I was still wobbly as I loaded up the car.
I had tossed and turned during the night. I would wake up, legs cramping, then chug some water. I would wake up again, legs cramping again, and again, and again. My body finally gave up around 4am and I got a good three hours sleep before I woke, head foggy. Thankfully my headache had passed, but I was not rested.
The day’s journey began with a slow drive towards the back gate along the flight line road*. I had hoped to see one or more of the bombers assigned to the base, but all that was out was a lone C-130 transport plane. Once back on civilian soil, I was met by a row of scraggily mesquite that, as I continued on, gave way to the requisite neighborhood of double-wide trailers. I was on my way.
This was intended to be another easy-ish day, 500 or so miles from Abilene to Albuquerque. The morning went smoothly as I rolled through the flat plains and cotton fields of West Texas. I stopped for petrol in Lubbock, and continued my trek northwest. It began to rain as I approached the New Mexico state line, a welcome relief from the summer sun. Clovis brought road construction that reduced the highway to a single lane each way; I passed the time watching activity in the rail yard that paralleled my path. After the air base (Cannon, home of the 27th Special Ops), the rain cleared, and the cultivated fields gave way to field crops and open rangeland.
One of the things I’ve always found wonderful about the west is that the sky is so big. In Florida there was scrub and humidity, in Connecticut rolling tree-covered hills and haze, and I always felt a bit claustrophobic. But out here in the shortgrass prairie (and deserts) of the west, it feels like you can see forever. As I cruised westward along the two-lane highway, I watched a pair of isolated thunderstorms to the south build, cap, and downburst; they were easily 50 miles away.
I turned north at Fort Sumner and began my climb towards the foothills of the southern Rockies. Here a surveyor’s theodolite had mapped a long, straight path across the dry plateau, with an occasional canyon (that fed the Pecos River during monsoon season) to interrupt miles of dried scrub and grass. Fortunately there were storms to the north and west to entertain me as I continued my journey. One to the northwest was particularly formidable: miles of towering cumulonimbus clouds anchored to the earth with a thick shaft of rain. As the pavement eased to a northwesterly route, I got a better view.
But wait, what was this?
The storm began to fill my windscreen, and soon it was upon me. My truck was slapped with rain and wind, with the occasional flash of lightning to make things interesting. As visibility dropped I slowed, 50 mph, 40 mph, 30mph (trying to keep two to five seconds of visibility), with flashers on to warn my fellow travelers. As I approached Santa Rosa, I met up with a fellow voyager, an 18-wheeler slightly more cautious than I. I tucked in his slipstream, and we inchwormed our way north. Ten minutes turned to fifteen, fifteen turned to twenty. At twenty-eight minutes we turned onto the Interstate, and the storm seemed to intensify.
The lightning became more frequent; the thunder was so loud I jumped in my seat. Water came off my big-rig friend in sheets and pooled on the cement highway. At this point, too timid to stop for gas or pull over to the side of the road on my own, I continued on, occasionally taking a deep breath in an attempt to calm myself. As we slowly made our way up the slope to the west of town, I began to wonder whether the storm would ever end. Then suddenly, about eight miles west of town, sun and clear-ish skies.
I pulled over at the next exit, and took refuge at a lonely petrol station packed with other vehicles. I was number twenty or so in queue, so I rolled down the windows and took in the damp, sage-scented desert air. My arms ached from gripping the wheel, and I slowly realized my headache had returned. Albuquerque was still 160 miles ahead.
* Every AFB has a front gate (very fancy) and at least one back gate (less so).