I like driving. This is a good thing, because I've done about as much driving in the past two weeks as some people do in an entire year.

Last Friday I left for Mesquite, NV to pick up my newly repaired car and drive it back to Denver. I planned on leaving directly from work and heading west on I-70, but I managed to leave my cell phone at home Friday morning and I needed that in case I broke down again or had some other calamity befall me, so I ended up having to go home first before I could take off for Nevada.

I drove through the night for as long as I could. During this time, I reminded myself how much I hate AM radio. Actually, to be fair, I like the kind of programming that is generally on AM radio (i.e. news and talk) so that's why I was even listening to it in the first place. But I hate the AM band in general because of the way it functions. During the day, you get maybe four local AM stations, and they'll come in fairly well. But at night is when AM basically goes to hell. The problem has something to do with the atmosphere, and once the sun is down, suddenly every AM station in the world comes in on every channel. There are two syndicated radio programs I like to listen to at night--the Phil Hendrie show and Art Bell's Coast to Coast. The problem is, when you're driving at night and trying to listen to AM radio, you have to constantly be changing stations. With at least five stations all suddenly competing for the same frequency, your program might suddenly fade out and be replaced with salsa music, or worse, the Mike Reagan show. If you wait long enough, it'll probably come back, but it's better to have scoped out the dial and found at least two, preferably three or four stations carrying the show you want to listen to, so you can switch between them when you suddenly get salsafied.

I found three stations carrying the Phil Hendrie show, but for some reason one of them was carrying it about an hour behind the others. One of the stations was a Denver station, one was New Mexico, and one was California, and I believe it was the California station that was carrying the first hour of the show while everyone else had the second hour. This might seem normal, what with the time zone change and all, but the whole POINT of the Phil Hendrie show is for callers to call in and yell at Phil's "guests"--and how can you do that if many of the stations are apparently carrying the show on tape delay? This baffled me, and it also angered me when I'd lose the other two stations and have to flip back to the California station, only to hear stuff I'd already heard an hour ago.

The situation worsened when it came time for Coast to Coast. I found three stations carrying this program, but one of them seemed to be a random amount of time behind the others--it didn't even seem like a whole hour, maybe just half an hour. Again, Coast to Coast on Friday nights is "open line" night, where people call in all night long and relate their spooky paranormal stories or go off about the latest conspiracy or what have you. So what happens when you've got people still trying to call in and get on the air to tell their story an hour or two after the show has actually gone off the air? It baffles me.

Worse yet, the three channels I found carrying Coast to Coast seemed to like to all fade out at once, so I'd be stuck listening to salsa music or randomly spinning the dial in the vain hope of hearing the rest of that story about shadow people.

I managed to get quite far Friday night--in fact, I got a little too far. I had planned on staying the night in a hotel, but I ended up in the middle of this long, hundred plus mile stretch of southern Utah where there's nothing but desert when I got too tired to continue. So I pulled over at a rest area and checked into the Mazda Motel for about four hours, sleeping rather fitfully sprawled in the back seat and trunk of the rental car.

The next morning I drove to the nearest town for some caffiene, then fought the drowsiness all morning with more and more caffinated products until finally I woke up sometime around nine or so. It was touch and go for awhile, and several times I felt like I should pull over and try to sleep for a few more hours. But by that time I was in full-on desert country, and sleeping in the back of my car in the heat of the desert was not something that appealed to me, so instead I stuck with the caffiene and pushed on.

I passed through Arizona and didn't see Faux Pas.

I got to Mesquite around 10am Pacific time. I had called the place in advance and paid with a credit card (that was quite painful too, I might add) and had them leave the car outside locked up with the key I gave them under the mat since they were going to be closed that Saturday. I had had worries that they might not follow my instructions and I'd drive all the way there only to find my car locked up inside their garage, but as it turned out, they followed my instructions to the letter and I took my car out for a quick test drive to make sure it was working properly before I returned the rental car.

I noticed as I was driving the car around the block that the idle was way down, to the point where it almost stalls now when it's idling and you turn the wheel or turn the AC on. The car definitely shifts nicer than it ever did, though, which is a plus.

After my test drive, I transfered all my stuff out of the rental car and then headed for Las Vegas to return it. On the way a semi truck in front of me had a blowout and I ran over a huge chunk of the shreaded tire. When I got to the return area, the attendant looked at the front of the car and said something to one of the other attendants. The other attendant came over, made a face, and walked away. I walked over, ready to explain the tire incident and hopefully avoid paying for any damages. However, it turned out they were not looking at any damage to the car, but instead at a little bird that had impacted on the grill at some point during my long journey. Me being the person I am, I found this both sad and quite cool.

I took the courtesy shuttle to the airport, where I then had to catch another shuttle back to Mesquite. Unlike my previous ride on this shuttle, there was actually another passenger riding with me. The woman was definitely a regular, because she apparently knew all the drivers by name and struck up a long conversation with our driver on the way back. I gleaned from this conversation that this woman lives in Boston and her boyfriend lives in southern Utah, and they meet in Mesquite on the weekends to, uh... Well, to play leapfrog probably. The driver kept trying to include me in the conversation, which was annoying to me because I was trying hard to catch some much needed Zs. Of course, it became clear later that the reason the driver was trying to include me was becuase he thought *I* was this mysterious boyfriend, even though there were several clues that I was not, in fact, the man this woman had apparently spent so much time talking to him about. For one thing, I told him I lived in Denver, when this woman's boyfriend clearly lived in southern Utah (and last tiem I checked, Denver was not, in fact, in southern Utah.) I was also riding on this shuttle, while the woman had clearly stated that her boyfriend was waiting for her in Mesquite. I was also clearly not an avid bicycler (most people can tell this about me just by noticing how grotesqely out of shape I am) when this woman had stated that she met her boyfriend on a bicycling trip in Utah. I caught all these little clues that I was not, in fact, the woman's boyfriend, and I was HALF ASLEEP for the whole ride back. It made me more than a little worried that he was so oblivious and yet was the one driving this jillion pound bus with me on it through the traffic of Vegas and then through the desert.

Some good did come of being dragged into the conversation, though. The driver offered to drive the shuttle directly to the garage instead of having me walk through the desert heat from the nearest casino, and I also learned which casino apparently had the best buffet. So I drove my car over to the casino and headed for the buffet for lunch.

However, I was clearly lied to, as the buffet was intensely disgusting and not anywhere near as good as I was expecting. After the very dissapointing lunch and the very tiring day, I headed over to the casino. My plan was to drop ten bucks in a nickel slot machine and play for awhile. Ten bucks in a nickel slot ought to last an hour anyway, if the thing pays off fairly well, and I wanted to kill some time since I didn't want to drive my car through the desert right in the middle of the heat of the day if I could avoid it.

The nickel machines were crowded, so I ended up at one of the quarter video poker machines. I put my $10 in and within five minutes I hit four of a kind. I didn't know how much money this was, but I knew it was more than I'd put in, but less than $100. Now, at this point, I had a decision to make. Do I take this as a sign that my luck is turning, and press on and try to win more money, perhaps even enough to pay for this whole debacle? Or do I just cash out now, accept this as a sign to take this small victory and just go the hell home and be happy with that?

It took me all of fifteen seconds of internal debate to hit the "cash out" button and go home. I took my bucket of quarters to the cashier, and it turned out to be $67.50, for a net profit of $57.50. I took my winnings and started home.

Of course, the downside to this was that my plan of waiting out the heat of the day in the casino didn't happen. Instead, there I was driving through the desert just after noon, exactly when I *didn't* want to be driving through the desert.

I pulled out onto the highway and accelerated up to speed. I pulled out to pass a slow poke, but looked down and realized I was already doing 85. It sure didn't *feel* like I was going 85, but I backed off and didn't think too much more about it for the rest of the day. I took it as slow as I could stand through the desert to keep the car cool, and again passed through Arizona without seeing any Pas.

I made it back to Utah around 7pm, and decided I didn't want to go any farther. I stopped at the last place for gas and lodging before that 100+ mile stretch of nothing, and had to settle for a smoking room in a Super 8 motel, as everything else was booked. I aired out the room and it turned out to not be as bad as I was fearing, and I actually got a good night's sleep for the first time that weekend.

Again, I was planning on getting up early Sunday morning and driving through the desert portions of Utah before the sun got really high in the sky. This plan backfired on me again, as there was no clock in the room and I was too lazy to get a wakeup call, so I didn't get out of the hotel until 11 am. I had breakfast at Denny's, and decided to splurge, what with my newfound winnings, and had the steak and eggs. It's hard to really splurge properly at Denny's, though, because nothing on the menu costs more than $10 anyway, but I did what I could. I tipped the waitress well, because like Will Riker says, "When the train comes in, everybody rides!" (Bounus points if you can name the episode that quote is from. Extra bonus points if you hate it as much as I do.)

Of course, all this meant that I was getting on the road just after noon once again, so I was once again driving through the desert right at the hotest part of the day. Oh well. So much for plans.

As I was driving through Utah, I noticed more and more that even with the cruise control set at 75, I was getting passed right and left. Now, I certainly don't expect everyone to do the speed limit, but I generally expect to not be passed by EVERYONE on the road, including truckers and old people. The last straw was when I was passed by an ancient couple in an old Crown Victoria. I knew then something wasn't right.

I checked the odometer against the mile markers, and sure enough, it wasn't calibrated properly. Unless most sets of mile markers on I-70 east through Utah and Colorado are actually a mile and a tenth apart, I knew my odometer was off. And if the odometer is off, the speedometer is off too, which explains why I was getting passed by old people and trucks.

I spent most of the drive through southern Utah trying to do the math in my head to find out how fast I had to go by my speedometer to end up actually going 75. It took me awhile, but I finally got the right formula (later checked for accuracy at one of those "Your speed is X, SLOW DOWN" road sign places). Eventually, though, I got sick of driving and just decided to go as fast as I felt like and hope to not get caught, which, thankfully, I didn't.

Because of this, though, I ended up getting home about an hour and a half later than I had hoped. And now I have to try to call the place and see what can be done. Technically, their work is under warranty, but I know they're going to refuse to pay for it if they don't do the work themselves--and no WAY am I driving BACK to Nevada just to get my speedometer recalibrated.

But at least I have my car back. *sigh*

-- Dave