I woke up, obviously due to some proximity alarm inside me that was going off because some guy was walking around my car looking through the windows of my Dodge. I sat up, turned the key, and backed out away from the outdoor swimming pool I was parked in front of. The mans disapproving glare followed me out as I turned back into the road. 

I found a place for coffee and gas and continued down the road. I thought about last night. That alternator discharge thing was concerning, yet today, it seemed like it never even happened, which made it even more strange. This made me just want to drive straight on to Port Aransas non stop lessening the chance that I would have another occurrence.

I thought about all of the stupid decisions I made yesterday. I put unnecessary stress on myself and my car, I deprived myself of so much sleep, and in doing so, I deprived myself of any ability to take in what I was seeing. After close to three hours of driving down, I-35 and then down US Highway 77, I realized that I was seeing absolutely nothing.  I could not be sure if that meant that there was nothing to see, or if I was just not seeing what was there.

In the town of Giddings Texas, there was a place called the Giddings Sands Motel. I pulled in around 1:30 and got a room. My big worry was that I would arrive at Dad’s tonight and be so tired and burned out that our reunion would be overshadowed by my fatigue.

I was a zombie. I decided that the furthest I was going today for dinner was going to be vending machine down the hall for snack food and nothing else. I showered, ate, put an old movie on television, and drifted off to sleep. I don’t think I ever slept this many consecutive hours in a row in my life. This was needed, it was what had to happen for me to return to the land of the living. Tomorrow was Friday and day six on the road. Sometimes, you just need to draw the line.

Years later, just off to the west in Bastrop, a young man will sit in the passenger seat of his 76 Chevy Van and feel that he betrayed all of this.  If you could fold time like a piece of paper, those two men, the one here in Giddings and that one in Bastrop could momentarily catch a glimpse of each other and never understand why the latter was even happening.