flash floods scatter the cars but i push through, finally some spanish radio, kissing ciudad juarez through el paso. the skies yawning, opening up endless, unblemished above honest workaday trucks and rolling scrubland. injury lawyer ads give way to corrugated steel and fences, tiny metal windmill, far off bluish mesa lines in arid-fuzzy air; alone but for a gentle highway patrol officer. then the largest never-worked-a-day-in-their-lives trucks, bulbous tanks, aggressively stickered, parking backwards. finally crossing into california, i’m back to the familiar self-congratulatory teslas, aggressive audis, and old mitsubishi trucks bursting with gardening gear, my roads. this is my stop.