Crazy

Yes. We're driving.

No need to ask again. And, yes. We're crazy. Thanks for the reinforcement.

This may not have been my best idea, but I keep thinking to myself, "You know, in 20 years, they'll remember just how awesome it was."

I say that because I can remember those Christmas drives from Longview, Texas "home" to Colorado. Two smoking parents--Marlboro Lights--and three pre-teen brothers piled into a single back seat in the Caprice Classic. Or the Buick Le Sabre. The smallest of us could squeeze into the little space just above the back seat right behind the back window. The middle kid could curl up on the floor--even with the hump in the middle. I'd stretch out on the seat.

Seat belts? Whatever.

Occasionally, my dad would crack the window, which generally succeeded in pushing all that acrid second-hand smoke into the back seat, where the three of us would suck it in. If we tried to roll a window down, we'd earn the blind wrath of a parent: "No! You'll let the heat out!"

It was horrible.

But, once we stopped at the Tall Texan in Amarillo, and on another trip, we stayed at a swank Motel 6 in Wichita Falls. It had a pool.

On another trip, were were eight hours away from our home in Longview, when I looked at the car passing us, and there was my junior high classmate Kirk Hayes driving his parents down Highway 287. He was 14.

After the next exit, I had managed to pester my parents enough to allow me to get behind the wheel. Moments later, I damn near took us all out as I crept up on an 18-wheeler and then swerved into oncoming traffic.

Yeah. That was fun.

And the license plate game... damn, we were good.

Then was always that moment when the sign announcing our arrival in Colorado--whether it was atop Raton Pass coming from New Mexico, or along the sage-dotted panhandle of Oklahoma near the town of Springfield. That was magical. Colorado was home. Texas was halfway to Hell.

Once we went to Palo Duro Canyon outside of Amarillo on a summer-run home to the Centennial State ("No! You'll let the air conditioner out!"). That was pretty cool.

Honestly, those trips were pretty awful. But when we speak of them, simply describing the horror of two parents lighting one smoke off the last smoke, we smile. We remember those close quarters. We remember the few good things on a 17-hour road trip that made those adventures worth taking.

At the time, 17 hours felt like an eternity. It's not. 30 hours. I'll let you know.

We're about five hours in as I write this. We've just escaped Price, Utah, after a stop at "Utah's Tallest Coal Miner," and the Big Kmart, where the kids pooled their resources and bought a new charge cable for their iPhone/iPad. Priorities, right?

To the east, the Book Cliffs are shrouded in clouds. I just heard, "How much longer?" for the third time.

We're on a road trip.