Nevada was extremely cold. in the back of my mind i had already agreed that sleeping outside at the highway rest areas i come across would be the most logical approach when traveling cheaply. while due to warmer weather and the plan going smoothly on the trip west. yet refused to assimilate the notion that the weather may change over the coarse of a month.

it was probably 22 degrees with a dusting of snow that night. i thought that three blankets a sleeping bag and a bivy cover would be ideal. but the high desert gets far too much wind.
i slept off and on for maybe three hours and resumed the tiresome monotony of staring into the east.
Subway food is no longer appealing. i thought it would be the only thing suitable when searching for fresh vegetables on the road. but I've reached my threshold.
luckily in some casino smothered Nevada highway driven town the Subway also had a little Hispanic boy that found joy when making fart and/or duck sounds with his mouth while watching me eat.
i made fart and/or duck sounds back.
he was surprised and as well intrigued to continue.
i told myself no more Subway. yet i ate my last meal with the best entertainment that money could buy.
back to carrots and raw cashews and cold soup straight from the can.
my generic leathermen has no well defined design.
it takes ten minutes to open a can halfway. and by then i get too hungry so i just sort of drink the soup like it was a smoothie.

Utah has water on the salt flats this time of year. it reflects the clouds and bluish-gray horizon. the mountains become perfect replicas of themselves yet hold this uncanny pull of gravity.
it makes the desert somehow seem exotic. i must keep my self from stopping to jump in. maybe to wake up or to realize how deep it gets. i think no more then two inches. vast lakes of two inch water.
i sleep at a gas station for a couple hours because the sun came out and made my car warm enough.
my car doesn't have heat so every time i get more gas i make hot tea with my canteen and when its nighttime or early morning i hold onto it with both hands while driving with my knee.
i don't recommend driving this way. it only makes it far too similar to television but is much more difficult to turn the station.
well actually my car does have heat but it also comes with the noxious smell of car fumes.
i must get that fixed before deciding to travel faraway again.
cleaning fogged up windows with my handkerchief is far from ideal.

when driving for such an extended period of time i've realized that at a certain point in the day either time would slow down or my thoughts would speed up. why must they put millage signs given the distance to multiple cities every 10 miles?
i put duck tape over my clock to resist the habit.
it peels off so i add more. in Wyoming i give up.
it is still very cold and i say to myself "i must pick sage brush for a friend".
i say it incessantly until i decide to stop.
it is very cold and most of the brush has already flowered or is too small to wrap. the wind travels across the open desert just to tangle up my hair and spin me around until i find the door to my car and assume the exact sitting position that i have held for the past 10 hours.
five days later the brush still sets in my door and is probably too dry to tie up. it was the thought that counts.

Wyoming is better then Nebraska because of the variation in the landscape. but a man yelled at me for dumping my yerba mate in the toilet at a gas station. (a stimulating alternative caffeine-like tea from south america)
it was funny though because he actually refereed to it by its name.
i probably drank six ounces in three days.
half the time it makes me alert and patient. the other half it doesn't seem to work and seems to create the opposite.
i make it to Nebraska after 2 hours of 60+ miles per hour wind. cookie seems to be a cheaply made can of tuna fish. i rock side to side with dreary eyed apprehension.
i drive till 4 in the morning and due to the cold i have this hairbrain scheme to sleep in some secluded corner of some warm hallway of some average run of the mill hotel. really i was going to get some more hot tea at a gas station when i pulled off the highway. but the exit i took only had closed gas stations and open hotels. i decide to try one of the back doors at this travelodge thinking that not in a million years. but the door pops open and a warm gust of air washes the cold from my face.
i scamper upstairs thinking that I'm in some 1920's hero and villain caper with the fast quirky music. my goal to find the hidden nesting ground for a weary weather beaten traveler on his way home.
yet there were absolutely no nooks or cranny's that i so imaginatively thought to be sleepable.
so with slight agitation and a soon swelling of anxiety i lay my sleeping bag at the end of the hall on the second floor near the stairwell.
now i might add that this probably wasn't the brightest idea that i had chosen to pursue but those few minutes tucked away under my warm covers in this warm hotel hallway felt like they could last forever (well maybe a few hours longer then they actually had).
then my conscience got the best of me and the paranoia and the anxious feeling evolved into the imagined circumstance of being woken up by some law enforcement. this brought enough will for me to come to my senses and leave that moment of undeniable rest.
thought i do put up one final last debate that almost keeps me put but the lacking of a pen and paper makes it difficult to conger such a sign to lay next to my sleepy self exclaiming my strenuous and scenario driven argument with my loved one that has evidently sent me to such a predicament outside of "our" supposed legally purchased hotel sanctuary.

i decide to walk out the way i came and enter through the lobby to plead my tiresome case with the night attendant. she said twenty dollars cant get me a room but sixty five can. her next advice is to call the cops and they could find my a place.
at first i thought this may be a trap. but my intellect prodded a bit further and realized that some religiously involved haven may take me in.
yet when directions are set and i wave goodbye to both the officer and the night watchmen i realize that I'm about to knock on some door to some strange house in some little town in nowhere Nebraska. oh yeah and at 5 in the morning. but at last i arrive after twenty minutes of side roads and another twenty minutes of poorly given directions and i seem to find the church and the house with the two florescent soda machines lighting up the driveway. i knock once and i then knock four more times with each a little more confidence and momentum. and soon enough come to a conclusion that this plan has one minor flaw that has grown into new a wholly more logical direction for the evening. i say out loud that this is stupid and jump back in my car toward the familiar sanctuary of wonderful interstate 80.

my plan is to fill up my canteen once again with very hot liquid and drive to the next rest area, put the canteen in my sleeping bag and sleep in my car not far from the position that I've been driving for the past two days.
of course the rest area was closed so i find a gas station and park out back.
an hour into such anticipated slumber some lady taps on my driver side windshield with which i reasoned to be a whole lot of guff. now i don't use the term guff that often except for my friend Miles, because when he walks i just think to myself "man he's got guff". but this woman tells me through my window and the faint muffle of three blankets and a sleeping bag after, just to remind you, merely 1 sweet hour of undisturbed rest " hey wake up, you cant sleep here or I'm calling the cops"
so i do any logical action that one can do in my situation and drive across the street, which must have seemed like an awkward sort of drunkenly gait, to yet another hotel parking lot. half dazed and half resuming the mission that i started long ago. which is sort of a blur. finding a place to call home for the night or still actually trying to make it to the place i once knew as home.
luckily i was tired enough to not contemplate this for too long.
i wake up sweating at 10 in the morning because the sun has filled my car like a greenhouse.

the rest of the trip is tiresome and boring.
the rest of Nebraska is surely flat.
Iowa is sort of the same.
we all know Chicago.
but it nice to get into your home state especially when your destination is only about an hour from the boarder.

there's nothing more reevaluating when you have so much time and distance between your place of travel and a place you consider to be your home.
it almost feels sort of courageous to take on such an overwhelming amount of stress just to leave a place that you ultimately end up drawing yourself back to.
my eyes needed some exercise from their limited but intensified range of motion.
i just rolled them back and forth lot in my head.