It's foolish to be "in a rush" about a hard two-day drive, but my vacation was over, I needed to get back to work, and I wanted to get back to Cindy. Add the paranoid fear that my car had basically gotten the equivalent of a liver transplant, and what if those guys in Cody hadn't fixed it right? Breaking down had sucked, but it had happened a few miles east of Yellowstone's East Entrance, right in front of a dude ranch/tourist camp; I'd had to walk the equivalent of, like, a block to the phone in their office. Now I was preparing to cross empty South Dakota.

I was climbing through the Bighorn Mountains west of Sheridan. I was listening to one of my friend Bill's lounge/exotica/ephemera mix tapes, compiled from his collection of thrift-shop LPs. There was road construction on the pass, so traffic was stop-and-go, creeping and winding for miles while we gained elevation. It was hot, but I didn't want to run the air-conditioning. I wasn't making any time, and if my car was going to overheat or some other such thing, it would happen under these conditions. Everything was fine, but in my head things were threatening to go very wrong any minute.

Finally we crested the pass. "END CONSTRUCTION." The road down opened into two lanes, and traffic spread out and started gaining speed. The Wyoming sky stretched panoramically east over the prairie towards Sheridan and the Badlands. As I exhaled and started driving with the brake to control my accelerating descent, a trumpet fanfare I couldn't quite place began the next song...and then I recognized, picking up steam, that trademark Ramsey Lewis groove. From the bottom of my heart and guts, I let out a spontaneous whoop of joy and freedom. I was going home.