Vanishing Point

That is a very good question. Part of the reason I haven't been blogging lately is that I don't really know the answer to that myself. So I gave myself permission to stop trying to communicate about it for a while. Yesterday two people asked me something to the effect of, "So, what about your blog? What's going on these days?" I'll try to summarize and highlight my time in Arizona in January. First some context: the gathering I was heading to Arizona for was actually two related gatherings. The first one was January 4-8 and for women only. The second one was from January 9-20 and for both men and women. Now for the summary. When I got to Tucson, everything felt cramped and crowded and fast. I got some yummy stuff from a health food store and went back to my room and chowed down. The next day my drive would take me close enough to the event I'd driven halfway across the country to attend that I could show up there if I wanted to. But I still wanted to

I wrote the following paragraphs back at the beginning of January and then never posted this. I'll get into that a bit more in my next post. For now, here are a couple of photographs from the wintry weather in Las Cruces, and some thoughts about why I stayed there so long: I have had various reasons for sticking around Las Cruces the last few days. First there was the snow storm, then there was my desire to rest, then it was New Year's Eve and I didn't want to be out on the roads in any significant way that day. I had a plan to leave New Year's Day, and then I found out that a friend who I was planning to meet in Arizona had gotten fed up with camping in freezing weather and was heading East. If I wanted to see him, I needed to stay put in Las Cruces a bit longer and he would come through. Then there was more snow predicted on January 2, and I devised a plan to leave on January 3. That would make me late for the gathering I wanted to attend near Quartzsite, but i

Why was I so keen on getting to Pecos that day? It's because I had a coupon for a low-cost night's stay at a Best Western of my choice for only 10,000 reward points (the usual range is 16K-24K), that was going to expire soon, and it wasn't valid on Friday or Saturday nights. If I wanted to keep to my schedule and use the coupon in Pecos, I had to get there on Thursday. Why Pecos? Because the most expensive Best Westerns I know of in this part of the world are in Pecos, and I wanted to get the biggest value for my reward points. There are two Best Westerns in Pecos, right next door to each other. Previously I'd only stayed in the less-fancy one, but this time I wanted to spend my reward points to see the fancier one. When I walked in the front door, I was very surprised to see that it was still decorated for Christmas, and that the lobby was as dramatic as it was. Here's a photo I took from near the front door. In addition to the central building, there were

The winds west of Abilene were predicted to be on the strong side, blowing crosswise to the freeway. Just what I most wanted to avoid. But it looked like they were supposed to slowly decrease as the day progressed, and I really wanted to get to Pecos that night. I consulted my new trucker's app on my phone ( https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/trucker-path/id782746890?mt=8 if you're curious) and saw that there would be places I could pull off and park all along the route, so I knew that the worst case would be that I'd stop and read a while the wind grew weaker, and wind up not getting as far as Pecos. My first rest stop of the day was in the town of Big Spring. I planned to stop at the truck stop there, but it looked completely full, so I kept driving into town. I'm not sure if the Statue of Liberty was the one thing I least expected to see there, but it was the thing I actually did see that I least expected to see. My next stop was in Odessa, Texas. I'd been