it started in Santa Cruz, CA.

The venture from Santa Cruz to Albuquerque is, to say the least, uneventful.  We made the first trip as about a 14 hour stint, being held up in traffic for an hour to go four miles.  I don't know what happens between here and New Mexico, but it pretty much pisses me off that they have this exorbitant amount of cars backed up as far as the eye can see.  There was a traffic light to the right at the bottom, so I don't know if that was it, or if someone died and they cleaned it up while we were sitting there STOPPED COMPLETELY.

I can't say there was much more to this portion.  Lots of driving, but excited, heading-somewhere driving, versus long-term driving that you will hear about at another time.  We pulled over on the side of the road, Jeff and I, and we took a nap there for about two hours.  The sun came up, and it cold, but it was warming just as soon as we'd figure it would.  We did this before, he and I, ten years ago.

There we stood at an Albuquerque, New Mexico McDonalds, waiting for our coffee to not be torturous (hot as fuck) with my little laptop out, telling my dad where we were.  It was seven a.m. and we were squinting towards the sun, debating whether or not we wanted to stay in this town.  There were tattoo shops we wanted to see along the way.  Steve Truitt.  Evolution.  But these weren't the type of people who were awake at seven in the morning, as far as I knew.

I put up a post that I there on Facebook, just in case anyone wanted to bite at it.  Nothing, as I expected.  Shops didn't open until noon, and we sure as shit weren't going to tinker around the bug-ridden state waiting for this to happen, just so we could get possibly five minutes of face-time before these people returned to their jobs and did what they did best on a Friday afternoon.  Bad timing, but let's move on.

A steady stream of "When are you going to be in Oklahoma City!?" rained in on my cell and popped up on my Facebook page.  With the vigilance of the teenagers we'd been ten years prior, we jumped back into the car and took to the 8 hours between there and OKC to visit the King family.