A Ride North

There is a different brand of the wild and high, white noise that starts to ring in one’s ears - especially in mine - when the brain is hit with the prospect of making a late-night, 505 mile run through three states to what I can call home.


If someone were to ask me, I would have to answer that I like the sound of the noise. It makes my body begin to buzz; my muscles go into some sort of tightly wound spool of wire and wishes - and in the moment just before I feel like I’m going to implode, I throw all of the pertinent stuff in the back of my little black Jeep and rip out of town. 


Then I end up giving that pony I’m riding the ol’ over and under...and my particular pony comes with a custom six speaker Pioneer stereo system that can give every single one of Tool’s notes due respect and can go one hundred miles an hour if it wants to. 


So that’s what I did. Gave respect and got out of town as fast as I could, that is. Northern Arizona mandates these types of acts after nine months. What else can I say?


I had dialed a good friend up on the phone and said to him, “I’m outta here, dude. I’ll see you in the middle of the night. Gotta fill the tank and get a cup of coffee. Then I’m on the road.”


The Varsity Gasser - great name for a college town gas station, eh? - offers free coffee with a full tank. Perfect. I took the deal and headed north. 


And when you head north out of Flagstaff, you boom up over the shoulders of the San Francisco Peaks and out into a bazillion acres of high altitude grass and pinyon and juniper trees. Gray Mountain slows you down for a minute because there’s a gas station there - and that’s it - and then you run sixty-five miles north on your way to Highway 160. After passing through Cameron, you turn right and then you better go like a rabid bat on bad acid out of Hell itself through Tuuva City, across the stormy side of Black Mesa and on to Kayenta. Only because you’ve got some time to make up....and, in truth, time really doesn’t exist out there. 


On that particular night, as the sun went down behind me, the lightning storms started up on the three horizons left around me. It was one hell of a sight. 


I must admit that I thought it looked like everyone had summoned their own gods and, upon the decree, Mother Earth decided to talk to some of us for three hours or so - a split second at a time in blinding blue light - and as all her spirits and troubles popped out of her mind some other-worldly wraiths showed up and wanted to play. So, they all flew around with spears of fireworks to throw at the surface of Earth. It was relieving to see. A certain and persistent pressure left my chest that night.
 

And all I could hear was this: “Be patient. You must keep reminding yourself of this.”*


Anyway, US Highway 160 is a narrow and fast little road, full of tourists and semi trucks and crazy Natives and wild horses and - on that night - one hell of a rain storm.


It’s a different type of sensation that hits the brain from the one I mentioned at the top of this story when you realize that you are going 50 miles an hour but you have absolutely no control of the vehicle you are driving. It isn’t necessarily fear alone that you feel. It’s panic and also, oddly, adrenaline and a touch of challenge. You tuck into your seat a little lower and tighten every muscle you can control at that point for a second - or even a full three - and wonder just how quickly that damned wedge of water will get out from under your tires and quit making your rig hydroplane, combined with the next wonder of what it will feel like to barrel-roll a 2,500 pound machine across the desert at 50 mph....due to that simple wedge of water. 


All of that runs through your head but for some strange and calm reason, it doesn’t matter to you. 


Because a disconcerting thought pops into your brain: “Shit. That would prolly kill my dog.” 


That’s the thought that matters most to you. All due to that damned wedge of water. 


And just then, that wedge of water squishes out and you get control of your careening vehicle and you go: “Phew...” 


That whole hydroplaning story I just told you about took about two and a half seconds in real time. But it removed six years from my life. A man’s heart can’t beat that fast and still be viable seventy years from now, in my opinion. Not to mention the fact the when a grown man’s balls collectively shrink to the size of a sun-dried prune because he reckons he’s gonna die...well, I don’t know...I don’t think that can be good, either. 


And then, just as my balls began to relax and I was reaching for a cigarette, the crazy and pissed off little Honda sedan shot around me at 70 mph because, apparently, people from California enjoy driving at seventy in a 1,500 pound tin box in the pitch black during a 2 inch per hour deluge three feet from the bumper of a black Jeep with AZ plates as they ride with the brights on in your mirror.  


I, at that moment, clenched and then unclenched that one muscle that controls one’s sphincter and was strangely reminded of a line my father once uttered as we were driving across the saddle between two mountains on a 12,350 foot-high-road in Colorado: 


“Jesus H. Christ. You couldn’t have pounded a straight pin up my ass with a sledgehammer just a moment ago.” 


Dads have lines like that, don’t they? My brother and I still laugh like hell about that one. (Furthermore, my brother and I are still wondering what the “H” stands for. We were - and still are - unaware that Jesus has a middle name.) 


I laughed at the memory and I reached down, turned the stereo back up just as Maynard sang, “Push the envelope. Watch it bend.” 


Yessir. 


I rolled through Tsegi and down into Kayenta. I stopped at the gas station just long enough to top off the tank and buy another cup of coffee. Then I headed off to the north into the ghosts hanging around Monument Valley. Just like the pillars and curtains of rock that are up there. Under a full moon. And a quiet sky. 


I had left the storm behind.


The pale white light bouncing around the red rocks and blue sage creates one hell of a crazy-cool bath of the most natural light you will ever see. I watched the storms brew up over Powell, some 50 miles - as a hawk can fly - to my northwest. I nodded at them. The moon kept splashing down on the Monuments and as I sped towards those little southwest Utah towns - drawn by some type of special gravity towards the place that has made me who I am now - I started to smile broadly.



I rolled the volume knob on the Pioneer a few notches over to the right, wound the window down, threw a naked left elbow out into the 70 mile an hour wind and still moonlight and lit one more Camel Straight. 


I highly recommend the practice. It’ll clear even the most befuddled of minds. 


Moab meant more coffee and another top-off of the tank and then the high speed run to Crescent Junction and, finally, I-70 West. I took the right onto it and watched another three thunderstorms bubble up and flash down around me. One seemed to be up and out over Rangely and another was down towards Gateway and the last one was right in my path, about 90 miles away. 


So I drove straight into it. At about ninety-four miles an hour.


I figured I’d try to catch it. 

The way I see it is such: if they always say that you can’t outrun the lightning, you might as well run right into it. 


That way, in my mind, the score is even. 

*Maynard J. Keenan, Tool, "The Patient," Lateralus, 2001