Heading West_6

Midwest

After 9 hours wedged in the back of a beater VW, the morning was a treat. If you ever were in one of these "Made in Germany" old VW's, they had a particular smell to them. The ceiling had a soft padded vinyl pad on it, and the seats were also some kind of vinyl.

I awoke and saw Farley wrestling with the wheel and the morning sunrise in his eyes, he had no sun glasses, and had the visor down and was breathing heavy. He looked focused on the road and the traffic, but I knew that look he looked beat dead.
Kenny snoozed in the passenger seat, and eventually woke up and joined our conversation.

"Where the f are we?" asked Kenny.
"We're 100 miles from Iowa" said Bob.
"Let's stop for some coffee at the next chance"
"Sure Ken" my friend was exhausted and running like this car, on fumes.

We pulled into a rest stop, and Kenny filled it with cheap gas. The two college boys, saving our bucks, we only bought a couple of candy bars. Kenny and Bob bought large coffees at the counter. I hated coffee. When we got back to the idle Bug, Kenny looked at me and said "It's your turn to drive"

"I can't drive a stick"
"Oh you can, I'll shift it for you"

And that's just what he did. I started the engine, he told me when to hit the clutch, and we shifted and roared out to the freeway and he shifted me up to fourth gear.

I was so excited. I put on my perscription sunglasses and took a deep breath, and was driving this beast into Iowa before long. we tanked up and soon we were trucking. There was nothing in the whole world I wanted to be doing, on a sunny mid week, than driving a car across this midwest state.

It was ugly, it was flat and boring, and for the most part, we could give a dam.
We looked over to each other, knowing we had snagged a killer ride, and
we were eating up miles, on our Headed West tour.