heading towards Winslow. You've got all day to go only couple hundred more miles--no use getting to the crater before nightfall. You decide to get off this freeway and do some two-lane action. Exit in two miles. If it's paved, straight, and brightly painted with white line edges and yellow center dashes you're taking it. On to the exit and up the ramp to a perfect stop--in that sub-conscious roadtrip mode where driving comes like breathing This story begins on a highway in Indiana, and is now on a highway in Arizona.

Highway 333 swoops down from the human-made hill of the overpass and is just as wished. Bright yellow and white painted over a deteriorating pavement that's been recently repaired with black black new asphalt, heading straight towards some hills in the distance. Ten minutes of ka-chung ka-chunk and you're entering the hills. It's very beautiful. Shit, where's the camera? You search with your hand and find the video camera underneath a McDonald's bag. Flick on the power and hit the record button, but the camera is being difficult. It has fallen off the dashboard a couple of times and now you have to press the red button as hard as you can, using your thumbnail (or pen or nail if you have two hands) to press it down even farther than it's supposed to go. You slow down and get a better grip but it's just not starting. Your thumb hurts like a guitar player's from all the pressing. Steering with your knee, you try two hands but it just won't start.

You pull over. Behind you is a beautiful view of the valley you've just come from. In front, you're approaching the crest of a hill. It would be great to get a shot out the front of coming over that crest to what is revealed on the other side. But maybe you try to document things too much. Some times people are so busy with the camera that they fail to experience what it is to be experienced. You flick the off switch, put the camera down and decide to record it only in the higher resolution format of your mind. Higher than hi-8 video anyway. You pull back out on the road and
drive over the crest of the hill....