Lake Arrowhead, CA — Dallas, TX

Well, we made it. To Dallas anyway.

We left Lake Arrowhead yesterday at about 11 am PST and got here today at 3 pm CST. We stopped in Thousand Palms, CA for our last In-N-Out burgers, maybe forever. Berck drove till right before we hit Phoenix about 5 pm MST. Then I drove through rush hour traffic, on past firefighters putting out a car totally consumed by flames, into the night and the rain. We had decided to continue driving through the night because it had gotten unbearably hot in the desert during the day. We needn’t have worried; rain followed us from mid Arizona through Dallas (it’s finally stopped raining, just overcast now). But camping in the dark in a torrent was out of the question, so on we pressed. We stopped to fill up and change drivers. Berck put Rain-X on the windshield and decided to switch the wiper springs, since the driver’s side one kept skipping up and down the glass. Unfortunately, the spring launched a vital part into the dark, and we spent an hour searching for it in vain. Fortunately, the Rain-X worked wonderfully, since now we only had one windshield wiper. I read Gogol out loud to Berck until the road got too bumpy, then slept soundly till we hit El Paso and had to stop for gas again. Then I drove, consuming an entire package of sunflower seeds by the time I finally gave up sometime after dawn at a truck stop west of Abilene. I propped up my head with Berck’s sleeping bag stuff bag and was asleep in seconds.

Three hours later, Berck went inside the truck stop and came back with a Starbucks Frappuccino (which he downed immediately), a Dr Pepper, and a gigantic Snickers bar. I kept sleeping till he got gas again outside of Ft. Worth.

I keep asking Berck if it’s alright to go to sleep. I feel very much like my head is about to fall off.

We’re heading for Mobile in the morning, though we may have to stop in Tyler (and the nearest Advanced Auto) to get a new alternator. Berck just got his replaced in December, but this one’s now got a bad (and very noisy) bearing. Plus the car has developed a new rattle. I keep telling Berck it’s the missing piece of the wiper blade assembly, but he doesn’t believe me. Hopefully, a new wiper part and header will be waiting for us in Mobile. Until then, the car sounds pitifully loud.