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Constant Readers,

I have been back home (sweet home!) in Davidson, N.C. for over a week now, so it's time to wrap up my Road Trip Summer 2009 travel blog, and send it to archives where it will live on for the future reference of posterity (mine if no one else's!) at blogs.davidson.edu/roadtrip (which can be reached geographically on the Davidson homepage by clicking News, then Blogs). But first, some notes:

• I am, unsurprisingly, a couple of shades of tan darker than I was in June, in spite of SPF 85 ritually slathered on every day on the road. (I was especially diligent about my ears, so that I will not have to wear Band-Aids on them when I am an old man. Not a good look.)

The sun-protective Tilley hat I left town with on June 13 turned out to be too floppy for an open car at 75 mph, so I did the baseball-cap-and-bandanna thing most of the way. Additional tip for those without auto AC: A bandanna (pictured) dipped in icy cooler slush helps keep a body cool on those long summertime hauls. Dodger wore sunscreen, too, on the pink parts of his delicate l'il snout. Here at the moment of our return to Davidson, his cruise control is still set on "Squirrel!" (July 24, photo by Bill Giduz '74)

• I am greatly enjoying preparing all my own food, in my own kitchen sweet kitchen. Nothing out of a can shall cross my lips, and lots of fresh summer fruits and vegetables shall cross them often. (That last week of hard driving put me over my annual limit of drive-through gut-bombers and Beanee Weenies in a tent. Hellooooo, farmer's market!)

• At my office sweet office, I'm adjusting to sitting at a desk again (I am up to a half-hour at a time without jumping up and running in circles like the dog), to central air-conditioning (my hands and feet got cold the first few days), and to long pants (creased khakis instead of wrinkled camp shorts that smell like gasoline and antifreeze).

• My laundry is done, my friends are hugged, and the Comet sits quietly in the rain under a cheap spun-bond cover from the WalMart in Flagstaff, Arizona---just until I can figure out how to zip back up the rear window that came completely aloose from the canvas in a high wind on Route 66 near Tulsa. That was a full day, I recall.

After miscalculating mileage in a big square state yet again, I had the beginnings of a massive tension headache by the time I hit Topeka from the far western reaches of Kansas, nearly 400 miles of gripping a 42-year-old steering wheel in high plains winds. So as I passed Topeka for the last 15 miles into Lawrence and saw the big, green, federally funded interstate reminder of the KU men's basketball Jayhawks' successful 2008 run, I gritted my teeth and resolved to dig my dirty Davidson T-shirt out of the trunk for my the duration of my stay here. That'll show 'em. It helped that George Thompson '84 had earlier said by phone that he proudly wore his Davidson shirt during that tournament, even tho' he is employed at KU. Anyway, a spritz of Drakaar Noir at my Motel 6 did a fair job of masking the gasoline and other fumes embedded in the wrinkled gray athletic T that I had found behind the spare tire, and off we went for a libation on Massachussetts St., the heart of Jayhawks territory.

Turns out my buddy Ricky has been up to a good deal since 10th grade, as have I, so we shared all about that and then some in Taos, relatively late into the evening, for a coupla guys approaching---only approaching, mind you---middle age. Our dogs kept us out of trouble on the town, and next morning, we headed up to the Sangre de Cristo mountains, the southernmost Rockies range, where Ricky knew a nature preserve with hot springs. Okay, it was a "naturist" preserve, and if you had ever told me in 10th grade that thirty years on I would be hiking up a mountain anywhere with anybody wearing nothing more than Nikes and a fresh goatee, I would have slapped you. But that I did, hike up that mountain to the bubbly mineral spring pool in my birthday suit. My congenital Southeastern orthodox Presbyterian upbringing makes it seem unseemly to share more, except to note that it was a family-oriented occasion.

Sadly this morning at 6 a.m., I bid adieu to the ACE Hotel and Swim Club on Palm Canyon Drive, and began loading up the car for the blistering 220 miles to the Needles, Calif. Motel 6. As is my custom, while approaching my 67 Mercury from a distance, I scanned the pavement under the ol' girl for unfamiliar puddles. Uh-oh. Driver's side gasoline hose leak on the firewall, rubber must have disintegrated in the heat. Not a thing you want to have to fix yourself in the 115-degree desert, so off to the Vista Chino Shell station I was, with John Gilmore '69 and my new best friend Antonio Romualdo to the rescue. Soon enough, I was comfily ensconced in Antonio's plumaria-scented garden, for a bonus day in Palm Springs.

It's 9:30 at night in Palm Springs, Calif., and I realize I have had the Southern California classical radio station, KPSC 88.5 FM, on the radio all day. OK, I set it for the dog, truth be told, since classical music on WDAV 89.9 FM is what they play for him at Camp Wagging Tails back home, and what I play for him at my condo while I am at work, on account of his mild (now) separation anxiety. Dulcet tones soothe the savage beast. Seems to work. And besides, who does not want to awaken from their afternoon nap to the sound of applause, hello? Especially now for him, in Dodger's desert dog-days of summer 2009: too many hard, loud, freaky hours of SoCal freeways in an un-air-conditioned, 42-year-old Comet, with no roof to speak of? Who signed him up for this? OK, I did, against my better judgment. But all is well.

I thought I had already been as hot as I had ever been in my life. Not so. My most recent 48 hours in the desert were it. In Blythe, Calif., 20 years after my first summer evening there, recounted in "The Comet" entry, it was still triple digits at bedtime two nights ago. Next morning, a cut shaving latened my departure til after 10, so by the time we got to the part about climbing from desert sea level to 4,000+ feet in eastern San Diego County, it was the hottest part of the desert day.

I just got back from the Vegas driveway garage of a great mechanic, name of Don. Linda at AutoZone said he was the best. When I found his house on Casa Linda Lane, he jacked up the ol' girl's back end and said that rattle/squeak I'd been hearing since Cud'n Maria's dirt road in Santa Fe was an axle bearing going out. I said hmm, then asked him what he would do. He said he didn't give advice. I said that wasn't what I asked, I asked him what he would do. He said he'd drive the s--- out of it and that I would know if it went out altogether, because the axle would poke through the wheel and "the ass end of the car will end up on the pavement." I figured that was clear enough a diagnostic, so I gave him $20 and drove off. You really can't hear that rattle/squeak much if you turn the music up, and and you can't hear it atall on the highway, which is good. I think.

Three states ago, we camped in Palo Duro (Hard Wood) Canyon south of Amarillo. It was sere and searing, a good warm-up, so to speak, for the Grand Canyon. We could drive to the bottom to our campsite, which included a picnic table on a slab with a shade shelter, butterflies

What would we do without our cars and our computers?