So I’m back in Chicago. And, you’ve got it, not for long. I’ll be leaving in the morning to get back to a more stationary life in Oklahoma. At least for a little bit.

It seems that I left off somewhere around LAX. I’d paid for a “ShuperShuttle” reservation the night before. I’d never really used them before, so I wasn’t sure how it worked. I eventually found their agent on the “traffic island” and told her I had a reservation. After about half an hour, she told me to get into one of the many vans that drove by. I gave the driver the address, and he looked it up in a Mapsco. And then we drove around the airport for another half hour collecting other people. That done, we departed on a grand tour of the greater LA area. He dropped everyone else off before driving up the mountain. I suspected that finding the body shop with the Miata was going to be difficult, but he managed with no difficulties.

The place was closed for lunch. I put my backpack down and sat on it. Eventually a clean, rather modified, early 80’s Porsche 911 drove up with two mechanics. They said that they didn’t have the key to the office, but that I might want to go next door for lunch at the malt shop. So I did.

I had a very good burger as well as a milkshake and headed back to the body shop. They turned over the car with a minimum of fuss. I stopped at Carol Ann’s to pick up what few things I could fit in the Miata and started driving east.

When I started getting tired, I called Joanna and asked if she could find me a cheap place to stay for the night. She got me reservations at a Motel 6 in Tempe, AZ. Having a navigator on the other end of a telephone line is useful, though not as good as having one right there with you.

The Motel 6 couldn’t find my reservation. There was one woman working there, and she didn’t know what to do. After pleading that surely there was someone she could call, she called someone. Who told her to check me in and worry about matching the room to my reservation later.

I slept soundly and got up about the same time as the sun and kept driving east.

It seemed to be a nearly endless drive. The desert goes on and only changes form every so slightly over many hundreds of miles. It’s beautiful, but I had no one to share it with. Of all places, I desperately wanted to be in Norman, OK. I drove on and on listening to NPR where I could get it, recorded episodes of This American Life where I could not. There were lots of public radio stations on the drive, but most of them seemed perpetually out of reach. I wanted to stop at an In-N-Out. I was sure that I would find one in Arizona for lunch, but it didn’t happen.

It rained off and on. At some point Joanna called and asked where I was. I thought it was New Mexico, but it might have been Texas. The question seemed terribly unimportant as though all that mattered was that there was desert. And not much else.

It’s nice to have a home and to come home to it.

After enjoying the rest of the weekend with Joanna and fixing the car, I set off for Nashville on Tuesday morning.

While driving through Oklahoma City, I got stuck in an exit-only lane that’s not well marked. It says “Left Exit” but doesn’t say “Left Exit Only”. There was a line of trucks and it looked like I was going to be forced off. But, just at the last minute, I noticed a space in front of the trucks, which I could just make. I accelerated and changed lanes just as my lane exited. Not two seconds after changing into my new lane, a woman on the right side of the trucks changed lanes. Into my lane. My being in the lane didn’t seem to faze her.

Because the car doesn’t have ABS, I locked up the tires braking while simultaneously leaving her as much room as possible. Because the lane I’d just changed from had disappeared, I’d left myself with no options. So she hit the front right corner of the car knocking it a little sideways.

I slid for awhile, managed to straighten the car, get it under control and bring it to a stop on the grass.

The woman who hit me got out of her car apologizing profusely, which probably would have helped my case had I decided to fight about it. While the accident was definitely her fault, I was certainly a contributing factor. I’m not sure how police/insurance would finally decide about it. Her car had a scrape and some paint damage. The Miata had a not-insignificant dent on the front right fender, baseball sized. Since I have no accidents on my record and really, really don’t want any, even if one that might not be my fault, I asked her if it was okay if we didn’t call the police. Even in the best case scenario, we were both going to be facing an insurance premium hike, which seemed stupid. So we shook hands, and on we went.

This wouldn’t be a big deal at all if it were my car, which is already dinged, and well, mine. Dad had already sold the car to a friend of his. Furthermore, the car had just come out of the body shop because someone had hit it in a parking lot.

I went ahead and drove to Nashville, and the car was in the body shop when I left.

The folks who’d purchased the car were actually on their way to Chicago from Georgia and were passing through Nashville. They picked me up in their RV-thing, and took me to Chicago. They were planning on picking up the Miata on their way back from Chicago, but I have no idea if the body shop had finished by then or not. I managed to sleep a little bit in the night but certainly not well.

They dropped me off at a suburban Metra train station, which took me right to the loop. It was an early morning commuter train, everyone going to work but me.

I arrived at the Loop in something of a daze, not really sure where I was. When I figured it out, I tried to buy a fare card so I could get to Sydney’s. Only all I had was a $20 bill and $1.65 in change. It’s a $1.75 fare, and the machine doesn’t make change– it merely gives you a fare card for whatever money you put in it. I bummed a dime from a helpful CTA employee, reflecting that I probably could have gotten on the train for a dime once upon a time.

When I got to Sydney’s, we got in the car and drove. 960 miles to the western edge of North Dakota. This is definitely one of the weirder things I’ve done. And I’ll have to write about it some other time.

Now I have to decide if I should take the State bus to meet Sydney at work or the Red line. And tomorrow I’m driving home. And plan to stay there awhile.