Day 45, my longest day

I think I left you in Eureka. My plan was to take a nap and then head out at night. I vividly remember saying to David, the cyclist I bumped into, that I was disappointed that there would be no more challenges and surprises left on the road. I might as well pointed a gun at the sun and fired.

I went to the park. Two guys were building something to the sound of the sappiest country music I've ever heard (something about it's so hard being poor or it's so hard being rich because you aren't poor any more). To make up for their wet music, the men took to swearing and using a power saw. I took to finishing The Road. It moved me, I loved it, and You will too. If you hurry, you can find a copy on the L park bench where I left it.

I drank my coffee in a can and pushed off into the sunset. The sun was orange and in my eye line; then it dipped behind a mountain and turned the sky colors; once the sky looked like the box to Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout; then, imperceptibly, it became something different; and then it disappeared. The stars start turning on one by one. Some of them shoot. Some of them do twinkle. And they all distracted me long enough to blow out.

I ran over a shred of tire and the steel braid ripped a hole in my tire and took a spoke off. I think. So, in the shoulder of the Loneliest Road, I worked by dark. Duct tape now holds my tire together where kevlar once was.

This was all my fault. See this was my first flat. I got it into my head that I was going to go the entire country without a flat. To avoid jinxing, I did not rotate my tires midway through, nor did I ever really look at the things as they peeled thinner and thinner. Now, I've got 110 miles to go before I can swap it out. Everything is ginger.

Still, the night ride had its moments. The moon lit the road once so it looked like a white river; occasionally, the white light made the desert look like the moon itself; and I saw a meteor shower or shooting star fest. The stars fall fast and explode like blue magnesium.

I'm tired. I slept for four hours. The Early Show is on and they're trying to convince me that men are going to start wearing makeup. A small price to pay for nice pancakes.