Other than the usual bullshit, the drive is relatively okay today. Since we left Woodward the land is terribly flat. You can see absolutely nothing for miles. We're traveling along the long skinny part of Oklahoma and it feels like it goes on for freaking EVER. A half hour after we think we SHOULD be leaving Oklahoma we still haven't seen the border. The land gets hilly again, and we still haven't reached the border. We begin to suspect that someone out there keeps moving the border further and further away from us.
The plan is to go through Clayton and Raton NM, up the Raton Pass (elevation 7800 ft or so) cross into Colorado and spend the night and get a decent steak in Trinidad, then be in Walsenburg early the next morning.
Here the roadside is carpeted with black-eyed susans, and in the distance Black Mesa, the tallest point in OK rises. Then at least a half hour after we expected it, we get a sign welcoming us to New Mexico. From here we can feel the land begin to elevate. Past Clayton we start to feel our ears pop from the height. The sun is beginning to set as we pull into a gas station in Raton.
Of course that's where everything goes wrong. First off, I find that Raton is yet another town that closes down at dusk. Nope, all the drugstores are closed. But that's a minor inconvenience. What's a major cluster is that CK reports that the lights on his trailer aren't working. The right directional and brake light are okay, but the left, as well as the running lights are dead. Quantum is exhausted and cranky, CK is cranky, I'm tired and bitchy and want to make it across the border before we stop for the night. I'm nervous about the plates, and as of midnight it'll be Sept 1, and the tags on our trucks will be VISIBLY out of date. So I want to be as close as possible to home. And I'm really wanting that steak and a chance to do my hair.
CK pulls the truck over to a side area and he and I set to working on it. As I'm playing go-between with CK and Quantum and getting sent off to buy fuses and such, this very odd dude approaches Quantum asking about the trailer we're pulling and asking if we'd be willing to sell the axle. Now granted, the guy is way over the top. He reminds me of somebody who's taken too many uppers, though I suspect his attitude is natural not pharmaceutical. Boisterous good nature to the point where it's a little scary and grating. I mention that we're having problems with the trailer half as a way of getting us off the hook of talking to him and half in the hopes he'll know something, and he wants to help.
So I go over and tell CK we might have someone to help us, and as soon as the guy pulls up, CK turns on whiny-ass mode. Now there's a bone of contention about whether or not this guy knows anything or is completely full of it, but right now I figure any help is good help. Within moments CK is saying, "she's a bitch, and I'm always wrong," and other nonsense, and the guy, Joe, is saying, "whoa, dude, take a chill pill." Seriously, many times CK has copped an attitude like this with me, but with a perfect stranger who (wacko as he is) wants to help? And of course CK is completely dissing the guy's suggestion that the most obvious and likely problem with lights on a trailer is a bad ground. Now I'm no ace mechanic, but I've been around cars and car people pretty much all my life (I've even done some work on my motorcycle and on my VWs) so what the guy is saying makes about perfect sense to me.
Quantum who didn't hear the conversation from the beginning, feels CK might be in the right and this guy is crazy, but my point is that when someone offers help you don't immediately cop a nasty attitude. CK is unbelievably rude and I am fuming ticked off. Eventually I ask Quantum to come out and save the situation, and he tells the guy he's going to call Triple A (which is pretty ridiculous to me, since to my knowledge they don't do more than tow, fix flats and bring gas). Joe drives off, then comes back a few minutes later asking if we want some organic produce, cantaloupe in particular. It is all very weird.
We limp over to a motel and I spend the rest of the evening glaring at Quantum and plotting CK's death via rape by a bull elk.
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