So it has been a while, hasn’t it. Time to catch up on the story.

This was always going to be the part of the journey I traveled alone, the rather desolate drive from East Texas to the very West coast of California. The following negates the need for further text.

The drive across Texas is notoriously dull. I can confirm this. As somebody that has no problem sitting in a car for many hours, even I was struggling for anything resembling visual stimuli. To put this in perspective, at one point I made the mistake of passing up a gas station when I had half a tank showing on the gauge. As I neared empty I had not seen another opportunity, I checked the GPS to find the nearest gas on my route was a further 75 miles. This is on a freeway. It did show me gas in 15 miles off route and so I had to make the trek knowing I would have no gas to make it back if this option turned out to be a long deserted station in a ghost town. Fortunately it did not but it was a nervous 20 minutes or so getting there.

A little later that day and the storms caught up with me. I had been watching the weather and thought I could get beyond the worst of them. I turned out to be misguided. Driving on a virtually deserted (of course) stretch of the I10 I had noticed some approaching angry clouds. Then my phone, bracketed to the windshield, burst into life with the now familiar emergency alert signal. Anyone here knows it, it is a deliberately horrible distorted repetitive siren. I’ve seen many before but not focused my attention quite like the last 2 below.

I am not foolish enough to think I can outrun a storm but given my position I figured the best I could do was drive as fast as I could before it hit in the hope the more distance I covered would provide more chances for “cover”. As it turned out with the edge of the hailstorm bearing down on me I found a freeway overpass where others had already taken refuge. There I spent about 30 or 40 minutes (I felt a lot more) of the more scary moments of my life. With Cars and Trucks alike taking up any shelter they could find we waited out the worst of the storm. I have since learned that this is not necessarily the safest option as a bridge can clearly act as a wind funnel. It is certainly true that the car was getting bucked by the gusts but on balance given the same scenario I would do it again. With lightening literally hitting the ground around me I was thankful for the cover of concrete, to say nothing of the rock sized hail that the car was (mostly) avoiding. Although the video I took, that I won’t share because frankly I look petrified, you can clearly hear it taking some punishment.

I wasn’t the first to leave, some of the semi trucks moved on first, as they did of course so the backlog of traffic that had been forced by the blocked freeway to sit it out in the open moved through. When I did finally engage drive again the darkness was clearing to leave behind a beautiful purple sky. Nature can be freaky.

I called it a night a hour or so after this – in a town called Van Horne on the western edge of Texas. A truck stop Wendy’s and a 6 pack of Budweiser providing dinner.

The next 24 hours was less eventful – a blast through the southern tip of New Mexico and into Arizona. Of the 2 stops I made the famously over advertised roadside attraction of “The Thing. What is it?” provided one. It’s a gloriously kitsch throw back to the glory days of US road tripping and it cost all of a dollar to do – so I did it. The thing is – well it’s a thing. The second was a short spin off the motorway to see the Boneyard. This is the famous place where old airplanes go to die. Basically rows and rows of the things. You can tour the place but I was there in the early evening so had to be satisfied with a drive around the outer edges.

The night was spent in Casa Grand AZ before a reasonable start in the morning for the last leg of my solitary pull into California. I took the longer option of the I8 via San Diego. This for little other reason than wanting to get the hell off the 10 which had been the virtually sole recipient of my rubber for 2 days. One of the main factors is the amount of rubber you have to dodge on it. The 10 is one of the main truck routes across the lower half of the US and the trucks on it regularly shed tires. They literally just sheer off and the road is littered with the debris. If you are unfortunate to be behind said truck at the time as I have on a couple of occasions you are faced with the choice of swerving at speed or ploughing through and accepting the damage. Neither are attractive. So I was glad to accept and a hour or so more for a little less diesel.

California was reached by early evening on Friday May 29th – the evening before the FA cup final. Dione and I would spend the next few days and evenings with family and friends, catching up and shaking off (for me at least) the road. I have also found a new mascot for the Trans Am in our nephew, Colton, who has taken liking to her if for nothing else but to climb all over.

Tim, May 31st 2015

The Trans Am – filthy but in one piece after Texas hell.

And getting a well deserved California spruce up.