Gas station, Fredericksburg. "Look, I just hit a deer,' Harrod exclaimed. 'There's camera fragments all over the road back there.' A posse of local cops has turned out to welcome us to town. Annie and I thought we were in the lead as we rolled into town, but it appears that Jack Splat has been pulled over up ahead in what looks like a roadblock full of flashing yellow lights and of course the familiar blue and red of the cops. Thankfully, the cops are friendly and give us directions to a rest stop down the road. It's free, they say, and we can sleep there. But mob ruled and suddenly we we're at a motel a half a mile back haggling over who was getting the beds and who got the floor or was tenting it outside in the grass.

And of course, a battle ensued. Mostly it was between The Grape and Love 23. I say it thus because by now we were all referring to each other by our vehicular names. In the battle for bed space, however, a few other choice names were used. I asked someone the time. It was 2 a.m. There was an empty pool at the motel, and I was just tired enough to climb down in there and go to sleep if the bed battle wasn't settled soon.

The killing of the deer had effected a strange shift in all of us. We were getting testy, over-tired and road weary. But morale was at an all-time high. There was wild energy afoot, that no mere fatigue-addled fray could dispel. We were edgy, pumped, and starting with Harrod, we were starting to get a little batty. Sure I was so tired I couldn't see straight, but I had to admit with this group, on this trip, the feeling of being part of something great seemed to erase the need for sleep. I thought, only in the mundane workaday world is regular sleep a necessity. Out here on the edge we survive on coffee, adrenaline, gas fumes and transmission oil. We run rough yet determined liked an old car. Fatigue-slumps and thrill-induced rushes jangle our brains like the behavior of a moody carburetor, stalling at high revs from a clogged fuel filter.

At last I got a bed, again doubling up with Marble. But sleep, I was soon to learn, was as yet a ways off. For in the room with Philo, Joanne, Ron and I came Harrod with his camcorder and a bottle of some high grade tequila, Anejo or Hornitos it was.

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Last update April 1, 2004