LET THE HELLRIDE BEGIN: We pushed off today, headed back to Michigan. Left Portland around 6-ish, rolling into Burns around Midnight. Down up past Hood, across the Cascades, through the desert and down to Bend. Took a quick spin through the downtown, getting a good, strong whiff of the summer night air down there. Then we split out due east into that big, vast stretch of Eastern Oregon. Not five miles out of Bend, we’re whipping out into the night, come up over a berm and fuck if there isn’t the blackest bovine standing there out in the road. Instinct took over and my motor skills had me pull off one of my FINEST involuntary swerves, maybe ever. Can you imagine hitting a cow at 65 miles an hour? I can’t either. Fuck. So glad we didn’t hit that cow. Trip would’ve been over. Just like that.

Stunned, I whipped back around, cuz shit, I wanted to beep the thing off the road. Just as I turned around, I saw a tiny, bouncing light in the distance getting closer. Some rancher guy came rolling up on his four wheeler and apologized for the wandering cow.

So relieved about that one. Another 20 miles out into that desert, and we pulled off and turned the car off, jumped out and were treated to the most amazing night sky! Leigh and I were BLOWN AWAY. The heavens, up above us like we haven’t seen them in a long, long time. The city is too bright. Midnight is pretty dark in that desert, and damn, that sky was something else.

Those stars are real. Proxima Centauri is the closest one. 4.37 light years away. That’s roughly 26 Trillion miles from earth. Using the latest technology, it’d take us 81,000 years to get to it.

Think about that shit for one little nanosecond.

With our cosmic minds blown, we drove all the way to Burns and crashed out.