When I moved out west, I packed all my shit in a U-haul and towed it with a 4-door bucket of a Bonneville. A real Detroit boat. My dad, in Ohio, helped me rig a hitch to the chassis that was mostly of questionable design and assembly. One leg of my trip which I'll never forget was the 40 - from Atlanta to L.A. All was well till I ran out of gas in the Mojave. Driving over that last desert ridge, I could feel my car huffing. As inevitability approached, I rolled off on the median and started walking my way further west. I could see the station ahead of me, but with the expanse of the desert before me and little for reference of scale, I didn't know if it was 1 or 5 miles away. To my bewilderment, a semi picked me up off the road. No thumb was necessary as it was clear that no one would be walking this path on purpose. I had purchased one of those red, yellow nozzled, 5 gallon gas cans (marked up 300%), topped it off and headed back to the car. Finally, I was on my way again and feeling optimistic enough only to have the fuel pump disintegrate 10 miles down the road. As a result, I spent a weekend in Tehachapi while parts were on order. I didn't see much considering my air conditioned hotel and the heat outside, but I wish I had. Something weird about road trips is that all the cities between the start and the destination seem unreal. Like they don't really exist. Through all of it though, the thing that sticks with me the most is the drive in the tow truck. I sat with the driver while the Bonnie sailed behind me strapped to the back of the flat bed. It was the first time I was a passenger for a good while and I was afforded an inattentive gaze of the desert landscape. I remember that the driver was a bleached blonde skater with a flat brimmed hat, working a worse than good job, and playing Sublime on his tape deck stereo. We listened in mono because of the blown speaker. That band never sounded so good. I felt that I had everything in common with him, but regarded him as a stranger from a different land. Parisians move 3000 miles away and end up in Turkey. Americans move 3000 miles away and find themselves in terra bizarro. So close but so far. I wanted to know more and was excited to begin a life west of the Sierras. Mani-motha-fuckin-fest-destiny. Now when I tell people that I'm from Ohio - a place I've described as 'the middle of nowhere' many a time, they say it sounds exotic. No joke. We live in our own shoes and sometimes forget that they belong to no one else. Where you're from and where you be, Kafke, is anything but uninteresting.