Driving to Arizona

One of the things they don’t tell you when you move to Las Vegas is any mention of the shear joy of driving to Arizona.

For car enthusiasts, or just folks who like to drive, the run through Boulder City, across the new Pat Tillman Bridge in front of Hoover Dam and down the arid, forty-five miles of high speed Mojave landscape of the border between Nevada and Arizona, any excuse to put the pedal to the metal in your favorite car is easily validated.
If you get the chance to win $400 million for making the journey, it’s only gravy :- )

I’ve got a zippy late model car that not only still plays CD’s, it plays cassette tapes. Yeah, that’s right, cassette tapes. As someone who grew up listening to albums and getting burned (but did I?) on portable 8-track players, the chance to dive into my old music collection is an increasingly rare, joyous private moment.

It’s not important what I listened to. It’s not important that the numbers I inked-in on my Powerball ticket didn’t end up among the winning numbers in last night’s draw. What is important is that I made the journey.

I don’t even want to mention the wonder of Willow Beach, or the vistas of Temple Bar. Even shooting a clip out of a .50 caliber machine gun or being asked if a 2012 Jeep takes diesel by Swedish tourists pales in comparison to the journey.

I discovered, through practiced Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonations, that doppelgangers are alien scientists here to observe us. I discovered that Mark Knopfler and the rest of the Dire Straits band, must have at one time, been stranded in some part of the great American southwest desert, because they spook so eloquently about it.

I discovered, again, that it’s not about the destination it’s about the journey.

On a Wednesday.

In the desert.

It gladdens my heart and I appreciate the fact the joy of driving to Arizona wasn’t in any of the Vegas tourism or newbie arrival documentation. Living in a desert isn’t for everyone. But the skies are so often so incredibly blue and the little details, the in-between nowhere exits that lead to watery oasis, make everyday life so unpredictable, so unexpectedly profound, that even road trips on Wednesdays make sense.

When the cobwebs of life start becoming sticky, you can either alert the spider by struggling against them, or you can take the spider into the desert, set it free, then return home with peace of mind.

I like returning home with peace of mind. I hope your travels take you where you need to be today too.