Amarillo, TX - Pueblo, CO

It takes me 30 minutes to load the car. 

I have to make big decisions, like... Do I bring the guitar amp or commit to quiet, un-amplified electric guitar?

Do I need a fork? Do I need to pee?

These are the hard questions when you don’t have a plan. 

Leaving Amarillo, there’s traffic. Well, traffic for Amarillo. I touch the brakes a few times. 

Rodney is unsure of why we are headed North. 

He’s now an unwilling participant. 
I'll feel bad, eventually.

I have to keep reminding myself to fight the urge to pull over and take pictures of everything. Geoff taught me that, but my instincts are off. I find myself passing things thinking “I need to remember to stop there next time”. 

“If there is a next time...” -cheesy villain voice

The transition up-on-to and down-off-of the cap is the prettiest part of the panhandle. 

Prettiest is a bit of a deceptive word choice. But it is pretty. It just doesn’t have any competition. Sometimes that can make a thing mystical.
Mostly it feels like I’m being lied to. 

We are lucky, a storm has the wind at our backs. Normally we turn straight into it.

There’s a metaphor in there somewhere.

“Texas is too big”, Rodney says, as we are driving through New Mexico. 

It’s only been a few hours, barely long enough for me to get started on my self-assignment of catching up on pop music. 

Kanye and The Carters.

It’s some form of pseudo-social masochism to replace the hours I haven’t been able to spend on the bike. 
Surely people talk about pop music.

In the same amount of time it normally takes me to leave Texas, I’ll be through New Mexico and part way through Colorado.

“This is a very different Texas than the one I know”, I think, as we near A Volcano in New Mexico.

There’s a metaphor in there somewhere.

Geoff would say this is not an ideal photograph. Or... at least the version of Geoff I have created in my head... the one that would say things like that.
"Real Geoff" would probably find a way to help me take a better photograph without telling me how terrible of an execution I had just performed.
The Subaru Crosstrek is the washing machine of the century. Anyone who doesn’t know which car they want to waste their money on should go buy one and move on with life. If it's too SUV, buy a Corolla.

Tyler says the Corolla is all the SUV he needs. It goes dove hunting...

Any time someone casually mentions the golden hour in conversation I die a little inside. 

I’ve been considering starting a blog where I get to be sarcastic and Rodney tells you fun facts about the places we go. 

Rodney says it’s a lame idea, and he’s the pragmatic one. 

This is his first time out of Texas, and I’m the one writing this shit, and for all you know he’s sitting there not saying anything anyway.

Plus, it would have taken months for him to get this far on his own, so he can chill.

Man, this music is really getting to me. 

Just as we turn to enter Colorado, the road turns up and trees reappear. 

There must have been a fire, because entire hillsides have tree whiskers. It looks like an old man who is getting lazy but could never grow a full beard when he was young. 

I’m just glad I’ll have a place to string up my hammock when it’s time. I gained an hour, chasing the sun, so I might as well use it to get to Pueblo.

Wildfire alerts.

Any time I show this video of the wildfire to someone, they say its beautiful. And that's with the prompt "This is a Wildfire in Colorado". 

Bunch of arsonists.

I decided I wasn’t going to make a joke about Rodney farting.

So, I’ll just say this... when I asked him if he did, he wagged his tail.

A. I’m pretty sure he was fake sleeping

B. I’m pretty sure he farted

This was not a joke.
---

Pueblo doesn’t have any promising looking camping spots.

I tried to find a place by the lake, but it was all neighborhoods and industrial buildings.

So, I’m sleeping in a hammock at Walmart.

It doesn’t count as camping, but I’m outside... and if it weren’t for having to look for needles (I’m sure they were for insulin), I could have fooled myself.

Hell, I could have taken a picture and fooled you, but Rodney said we gotta play it straight or people won’t trust us later.

I’m not sure what he thinks he needs anybody’s trust for, but I have to allow him to come to his own conclusions about these types of things.

Truth is slippery when it’s handed to you.

The best part about camping at a Walmart has to be the fact that some people will assume that you are homeless. This of course means I get to role play my life’s fantasy and have live stage actors who are the best in the world. And no matter what I do, they won’t break character.
The freedom is intoxicating.

I didn’t use a shopping cart just to fuck with people.

They all looked at me like I was about to run out of the store with an oversized armful of treasures.

Dinner is spaghetti and olive oil with some sliced and smashed tomatoes.

Yes, they are organic. What type of homeless person would I be if I filled myself with trash? Trash is for trading...

And now that you (hopefully) think I’m being insensitive (you don’t know me...), let me remind you that this is MY fantasy.

You’re just reading it in first person.

Or you are self conscious.

Or it’s your fantasy too, and you’re embarrassed.

This is going to get out of hand.

I’m going to bed.