Zombie Will Think for Food

My dear, dear friends, I write to you from another La Quinta (“La Quinta Otra,” as I’ve been calling it in my sad, stale Spanish) in El Paso, Texas. I feel like it’s appropriate to be ruminating on the idea of what that means: The Step.

Driving through the entire width of Texas looks a lot like I thought it would based entirely on popular culture: like a stunning rendering of the landscape from any given Roadrunner cartoon. Driving west from Dallas was fascinating—barren tracks of farms and oil rigs compressed by an unfathomable blue slowly starting to slope into rolling hills, prairies, and inexplicable mountains.

Between yesterday and today, after driving (well, riding shotgun—Dad still hasn’t given up the steering wheel, and I’m not complaining) about 14 hours through Texas, I feel like I’ve reached something just beyond articulation, something all wrapped up in spending a night in a place called The Step. I’ve gotten where I am one step at a time: there are no shortcuts in life, and just as each and every of the more than 1,500 miles of pavement on this trip traveled beneath the wheels of my Toyota Yaris, you’ve got to live every step.

6 more hours on the road and Dad and I will reach Tempe, where my new life starts. One more step. See you on the other side.

(Check out highlights from these last two days after the jump—click to bigafy!)

My cousin Nikki and me at Uncle Jim & Aunt Beth's! There is something truly magnificent about sitting around a kitchen table with family.

Road, mountain and blue. Over and over, so beautiful it became mundane.

Dad, at a rest area outside of Pecos, in the middle of Absolute No Where!