Impromptu

Are you going to tell me what comes next
Or am I just supposed to know?
(OK Go)

"Well ... We may need you to come get us."

To say that wasn't exactly what I wanted to hear would be putting it mildly, but I wasn't exactly surprised. Mom and Dad had a rough start to their vacation -- their car had died before they were even ten hours into the drive to the Grand Canyon -- and they'd been driving a rental car for the rest of the week. In the meantime, the car was being repaired in Sterling, Colorado.

Unfortunately, not quickly enough.

As it happened, I had the day off and rather coincidentally a full tank of gas. So it was that an hour after a "Call me!" text message, I was on the road.

Sterling is only about four and a half hours straight south of the camp, across the Nebraska panhandle. Let me tell you -- if you ever have to drive north to south across Nebraska, take the panhandle. Not only is it about eighty miles shorter, it's surprisingly scenic. Hills, trees, strange rock formations ... Enough to keep an idle mind occupied.

Which was precisely what I needed. After all, I was driving to Colorado and back in one day, half of that alone. I needed amusement.

There was plenty to be had in the "easily amused" department. Coal trains that disappeared over the horizon, wind turbines and irrigation systems in a storm, the simple fact that upon entering Nebraska the sign reads, "Nebraska: the Good Life" ...

As I drove into Sidney, I thought about the friend from Mines who was killed a few years back in a car accident. This was his hometown, and until that moment I had no real idea where it was.

Around 4:30, I rolled into Sterling on the tails of a hail storm. We loaded my car in record time and hit the road again, pausing only briefly for dinner.

And at 10:00 we were pulling up to the ranch. It was good to be back.


Forgive me pretty baby but I always take the long way home...
(Norah Jones)