Greetings to all from a Days Inn in Albuquerque, where the wife and I spent the previous evening. We’re both in agreement that New Mexico is some of the most beautiful landscape anywhere in America, which of course was little shock to yours truly, since I had been blessed by parents who hauled me across this great nation in my younger days. For Corelyn, however, this was all quite new, and I have to admit I’ve scarcely seen her so giddy and excited as when we pulled in to grab gas and found ourselves looking out on to a wind-swept desert, layered with tumbleweeds and distant mesas. Adding to the splendor, the wind was cooled by an oncoming thunderstorm, so the air temperature sat at a perfect mid-70s. It was gorgeous. “I could live here!” Corelyn giggled.
Turns out, though, that God was just cracking his knuckles on that one. A half an hour later, as I-40 snaked its way through the desert, the sun began setting on our right, splashing the low-hanging clouds with gold and red, while at the same exact moment, an elegant but fearsome thunderstorm whipped itself into a frenzy on our left, shards of lightning cracking the sky and cold wind snapping the air. It was, without question, the most beautiful sunset either of us had even encountered.
On another subject, there really are three passengers in our road warrior of a Toyota Avalon, not two. Sure, there’s myself and Corelyn, but we’ve also adopted a strange new tagalong, whom we have dubbed “Cassie.” She’s a feisty thing, with very opinionated views about how our journey should proceed. She perches herself like a gargoyle on our windshield and barks orders fervently: “Keep left! In two miles, make a U-turn! Re-calculating! Re-calculating!” Cassie, of course, is named for Cassandra, the Greek woman with a gift for prophecy that was spiked with an awful caveat: her words of warning would never be believed. Our Cassie must often feel that she is in this same predicament. When we tell her we need to stop for gas, she seems to believe that this process will take a mere fraction of a second, and begins stubbornly ordering us back onto the road before we’ve even parked the car. Don’t even get me started about her feelings on us eating. To her, there is only the road, and these “stops” we keep telling her about are heretical and time-consuming.
Anyway, we’ve grown quite fond of her. Using Bluetooth, she can function as my phone in almost every way, even uploading my address book into her memory. She has an MP3 player, an incredibly detailed summary of the journey so far, a helpful guide to local attractions, and even provides a database of phone numbers for upcoming hotels and restaurants. She’s quite a wonder. But, like all geniuses, she comes equipped with a fiery temper. Deviate from her plan, and you’re going to hear about it constantly.
Another neat thing that happened on our trip took place in the least likely area: Arkansas. I’ve known a few people from this state who attended William and Mary, and all of them spoke about it much the same way you would describe a prison, so my feeling was that we should simply blaze through it. My wife, however, wanted an authentic “Western trip” experience, and she gently encouraged me to find us a local place to grab lunch. Despite my misgivings, I chose for us the “Ole Sawmill Cafe,” a very “Cracker Barrell”-esque locale with a buffet and a gift store. The buffet was delicious, home-cooked food, adorned with a stern warning that every plate not fully consumed comes with a $2.00 surcharge. It was also incredibly reasonably priced and the service was friendly and old-school. This in and of itself was victory enough, but lo and behold, the gift store happened to have a few vintage “Batman” comics from a line that was published well over a decade ago, and in spite of the fact that these collector’s items would now fetch a much higher price, they were being sold for their printed value: $3.00. I snatched one right up and read it in the car, then carefully wrapped it up and saved it for addition to my collection.
I must confess, I had never been a big fan of this particular Batman storyline before, but this little comic book was one of the best-written Bat-adventures I’ve experienced this year. I am now anxious to get my hands on the entire line, which was collected into a graphic novel called “Knightfall.”
Okay, okay, enough Batman talk. Corelyn has been reading up a storm on this trip, as you might imagine. She audio-booked a very popular teenage vampire novel called “Twilight,” which is making its way to the silver screen as we speak. Her feelings on it could best be called “mixed enthusiasm”: she reported that most of it was cliched and over-girly, and as such kind of a guilty pleasure, but on the other hand it held her attention very firmly, and offered an interesting take on vampires. In particular, I was stunned by the author’s very inventive excuse for making the blood-suckers so darned physically attractive, which is normally a kind of “roll your eyes” moment in these things. Not so here, the author brilliantly proposes that vampires function much like Venus Fly Traps: they are meant to look appealing to their prey, because they want to get close to them.
You have to admit, that’s way clever.
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