Ruidoso, New Mexico

Driving across west Texas was a little like a scene in one of those tornado movies where the purpose of the hero and heroine was to chase a tornado for scientific purposes, clock the winds, and gage the storm. There I was. Flat green and brown checkered fields stretching out in all directions while low, heavy, dark clouds shuffled for position in an ominous sky. No one else around, except for the eighteen wheeler a mile or so down the road in front of me. Very few buildings. A few oil wells slowly pumping. Then I saw it off my right shoulder. A cloud reached down to touch the earth, dust getting caught in the spiraling funnel, OH MY GOD! My eyes anxiously looking down the highway stretching out for miles in front of me. My mind wondering whether I should stay in the car, find a ditch to lay in (there really weren't any) or wrap myself around a.... a .......a what.....there's nothing to wrap around except telephone poles and that seemed like a lousy choice! I thought about how those movie chase teams actually were able to catch up with the tornado. I thought that if they could catch up with a tornado, then surely, I could out drive a tornado. Go fast. Straight ahead. Move it!

Then it was gone, disappeared, with just a few barely visible wisps of dust in the air. A few minutes of panic replaced by anxious relief. WooHoo once again! Although the inside of my car looks a little like the tornado (dust devil?) actually hit, it did not. The mess is my doing. All is well.

I've had a few other less exciting observations along the way.

There was the cowboy, with the proper boots and hat, sitting tall in the saddle on his horse, reigns in one hand.......cell phone in the other. I've seen many people walking the Gulf beaches back home while talking on their phones and I always thought that the phone didn't belong in the scene. But seeing a cowboy riding the range chatting with a phone to his ear, well, it spoils my mind's cowboy image! But gave me a little chuckle!

And why, when I am surrounded by refineries and oil fields filled with a forest of working pumps is the price of gas the highest I have had to pay on this road trip, twenty five cents a gallon higher? I don't get it.

I came across a drive-in theatre with a marque advertising the movie to be shown that evening. I haven't seen a working drive-in for eons. I thought that was cool. A little of touch from 1965.

Other observations are of a more personal nature.

I have noticed that after only a week, the knot in my stomach that has been with me for almost a year now has untied itself. I feel just fine. I'm hungry. No crying since my first night in a lonely campground. If I do happen to think about back home and "stuff," I feel like an observer rather than a participant, I am traveling through a different world right now. I have for a while, craved an actual conversation with my ex, maybe achieving a mutual forgiveness, letting go of resentment. But I know that is unlikely to happen, at least for a long long time. Tsk...

I think about, and I know this is dumb, that I am putting an awful lot of miles on my new car, that by the time I get home, my car will be less than a year old, but with a considerably higher odometer reading and with dust and dirt gathered under the hood and in the wheel wells. It was bright and young for such a short time. But I also know that I don't care. A dream is worth more than a car with low mileage. (This was my frugal nature rearing it's boring head once again.)

I tend not only to be frugal, but practical and conservative. I have always been better at saving than spending. I am careful. I am trying to change those tendencies somewhat, to think less about how much I am spending and spend what I need to enjoy this journey, to let tomorrow take care of itself, to enjoy today. I think I am having some success with this little goal.

I spent last night, and I am still here, at the Stizmark Motel in Ruidoso. Ruidoso is a little tourist town nestled among the dry hills with a lot of boutiques and restaurants. Tourist come mainly for the race track. The Stizmark is a little mom and pop place, with a log cabin exterior, flowers planted in barrels, bench swings in the front yard, log style bed, rustic, but very clean. I like it. It suits me. I was surprised to find working wireless Internet connection. It didn't seem to fit the atmosphere. I keep getting surprised, in so many little ways, by life in 2009.

While walking in town I stopped into a tiny nook of a restaurant to order a slice of pizza for lunch. I really wanted a cold beer with it. They didn't serve beer. The clerk told me I could go into the bar next door and she would bring the pizza over to me there. Different. So I did. This experience is significant because I think it is my first time walking into a bar alone. Being that it was lunch time, there weren't too many people inside so I was able to quietly sit at a table at the end of the bar, order a beer, eat the pizza when it arrived, and feel something new. Small potatoes, I know, not a tornado, but still, scary for me.