Because of the movie, and due to my natural hunger for repose, I started out too late on the wrong side of Dallas and everything that happened grew out of that fact.

Through the Big D you hit Fort Worth, and then Weatherford. Right around there, at a place called Hudson Oaks, US 180 ends, or begins.

I rode it as far as the Starbucks in Mineral Wells, and then I started worrying, about having enough time to get the car back on schedule. The first thing I did in response to that worry was to abandon the all-180 plan and jump back on the Interstate for the speed.

That broke my spirits a little, and the Interstate didn’t help that state of affairs of course.

It reached a crisis in Midland, a town I’ve always loathed and learned to hate just a little more this day. It was crowded and dysfunctional and ugly. I bought two full cups of coffee, one of them black, knowing it would be a long, long night in any case.

The sun was just beginning its descent to the western horizon, and flaming my already weary eyes. So I parked and played for a while with the very advanced navigation system on the Fusion. Alright, I proposed to it, what if I not only gave up on 180, but on sailing through my sacred town too. What’s the single fastest way back to the Prettytown Airport Rental Car Return?

I figured it would send me through Tucson, but I was wrong. Instead, it said, okay, get this. You leave Midland headed north on some Farm to Market road …

… I was like, what huh?

But yeah, confirmed, the technically fastest way back was to start out on a small road, and head at a northwesterly diagonal through all of New Mexico. As a bonus, the first part is straight north, which gets the sun out of your eyes.

Well … okay.

The radical revision to the plan was a huge success initially. I was and still am hugely grateful to this little lonesome stretch of highway, and even to the brain trust who built the nav system, even if they are dirty capitalist collaborators.

Spirit rose.

At a place called Seminole, I even re-crossed 180.

The western sky was full of mixed omens and a shrouded setting sun.

A serious dust storm dancing over the road on the west wind, not too concerning, but cautionary. Beware the Ides and August and everything after, traveler.

I drove out of the storm and abruptly into New Mexico at a place called Tatum. I’d never been there before.

The road out of Tatum took me to the alien burg of Roswell. 55 degrees in the dusk. I was going to make it cruising. Another couple hours, I’d be up on the big 40 east of Albuquerque with a straight moonlight shot all the way. I called her and told her. I got some food.

Roswell to Clines Corners is something like 150 blank miles, except one little town called Vaughn in between.

By the time I got to Vaughn the wind was up again, but this time there was snow in it instead of dust. And it was way past dark. I looked over the one unpromising motel, and said fuck it. How bad could it be? I’ve already ducked the big storm. It’s only like 54 miles to the big road. What could possibly go wrong?

Ten miles later I already knew I’d made the wrong decision.

It was coming down thick and the wind was howling and piling it up very fast, and it was getting worse by the mile.

The visibility got worse and worse, and then the guidance of the painted lines disappeared under a white blanket.

There was no chance of stopping any more. There were still twenty brutal miles to go. I was scared behind the wheel in a way I haven’t been since I drove this kind of road in an eighteen-wheeler, decades back.

I did have all-wheel drive, thank the gods. I knew I could stay on the road, if I was very careful. The problem was being able to see it.

The only saving grace was that this wasn’t an interstate, and so there was almost no other traffic. Other people in other cars are the worst, and especially now.

Twice I lost the thread completely and heard the rumble strip grinding and warning me left, left. But very gently. Very gently left, boy, because if you spin out this is going to go from bad to very possibly deadly.

Finally crawling into the parking lot at Clines, and sliding freely as I made that last turn … I was shaken and shaking, and I don’t even mind admitting it, much.

The lot was jammed with refugee truckers. I don’t know if they officially closed even the Interstate, but no one wanted to be driving in that hell anyway. It was after midnight and still the storm raged.

I cracked one window a little tiny bit, and woke up cold about once an hour, cranking on the heat for fifteen minutes and then sleeping another forty-five. I dreamed about that little motel in Vaughn, and I wonder still if it had been a real option, looking as dark as it had …

I wish I’d checked, either way. I think this is what they call a learning experience.