Pasadena, capital of the nineteenth century (4/6/08)

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Having, for some reason, attached an unquestioning credence to the prognostications provided by the online weather services I consulted regarding the prospects for dry roads on the morning of the 31st, I reserved a room in Vegas for Monday night and only at the last minute [prompted somewhat by the insomnia natural to my state of anticipation] decided to get up early and leave at five, just in case. A fortunate choice, since the idea of taking the direct route over I-70 turned out to be addlepated at best, and I discovered rapidly that [duh] conditions projected for Boulder, Glenwood Springs, and Grand Junction do not, to say the least, interpolate smoothly to, say, the top of Vail Pass — which I would not have reached at all if I hadn’t staggered into an auto parts store in Silverthorne after several hours en route and bought a set of cable chains which not to put too fine a point on it, saved my life. — By the time I got to Vail itself, of course, it was really just raining, and as I was sitting in a heap of slush trying to get the chains off a Paul Giamatti look-alike got out of his SUV, pointed at the Miata with a big grin, and said, “That’s a great winter car.” — “No shit,” I said.

After which I got to Grand Junction, finally, at one-thirty in the afternoon; looked at the sign that said it was just over five hundred miles to Vegas, shrugged, floored it west on the emptiest interstate I have ever seen in my life, and made it all the rest of the way by eight-thirty. — Whereupon I gained the curious distinction of being the only guy out of several thousand people on the Strip who was out walking his dog at nine o’clock on a Monday evening. Well, fuck them if they can’t take a joke.

All this to let Tashi take a bath in the Pacific.

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You will wind up looking through a pinhole, down upon your knees (2/10/08)