I hate New Mexico

So Jon and I leave Memphis and cross the unimpressive Mississippi River, heading into the great state of Arkansas.

Arkansas: Preferred mode of transportation: The four-wheeler, and where
phrases such as "gone done" and "Pa" are not uncommon.

We make it into Oklahoma and stay with our buddy Mr. Frengs. I decide it would be a great idea to forget my cellphone on the beerpong table. It has now been lost in the mail for over two weeks, which is fantastic. I hate Sprint anyways. We pass Mustang, Oklahoma, where my dad tells me his grandfather worked on the railroads. I laugh at the fact that our family could have ended up in the working class.

This is where the journey gets interesting. We pass through Texas and get well into New Mexico. Every time we stop Jon's car sounds worse and worse. Eventually it sounded like a lawnmower right when we get to the middle of nowhere, New Mexico. We had no choice but to push forward. Coming up there was as 80 mile gap without exits, so we decided to cross our fingers and go for it.

BAD IDEA.

We were right in the middle of the gap with daylight running out when something in the engine broke, and all the gages on the dashboard went dead.

I knew we were fucked.

We popped the hood and I started pulling out what was left of the serpentine belt (the belt that drives the A/C, water pump, power steering and brakes....just about everything) which had been sucked into the fan.

Within 10 minutes, it was dark. Jon starts making phone calls to get us out of this mess when a mexican pulls up in a car...presumably to kill us. There was no way I was going to die in this shithole state, I would rather be dragged back to Texas and executed at high noon, like the cowboy I am.

The nearest anything is 25 miles away, Jon can't get a hold of anyone to call AAA or any towing service, and this guy is offering to drive us back to his home 50 miles away and let us spend the night with him and his kids. I'm serious. For the sake of your amusement we should have done it. This was sending up some fairly large red flags in my mind; he would probably want a blow job and I wasn't in the mood to give one. By now I knew he wasn't going to kill us, but he was suggesting we should leave our Uhaul on the side of the road so he could tow us. Everything Jon and I own was in the back of that thing, and there was no way I was going to take my eyes off it so he could call his friends to come steal it. It turns out that this guy was just really nice. Plus, he was wearing a Polo shirt so we knew he was legit.

So we tow Jon's car into town and get a hotel room. We figure that instead of going out in Albuquerque we'll just drink ourselves into a coma in a hotel room. To make the night more awesome, we walk a mile to the gas station to find out that we are in a dry county. They didn't even have any paint thinner or glue to huff.

In the morning we wake up and go to the car shop to find out exactly how fucked we are. Turns out that the nearest pulley is in Texas, and will take like 5 days to fix everything. AND, that may not even fix the problem; they may need to completely take apart the engine. This is unacceptable. What was our solution to the problem?

The only Uhaul truck they had was the 26 foot supermover, ironically with Virginia tags at a bargain price of $1100. This thing was a HOSS. We could have fit Jon's SUV and the trailer in the back of it. So we carefully packed everything in to make sure it would all fit, and headed back out.

Being behind the wheel of this thing made my balls feel like cantaloupes; we owned the road. Just to make sure everyone else knew this, when it was my turn to drive I got in the right hand lane and put on my left blinker. For fifty miles. Any passing car was subject to me faking left to scare the shit out of them as they passed. I just knew I was going to run out of luck and accidentally force a big rig like this off the road, killing the truckload of ponies inside and ruining the lives of a dozen 9 year old girls.

More on the truck: Since it was our only mode of transportation once we got to Phoenix and we were too lazy to take Jon's SUV off the back, we used it to run errands. We took it to the liquor store, fast food restaurants, you name it. It took up anywhere between 7 and 14 parking spaces. By the end of the week we were driving it around like a Ferrari, whipping it into and out of tight spaces. Except the time I jack-knifed it and caused a traffic jam on the way to return it. We made it to Phoenix in one piece after that, opened our refrigerator and found a gift from our landlord: