Greetings From Tulsa...

There's this crap in the air. It's kind of wet, but not really. The desk clerk tells me it's something called "humidity."

Well, there's a whole week to catch up on, but tough shit--you're only getting the last two days. Next week, I'll talk about my first-ever trip to Disneyland. There are even pictures.

First off, a huge thank you to everyone at Square One Dining for a great last meal. They even gave me a muffin and a brownie for the road. (Confidential to YES!: The brownie did NOT melt on my seat. I ate it, and the crumbs melted on my shirt. The result is like a Rorschach test made out of chocolate.)

Now, the trip. Some friends and I asked ourselves a question the other night: when you're driving out of town, what's the spot you consider to be "out?" In other words, precisely when do you leave LA? The answer, it turns out, is never.

The traffic leaving LA was non-stop until Palm Springs. That means even if I was moving, there was not a single moment where my car was not boxed in on all sides by other vehicles. It was...unpleasant.

As to the question--in my opinion, until I get some space, I'm still in Los Angeles. That put my out point at, roughly, Phoenix.

My car, which as you all know is the best thing in the entire world, has been a cause of concern for me when planning this trip. You see, it has a crappy radiator. (I blame myself--several years ago it was replaced and I never checked to see what part was used.) This means that the engine tends to heat up a bit, but only in very narrow conditions. Those conditions? Up very steep, protracted ascensions in very high heat. Basically, desert mountains. Good thing I was only going through to New Mexico.

The outside temperature was 109 degrees in Palm Springs. I ended up turning off the air conditioning an hour and half into the trip. It was so hot that it felt like a relief to blink. Three hours in, I had the heat on to relieve the engine. Ten hours in and I was hallucinating. Seriously. I think I had dinner at Rick's Cafe from "Casablanca."

I went through eight 20 oz bottles of water and three of soda by mid-afternoon, but the car never red-lined once. The sun went down, and since it did, the engine has remained comfortably below the mid-line--no matter how high the AC is on. I love my car.

Day two was totally uneventful. Like I said, the car is fine now. New Mexico is beautiful, Texas is boring (save for the largest cross in the Western Hemisphere, which was closed for remodeling), and Oklahoma is OK.

It looks like West Virginia tomorrow, Washington DC the next day, and Providence on Monday. The more direct route would get me there by Sunday, but I'm visiting some family.

A couple of other notes:

--Is it possible to listen to "Abbey Road" without feeling like something is ending? I know it was planned that way, but every time I hear it, there's this nebulous sense of loss. I'm not sure if it's the album itself or the circumstances surrounding the album's creation.

--I ate something very bad tonight at a Sonic here in Tulsa. It was a chicken sandwich on very thick "toast" with mayo. If you want to know exactly how bad that might be for you, imagine an incredibly rich coffee cake with about 4000 calories and using eight sticks of butter. Now imagine another one.

That's it for now. More tomorrow.