Evanston, Wyoming

We collectively came to life this morning, picking up an hour of clock-time in the wee hours as we swept into Mountain Standard Time. I slept like a baby – I think everyone had.  Tom and Emma, driver and shotgun of Roxy Boxy, enjoyed a few more minutes of well-deserved sweet slumber. Once again, we had muscled through the night, breaching the Utah border into Wyoming, coming to rest at a Flying J Truck Stop.

Now, down through ages many tried and true techniques (and substances) have been employed to keep ship captains, locomotive engineers and bus drivers awake and alert. Last night, as we began our U.S. 80 passage through The Twin Sisters, we added another. N.N.E. of Salt Lake City, Jonathon called an audible for Queens’s Bohemian Rhapsody. With apologies to Freddie Mercury, our Karaoke musical moment, as free-spirited a rendition as you’re likely to find anywhere, enlivened our spirits and brightened our vision better than Red Bull, or any in the herd of energy products that have stampeded the marketplace. 

Earlier, in the late afternoon, a hop, skip and a jump over the Nevada-Utah border, we stop at the Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah’s famed measured-mile site of world land-speed record runs. Stunning in its scenic simplicity, it appears as if we’ve just missed a snowstorm; a pristine carpet of white covers the excruciatingly flat landscape, charcoal gray mountains to the North. South of the highway, you can walk barefoot onto the moist salt-crusted earth.

As someone who is trying to walk the walk, I went for it.

It’s pleasingly crunchy and mushy at the same time.

Well, I guess now is as good a time as any to tell you where I went to high school and drop a name, simultaneously. I think that’s a three-pointer. Craig Breedlove holds the honor of being the first man to go faster than 400, 500 and 600 miles per hour. His personal best was 600.601. He did that right here on the Bonneville Speedway. You have to wonder at what early age little Craiger says to himself, I’m gonna make the fuckin' Autobahn look like a carnival kiddie ride.

Craig Breedlove graduated Venice High School, my alma mater. Home of the Mighty Gondliers, Rowing Not Drifting… I hadn’t thought of that motto in eons. Emblazoned upon a staircase-landing wall, it seemed somehow pat and meaningless. Funny how time changes nearly everything.

No longer a feather in the wind, I have found my wings and am learning how to fly. Maybe I’ll just go and break the sound barrier.