Off the Road Again...

The wonderful thing about traveling is that you can have a marvelous time and still be beyond ready to be home again.  A good thing about road trips is that during that journey home, you have a lot of time to think.  A bad thing about road trips is that during that journey home, you have *a lot* of time to get in trouble and to generally get sick of your own company.  Thankfully, I'm quite fond of my own voice and was only really getting sick of me during the last half hour or so.  Actually, it did occur to me, looking on past trips where I did have company, that in the end it may have been a good thing that no one else was there to either witness or have to endure that last half hour anyway.  I seem to remember being rather foul tempered in both cases.

Speaking of my own voice- I found mine particularly hilarious when I was having an internal debate, randomly speaking some sentences while just thinking most of the others.  After throwing both sides around, I finally said aloud, "You both make valid points."  Seriously, not for the sake of irony or humor or any kind, I was commenting genuinely on the voices in my head and predictably finding merit, according to my own opinions.

There are some surprisingly beautiful stretches along the I80.  Of course, there are also large stretches of Nevada where there are a few slightly greenish tinted brushes along with the various shades of brown that leave you thinking, 'This is late April.  This is Spring in Nevada... and I'm not even to the part of MY state that Hollywood has used countless times to cheaply portray various apocalypses and cruel, inhospitable, alien environments.'  No, that part comes a couple hours later.  -To be fair though, on the way west, I saw the Salt Flats during the sunrise and it was practically beautiful (in a sneaky, deceitful, yet somehow perfectly valid way).

I liked the feel of Elko, and I had two rather nice (under 30 minute) visits to Reno.  Sacramento reminded me that I hate it (It's like a gigantic, way overcrowded Provo.  I'm not exactly sure I can explain that, but it is.)  And Carlin proved to me, once and for all, that you should buy gas in Reno, even if you don't really need it, because you might end up in the town that has a fake gas station at one end of town, and one that is surrounded by a barrier of weigh stations and road dividers in the center.  I felt bad about my bad driving up until I realized it had been designed to make legal entry impossible.

Last, somewhere around hour 9, I half wrote another post in my head about how to fix America's economy.  I thought I'd post this instead and give myself a few days to just make sure that one's not delusional...