is picking up, and still every now and then, someone flashes me... I'm wondering why those cops aren't holed up in some corner cafe somewhere... eating donuts or something. Then I started wondering if maybe there's some strange Kansas custom to flash oncoming traffic if there's a tornado headed your direction. I started to get a little bit nervous. I pulled into the next town, tanked up with gas, and decided it might be a good idea to stop for the night. I parked at a motel, got out of the car, turned off the lights.... and discovered that they were already off. I had been driving for about 1 1/2 hours, in the rain, in the dark, with no lights... LOL...

3. More on the weather... so here I am in a motel, and I turned on the TV only to discover that there are storms moving in and moving through that are dropping golf ball size hail and featuring damaging straight line winds. So... I should be happy to be safe and sound, right? Sure! Except for the fact that I'm driving a rental car.. and the deductible on my insurance is $1000.00 - I was like glued to the tube for a good hour. Then I decided that all this focused attention was just as likely to create golf ball size hail as to deflect it... so I went to bed... saying over and over "Thank you that the car is OK. Thank you that the storms missed us. Thank you that the car is OK. Thank you..."

4. So... between Wichita and El Paso there is a whole lot of nothing!! Miles and miles and miles of flat land with no roads, no houses, no towns, nothing. And I'm driving along and there, by the side of the road I see a car seat. An infant car seat... just sitting there. Nothing around it. No one in it. It doesn't look banged up. And I'm like WTF? I fed on plausible stories for hours.

5. Oh, and I forgot to mention this! I got into the rental car and was disappointed to discover that "economy" means no tape deck, no CD player... so I'm doing this whole trip in SILENCE! Some 600 miles later, I figured out that there really was a CD player... LOL... and by then, I wasn't inclined to use it. I was so involved in talking to myself that I almost couldn't get a word in edgewise.

6. The Oklahoma panhandle area is pretty interesting. You know that show, "Men in Trees"? I think they could do one for Oklahoma called "Dudes in Trucks"! I drove (my miraculously NOT storm damaged vehicle) through a 3 church, 2 gas station, 1 grain silo town... and did not see one single car. Not one. Every single vehicle in that town (excluding mine) was a truck.

7. Texas... Did you know that in the panhandle area of Texas it's customary to just avoid roads entirely and drive through the fields? The first time it happened, the truck in front of me just suddenly made a left turn and drove straight off the road and into a field... He didn't even slow down! I was like OMG! A little further on down the road, it happened again! This time I was thinking OMG WTF !!

8. Oh... and I saw a roadrunner. I bet you'll never guess what he was doing... OK... you probably guessed it. Yep. He was running across the road! How fun is that?

So... there you have it.

Thursday I'm going to a little clinic in Mexico for a shamanic healing Reiki experience. So, next time you hear from me, it'll be a whole new me! Who knows, I might even be timeless! LOL.