Westward Ho!

You know that it is going to be bad when even the GPS unit warns you there will be High Gusty Winds.

          I knew it was windy!

          I was driving!

          How did my GPS know it was windy?

          Did it sense my erratic driving style?

Could it tell by the many Lane Departure warnings she was giving me?

          At that point, I wondered if she had a DWI Warning built into her too! ( No worries there, I do not really drink except for an occasional Strawberry Wine Cooler maybe once a month.)

          Then I passed a sign that read, “High Wind Area”

          OK, now it made sense. Someone had programmed it in. We were traveling on Interstate Route 10 through southwestern Texas headed for New Mexico and eventually Colorado. This area of Texas is about as broad and expansive as any Texan could brag about. To complicate things, that Weather Anomaly that kept us from departing on schedule reared its ugly head once more, as if bidding us a evil, final, farewell.

           But we had Bluebird Skies and Bright Sunshiny Vistas!

          And Wind.

          Lots and lots of Wind.

          So not only were we in a High Gusty Winds Warning area, but we were still in the clutches of a departing Low Pressure System, which as it leaves, gets filled with an incoming High Pressure System that packs a Pressure Gradient that will knock your socks off! (in our case I guess you could say “tires off”). And unfortunately, it hung around for a while because Hurricane Zulu, Zorba, or Zumba (Can’t remember and don’t care) was still hanging in Louisiana and environs and wouldn’t let “our” system pass through!

          This made the previous drive through the Louisiana Bayou seem like just another Sunday ride on a Bike Path. (except there are no ‘gators in the Texas Desert, just a rattler or two). Remember how that previous drive went on for thousand and thousands of miles? Well, this one went on for millions and millions of miles!

          All day long, constant, no let up, save when we pulled into a rest area for a break.  At that point we could still feel the wind rocking us back and forth like we were on the boat with Jesus and the Apostles when the storm came up.

          Everyone knows the feeling of the Passing Truck on the highway.

          As the truck approaches and  pushes that big wall of air in front of it, you can feel it coming and you need to counteract that push by steering into it. The problem is that you need to stop that countermeasure the precise moment that the Wall passes you because if you do not, you will oversteer and only cause more problems.

          All of those issues are compounded by our size.

          I’m used to that by now.

          I watch my rearview mirror for the overcoming Big Rig and as it comes alongside, I steer into it until I feel the effect lessen and then I pull back to center and then steer the other way because now, as it passes, it wants to suck us in behind it.

          Got it!

          Been there. It is now all part of the Driving Experience.

Except when in the aforementioned High Gusty Winds Warning Area.

          Now it gets dicey.

          All of my carefully calculated, tried and true, driving techniques go out the window (literally and figuratively) when every maneuver that I make gets buffeted back and forth always in the wrong direction.

          I considered taking a Xanax but decided that it would not look good on the Police Report if they did a blood test. Poor Paula was as nervous as I was but made heroic efforts not to show it. You know how it is riding Shotgun, all of the drama and none of the control (slamming your foot to the floor in an effort to grind to a halt using your invisible imaginary brake on your side of the vehicle!)

          Miss GPS and Navigator Paula found an alternative way to go that not only promised to get us off of blustery Interstate 10, but it looked like it was even shorter! Off we go onto Route 285 North towards Pecos. I felt like I was in a Western Movie just hearing the word Pecos!         All was good until another Destruction Zone.

          They were widening the road (good) but in their efforts to do so they forgot to keep even the semblance of a shoulder on the right-hand side (bad). The road is only two lanes, one each way, so there was no riding in the left lane. The big issue with the No Shoulder scenario was that IMMEDIATELY after the white stripe on the right side there was NOTHING! Except a downward slope of freshly graded, sandy-type soil that would have flipped us over if I even thought about wandering over the line. It was so close to the edge I wondered how they even painted it onto the road. We made it into Carlsbad, New Mexico which is in the next time zone so theoretically we bought ourselves an extra hour to do with what we pleased.

          Sleep?

          How about Coma.

          Except we were so used to the constant motion of being shellacked all day long that when we finally stopped for the night and pulled into Walmart of Carlsbad, we felt like we had just gotten off an all-day rollercoaster ride.

          It took a while to fall asleep.