“Purty Dowg You’ve Got There”

LA/XC-4 DAY EIGHT:  POSTING FROM LAS CRUCES, NM

Today’s mileage:  421

Total LA/XC-4 mileage:  2,765

Road Music:  Sirius cycle; “Music of Nashville” playlist (5 CDs from the Nashville TV show)

Weather leaving Sonora, TX Thursday night:  77 degrees, mixed sun and clouds

Weather arriving Las Cruces, NM last night:  exactly the same!

Yesterday’s state tally: 2 (Texas, New Mexico)

Gas money to date:  $221,05

Road signs I mis-read from afar:  Torah (it was actually “Toyah”; was I really expecting “Torah” in West Texas?)

Yesterday was what we in the trade call a “mileage day.”  (By “we in the trade,” I mean the Beagle Man.  That’s what I call it when I talk to myself.)  No lunches with awesome singer-songwriters.  No campus tours with distinguished professors.  No amazing dog parks for Kemba.  No live music and BBQ at some downtown  honky-tonk.  Just miles.  Four hundred twenty-one of them.  From Sonora, TX to Las Cruces, NM.

Things were so monotonous yesterday that a highlight was the art in the men’s rooms in the I-10 Rest Areas.  I’ve been through Texas several times now on the LA/XC series, but I don’t remember encountering these cabana-style, open-air structures, with the “business” end covered, but with the rest of the building exposed to the elements and featuring eye-catching tile murals.  And if experience serves me, it pays to make use these Rest Areas in Texas, because I remember back during LA/XC-1 in 2011 christening New Mexico as the Land of the

Closed Rest Areas (though the state’s “Welcome to” sign would have you believe it’s the Land of Enchantment).   Another outstanding feature of the West Texas Rest Areas:  a fence between the pet exercise area and the highway — so Kemba and I were able to play fetch with no worries.

When you think about the lead item in this post being about Rest Areas, you’ll realize we’ve hit — as we also say in the trade — a “slow news day.”

What strikes me funny — and I suppose a little bit endearing — here in cowboy country:  I keep running into these tall, silent types with their ten-gallon hats and their cowboy boots and their slow, bow-legged strides.  Yet in spite of the macho veneer, they all fall for my puppy.  They have to bend over and pet him.  “Purty dowg you’ve got there,” they tell me.

Today’s game plan:  The Las Cruces dog park — and then on to Tempe, AZ.  This was going to be the day for some easy-going tooling along the Mother Road, the famed Route 66, but I’ll tell you what happened to that great idea in my next post . . .

RANDOM ROAD NOTES:

•  It’s pretty cool when the speed limit’s 80 — as in Texas and New Mexico — cause really, who wants to go much more than 90?  (Funny, when you slow down from 90 to 70, it feels like you’re crawling.)

•  The stretch of I-10 I drove yesterday from Sonora was flat as a pancake.  Then, the very second I passed the sign that said I was entering the Mountain Time Zone, I started seeing mountains.  Amazing how they’ve got that worked out.

•  There’s pretty much nothing better than traveling west and picking up an hour every thousand miles or so when you cross over into a new time zone.  Sucks going east, though.

P.S.  Happy birthday, Gil Hodges!  (Yes, Robby, the guy who batted .299 in 1957.)

I PLAN TO POST AS CLOSE TO DAILY AS POSSIBLE WHILE KEMBA AND I ARE ON THE ROAD.  BUT YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAY:  MAN PLANS, GOD LAUGHS.   OH, AND BTW, YOU CAN ALSO FOLLOW ME ON FACEBOOK, TWITTER AND INSTAGRAM.