West on Ten

(Ye somewhat over-burdenned Civick, just south of NM on US 285.)

Unlike Pete, I have no zany bike-related Valentine's Day mishaps to report. (Indeed, as the empty rack in the picture above indicates I no longer have a bicycle to my name at all.)

My day started with whole wheat pancakes and scrambled eggs with Aunt Jean and Uncle Vann (the most comprehensive meal I've had in a few days) and continued westward on a couple of Texas state routes with about as many roadkilled skunks as other cars. Eventually that fed into I-10 West, which took up a plurality of today's mileage. Mostly I just kept the cruise control at eighty and steered ever leftward to make up for the car's subtle pull. Periodic gas or bathroom breaks; a pause at a rest stop to refill my water bottles, schedule a phone interview for next week, stare blankly at the big wall-mounted map. I defied my Garmin today, choosing somewhat arbitrarily to blindly follow the Google Maps route instead, so periodically the Garmin-lady-robot voice would note in a neutral (and yet perhaps somewhat annoyed?) voice that "a better route is available". Ultimately I wound up on US 285 North, rural industry behind barbed-wire fences on both sides, aiming for New Mexico and Mountain Time.

I wish my concept of nature were fine-grained enough to describe what exactly happens to the landscape as I drive. As it is my mental symbols for such matters only get about as specific as "tree" or "bird", so all I can do is put the drive into West Texas in terms of "smaller, rounder tree" or "unfamiliar yellowish bird". (Contrast with easily made driving-related statements like "I have been passed by a late-model, four-door Honda Civic".) At any rate the easy hills I started from gave way to mostly-flatness in between low rocky plateaus, which became sparser and sparser until, once I turned north, the land was more or less level and scrubby and dry all the way to the mountains off in the distance to the west. It has its beauty but it would seem to miss the point to say so; functional and unpretentious vegetation on all sides, usually with oil or gas rigs here or there. The towns that exist around the big intersections have their gutted, eroded former gas stations and motels but also their fresh-and-clean H&R Block offices and Pizza Huts.

I'm in Carlsbad for the night, and if all goes according to plan I'll get up and out early in the morning to visit the caverns which also bear that name. I had the not entirely sensical thought just now that while I know about stalactites and stalagmites, I don't know the name for the equivalent formation that grows out from the side of the cave wall. If I weren't typing into a blog post right now I'd probably just let the mental filters keep that one.