On the Road.

I am sitting in a Starbucks in Amarillo, TX taking advantage of their free internet and reliably tasty coffee. This is the fourth day of my long road trip to New Mexico.
It has been a long exhausting drive hopping from one westbound highway to another, staring at billboards that advertise by turns Baptist Churches, "Adult" superstores, Long defunct tourist attractions, or simply read JESUS. I wonder: how many people really respond to evangelistic billboards like that?
I also saw many, many signs for the Precious Moments Chapel, which can be found somewhere outside of Joplin, MO. According to the signs, there are many scenes from the Old and New Testaments there, enacted by the neotenic Precious Moments characters. I almost wanted to stop just to see how they would handle the story of the Levite's concubine.

I have never done a trip like this on my own before and it has been a long time since I really did anything comparable with my family. The truth is though, I enjoy driving and I enjoy watching the landscape of the country change. Somewhere in western MO was the most dramatic change - the soil abruptly changed to a reddish color, which became deeper as I went through OK. Oklahoma had the distinction of having the friendliest toll road workers I have ever run into - they were positively chatty compared with the typically depressed, dreary workers I am accustomed to meeting in such jobs. Personally, I think any job in which I was stuck in a small box where I got to inhale car fumes for eight hours a day while wearing a painfully orange vest would make me a bit cranky, so I am impressed with the Oklahomins.
The weather has been mostly good. The most distressing thing was the winds in OK, which were pretty strong, but the sky was clear with no sign of tornadoes, which was my major concern.

I did pass through Joplin Missouri though, and saw the very edge of the devastation there. I was plainly far from the worst of it, and passing by at 7o mph, but I could see the ruins of a few houses through the broken line of trees. Bits of the destroyed homes were hung in the branches of the trees that were still standing. I said a number of prayers as I drove through that area.

Now I am in Texas, as I mentioned. I lived here a number of years ago, although I was in the Dallas area. I don't think I have set foot in Texas for a good fifteen years, and it is kind of nice to see it for a bit. I did not enjoy living here as I recall, but it is not a bad state to drive in. The roads in this area are not bad, and there is not nearly as much construction as there was in some other states.

I expect to be in New Mexico this evening and at my summer apartment in Las Cruces by early afternoon tomorrow. On the road, I am listening to Eugene Peterson's book Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places and enjoying it enormously (Technically, this violates my no theology rule, but I it was the only audio book I had on my iPod). Peterson is an excellent spiritual writer, and actually quite good on the Eucharist. Despite advice I have received to listen to music on long trips, rather than audio books, I find that spoken words keep me awake a little better. In the evenings, when I stop for the night, I am reading The Great Gatsby. I have never read it before, which I realize is a big gap in my claims to literacy, so I am filling it in now. I have finished the Moviegoer, by Walker Percy, as well as Eye in the Sky by Philip K. Dick. I found Eye in the Sky entertaining, but I was not really grabbed by it. I think it was one of Dick's earlier novels before he went completely insane, but also before he really started dealing with some of the themes of identity and perception that his books are best known for.

As sad thing happened yesterday, and I heard from my parents that they had to put one of the family cats, Boots, to sleep. He was about fourteen years old - older than my youngest sibling. He had kidney failure, and was not able to eat or even drink anymore. I was fond of him, and miss him but it was especially hard on my siblings, most of whom have never gone through having a pet die. He was really my younger sister's cat, and it was especially hard for her. It was also the first time that a family pet has needed to be put to sleep, which I know was a hard decision for the family to make; they are all in my prayers. Personally, I am a big pet person, and I hope to see them in heaven.

Well, its about time to get back on the road. Next time I post, it will probably be from Las Cruces, God willing.