Go West Young Man!

October 13th

I rode back to LA. Justin had a deficit of on-the-grid labor to pay for his brief prison break from society. He did let me sleep on his floor though while he toiled. The insomniatic blue light of LA peered through the window and I slid deep into my sleeping bag, and lightly into a strange sleep.

My cousin is stationed in San Diego with the US Navy. My plan was to ride down for a visit, then head east. I posted a request for a ride share on Craigslist the night before and to my amazement an offer waited for me that morning. Meeting my cousin didn't materialize, but I did meet Stevan, a retired police officer, in the parking lot of a large football stadium. We loaded Dee Dee into the back of his pickup truck. My mind pushed at my body the way alike poles of two magnets do as we rode comfortably in the wrong direction: east.

Stevan dropped me off outside of Tucson in a factory parking lot. The ride from San Diego had been about 400 miles, mostly through the desert. Weeks earlier this parcel had halted Gord permanently. But a few more miles around the sun had dulled the blazes daytime severity. I had hitched the ride because Dee Dee was starting to show her miles and I feared a similar mechanical failure in the heat, but it would have been a beautiful ride. I saw jagged black mountains encroaching our Mexican border and vast sand dunes populated with campers and paddle wheeled dirt bikes.

And then I was alone. In the factory parking lot I pored over our tattered atlas. A trip that had been defined by shared exclamations, laughing and slow conversation was now turned inward. Not silent, but outwardly quiet. In Tucson I sat in a Fry's Grocery parking lot and ate a chicken leg. If Fry's does well I'd hinge it on Anja, the shockingly gorgeous cart wrangler. She shyly asked questions while I took a mental picture of her electric smile, sure I'd need the image later to keep me going.