moving eight miles a minute for months at a time

I am thrilled to announce that I am no longer in Stillwater! Sadly, though, that's the only item of interest to share tonight. We didn't leave Stillwater until almost one p.m., and so I spent the morning packing, washing my car, grabbing some snacks and ice for the road, etc. And now, 10.5 hours later, my brother and I are holed up in a motel room in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I am delighted at the prospect of sleeping in a bed instead of on the thirty-year-old couch in my brother's living room.

Really, we made quite good time. Stillwater to Santa Fe was a little over six hundred miles, and we stopped five times: in Oklahoma City to drop off his car at the airport; somewhere outside Oklahoma City to grab a snack; in Shamrock, Texas to get gas at a disgusting little gas station where they had a cooler devoted to Franzia wine in a box, my brother spotted two different dudes wearing spurs, and a woman who may have been a truck stop prostitute was cleaning herself up in the bathroom sink; in Amarillo, Texas to get some caffeine at Starbucks; and in Tucumcari, New Mexico to get gas and a late supper. Tucumcari's claim to fame in my world is that it's one of the lesser-known destinations in Rail Baron, which can be a bitch to get to during the end-game if you don't have a good rail network established in the west. And now that I've proven my dorkiness for the thirteen millionth time, I shall move on.

Driving across northern Texas was about as dull and miserable as I expected it to be, but I'm rather enjoying New Mexico so far. The change in scenery was abrupt and pronounced just a bit before the Texas/New Mexico border; it suddenly went from miles and miles of flat, dry, irrigated farmland to rolling scrub with pronounced mesas and strange gullies. The sun was setting in a strange, surreal haze, and the oddly murky light made everything feel slightly apocalyptic. It probably didn't help that I'd been driving for about seven hours at that point -- I drove the entire way, since six hundred miles is oddly par for the course for me these days and my brother had only slept a couple of hours last night as he tried to wrap things up in an attempt to prevent me from leaving without him. But I'm eager to see what the scenery looks like tomorrow morning, in the bright light of day and after eight or nine hours of sleep.

But now, I should probably go to bed; it's only eleven p.m. mountain time, but that's midnight in the central time, and I'm quite tired. Luckily, the hotel I found in Santa Fe appears to be a winner despite being the least expensive one that we're staying in this entire trip -- it's only $55/night, but there's a fridge, microwave, two stove burners, dishes, silverware, etc. I'm waiting for some hideous catch, such as the possibility that the Santa Fe railroad runs twenty feet behind the hotel, but it's too dark to see what the surroundings are and nothing untoward has happened so far. So, we shall see what we shall see -- in the meantime, goodnight!