LOS ANGELES, April 25 – You’re not running out of road.

There’s plenty of asphalt.

Truly.

That black ribbon keeps unspooling ahead of you and any deadend can be circumvented by jacking the wheel hard over and whipping that sucker into a U and burning back to the main road.

Or the highway. Or the local route. Or the loop. Or the scenic. Or the surface streets. Or that spooky dirt trail that runs off into the wood.

It ain’t the road you have to worry about.

It’s the fucking ride, man.

When you get to the point where the odometer is rolling over that 100,000 mile mark and you’ve started hearing creaks and groans and squeaks and rattles you’ve never heard before; when the passenger side rearview suddenly pops off when you hit a speed bump at eighty and you start getting neck cramps from craning your neck to check that blind spot; when the tread has worn thin on all four tires and the road is still reeling straight at you and you can’t see a service station anywhere on the horizon, that’s when you have to worry about the ride.

When the car was new, you didn’t worry about it at all, but now, all those hard miles down the road that never seems to end, the fucker has taken a pounding and you can’t seem to find a safe place to pull over and see if she’s got another hundred miles in her.

Or fifty.

Or ten.

Or one.

You have no idea when the doors might just fly off and the tires blow out and the radiator boil over and…

That sound.

That clankclankclank.

What the fuck is that?

Is that a rod? Has this mother thrown a rod? Shit. Throw a rod and the ride’s over. Throw a rod, all you can do is buy a case of motor oil and pour it into the engine and hope she gets you over that next hill so you can coast down the other side. Throw a rod and that’s a whole new engine.

And there ain’t no time for a new engine.

See, you’re telling a story. And stories, they don’t really run out of places to go. That’s the thing/secret/funpart. Whereever the story is, there’s always a place to take it to, always a what if? Or a who comes in here? Or a secret panel or a shot in the dark or a momentary aside or some damn thing the story can do or place it can go. But the further you take it, the more miles you put on, the more risks you run of breaking down.

You never run out of road, but there’re some roads some cars just aren’t meant to go down.

You can fill your story with whatever crazy shit you come across, fill it with roadkill, but it may not be up to driving those miles or carrying that load. Knowing when to pull over, when to gas up, when to kick the tires, that’s part of learning how to go out on the road trip in the first place.

The journey may be the thing, but we all want to get home in one fucking piece.

But that doesn’t mean you have t be afraid of the extra miles.

Sometimes, the road takes over, tells you where to go. Sometimes the road imparts velocity. Sometimes you pick up speed, get into the rhythm, and just plain forget you’re driving at all. Taking the turnoffs as the appear around the bend, ignoring the caution signs, breaking traction on the curves, the rear end getting loose, no idea what it is you’re driving any more.

Is this the car you started out in? Was that the bumper falling off? Did I just hit something?

Christ, that train, no way I can beat that train to the crossing.

But why not try.

Pitstopping,
Charlie

And Then There’s the Bus

Spring is here and it is time for the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Fuck, man, it’s a freaking festival of books. I must go. And go I shall. In fact, I’m gonna ride a fucking bus there on 4/28 from Vroman’s Books in Pasadena with a bunch of readers. To find out how to ride that sucker and watch what I’m like at 8:30 in the morning, go HERE. Or you can stop by the Mystery Book Store booth (#411) on 4/28 at 10 a.m.