ROCKY MOUNTAIN REDUX

Buddy and I left in the morning and drove, and drove and drove and drove some more.Mom had bought me a little igloo ice chest and filled it with sandwiches and stuff for the road.
There are a couple of ways to get to Colorado from Austin, the short route, which takes you through the panhandle of Oklahomo (very bleak, but especially so in the dead of winter) or the more scenic route through New Mexico and over the beautiful Raton Pass.
Since I was in a perpetual hurry back then, I chose the former.
We spent the night in Amarillo and the next morning it was freezing cold. It was then I remembered there was no heater in my truck, to complicate matters, the holes where all the heater lines and vents once went through the firewall were open.
I made it about 20 miles outside of Amarillo before I could no longer feel my feet. I pulled off to the side of the highway and began stuffing these holes with toilet paper.
I had the drivers side door open, laying across the floorboard when this semi went by at a very high rate of speed.The windshear pulled my door forward until it was slammed into the front quarter panel, by the time I got out of the truck to jump up and down and hurl curses the semi was a tiny dot on the horizon. I jumped up and down and hurled curses anyway.
There I was in the middle of nowhere alone save for Buddy, jumping up and down and screaming "fuck youuuuuuu"!!!!! to nothing, with Buddy looking at me like I was crazy.
After pulling my door free from my front fender, I was back on the road. It was still cold, but it wasn't blasting arcticly from my floorboard anymore.
The rest of the trip was uneventful. I listened to and sang along to Neil Young's Decade the whole way there with the exception of occasional breaks of Loverboy and Foreigner.(Yeah...I know, but who could resist workin' for the weekend?)
I smoked a lot of weed and discovered the munchie love that is the truck stop diner.
I didn't have a plan really, beyond must.get.back.to.mountains.love.mountains. I figured I would find a job quickly and it would all be jake.
I was wrong.