I made it the whole distance with no wreckage but my own sleepy self. Update coming soon.

Let’s go around this elliptically.

If I say to you:

“But where did the red brick road go? The answer may surprise you.”

Then, never having cared about the question before, and maybe not even after hearing it, you’ll probably want to know, after the fact.

The canonical answer runs something like this:

“It runs south, to Quadling marshes. The Quadling people are sort of allegorical Cajuns. Also, I’m pretty sure Glinda was Canadian, Elphaba ‘of the West’ was from Laguna Pueblo, and Munchkins are Iowans. Also, ‘I haven’t been the same since that house fell on my sister’.”

The last part of that is my second-favorite bumper sticker of all time, falling just behind the simple elegance of:

“Namaste, Bitch”.

***

So in the yesterday spill I was squealing about how Oklahoma sucked. Today was supposed to be about how Missouri was worse.

I feel differently now. It’s not Missouri’s fault exactly, nor Oklahoma’s neither.

Partly it’s even my own.

I did yesterday’s 800 mile day and crashed in a nasty part of OKC at a nasty Red Roof Inn. Then I got up early and aimed for another 800 on top of it, but I-44 was full of both heavy rain and heavy traffic, so I didn’t make it to bed again until 3 in the morning, and I had to pay out for a third motel night anyway. Pennywise, pound foolish, and if that isn’t the story of my life.

So first of all, fuck the strategy of 800 mile days. 600 is efficient enough, should we choose to make efficiency into some kind of demigod for essentially financial reasons.

And second, it’s not whole states that suck, no matter how red they are.