6.30.01

6:29 am. Pulled out from the Nevada Hotel for home. Highway 95. Nobody was up and the highway was empty except for a group of four motorcycles headed somewhere like I'm headed. Followed them until they turned off, which was HWY 140 long before the Oregon border. After that, it was just me. For about three hours. No gas stations open, hardly any structures of any kind. I had no idea southeastern Oregon was so desolate. I traveled. I did see one cowboy on horseback herding cattle. I saw a wolf picking at a carcass in the road. I had to slow down for it. Every once in awhile I came upon another vehicle and the way was barren and straight enough that I never needed to touch the cruise controls but could just ease my way into the oncoming lane and pass with leisure. At Burns I got gas and fell for a quarter glued to the sidewalk. Something there attracts visitors and after Burns, traffic picked up. This is when driving got interesting. In fact this was the pinnacle of driving -- a test. Eight days of driving hardly under 80 mph, driving with every part of my body except my hands, or driving with nothing but my right hand, controlling acceleration and deceleration precisely with the cruise controls. At this point, the car might as well be a pair of running shoes for how well integrated we are. And so, when I pulled out of Burns and came up quickly on Lexus SUV swerving apprehensively behind a VW van, seeing that the Lexus didn't have the guts to make a move, I just passed them both and began a 130-mile scram for Bend, leaving no car un-passed and picking up a couple of groupies who moved when I moved and never without my lead. I'm telling you that by this late date, after almost 4000 miles, most of it on two-lane roads passing people, and passing people anyway, passing cars lost the qualities of story problems and became just habit, a rote motor skill whose process controls are so long programmed they're unconscious. Yeah, like that. Had Andrew's CD back on Play for riding the yellow line, the tach just past noon and the engine whining in the power zone waiting for that rise to drop away or that oncoming train of cars to end so I could get around some trailer hitched to a Subaru. Yeah, driving like that with your eyes glued to the horizon and your wheels straddling yellow, you know exactly how fast the car will accelerate; you can sense how fast oncoming cars are driving at you. Your comfort zone is so large you don't even have to say you believe that missing something by an inch is the same as missing it by a mile because things are going faster than that. And when some angry young dad in a minivan gets pissed at the young woman in a Honda Civic blowing by him and decides to floor the beast and close her escape gap, she punches back into third and passes two more cars to avert the head-on. That guy, wherever he goes, will always be stuck behind a line of cars. That SUV I passed in the beginning hopped right on in behind me and rode my wake for almost the entire 130 miles. Somewhere along the way we picked up a Thunderbird. Both passed when I passed and otherwise stayed a respectful distance behind. You know how it is when you get those losers who don't have the courage to take the lead but hug your ass trying to make you go faster. You know how it is. Well these two weren't like that and it was cool how they just followed -- or tried to follow, because for a while I tried to see if I could shake them and sometimes it worked. At a rest stop the SUV pulled over, which it shouldn't have done. That's a tactical error. You drive two-lane roads a lot you know better than to stop until you get to a metropolitan area where all those cars you passed disperse and mix with real traffic on wider roads. Otherwise, you have to pass them all again. Next thing you know, 130 miles is gone and it was the fastest most exhilarating 130 miles ever.

future past index