Im in a Roswell stae of mind.

We just passed a bank of solar panels shaped like a flower and held up to the sun on a stem-like pole. As we did something hit me. We can change this. We have the power.

Using as little gas as I’ve ever used on a trip we’ve put 1500 miles on this car already. Roswell sits behind us like an odd dream and nothing but open road lies between us and Austin. It’s been an amazing drive. A day before we left a huge storm started sweeping its way from west to east dumping rain on all the states we’ve driven thorough. Perpetually one day behind it we have been blessed with cloudless skies and well-fed earth. As I say again, this has been a special trip.

But let me talk about Roswell, if I may.

Whatever may or may not have happened here so long ago is very much a part of the town’s fabric. The signature black ovular eyes stare out at you from every corner as if to suggest that not only have aliens landed, abduction is imminent. But the lack of context is odd. Expect to shop for furniture with aliens, get gas with aliens, and even do your taxes and loans with aliens, who would be wise to offer low interest rates if you ask me. All the streetlights have aliens on them too, which gives you that creepy feeling well past sunset.

And the Roswell UFO museum is the heart of it all.

Situated on the heart of Main St, the UFO museum is the alien-nerve-center of extra-terrestrial research and blurry photo exhibition. Housed largely in a cavernous black room, visitors walk science-fair style learning the ins and outs of the outs who made it in. And while I’d love to say their exhibits massaged away my vocal skepticism, their card-board cutouts and wall of fuzzy UFO pics offered as “photographic evidence” did very little to make me feel any less alone in the universe. I’m all for the majesty of the cosmos but the aliens in the Roswell UFO Museam museum are so old-timey It gives the impression that if an alien was to land again, he’d be from 1950.

But for what it’s worth, I get it. This town needed something like an alien landing to be anything more than just another town on a lonley country highway. To a certain degree they’re lucky that the tipsy local who saw shiny lights would up talking to the exact right reporter who gave a small town in New Mexico a reason to have 2 television series and a Showtime original based on it.

And I guess that makes Roswell special after-all. Kyle McLaughlin is no joke.

So on we drive to Austin. Roswell fades in our rear-view mirror as we drive this spaceship looking car on to the next destination. And for what it’s worth, if and when cars ever take flight and fly around in space they’re going to look a lot like this one. It’s more function than anything else. We can pull up directions by speaking to the car. Suddenly, Picard saying aloud “Computer – Plot a course to Alpha 9” doesn’t seem to outlandish – jeez – I could do the same thing in the Insight and while it’d probably find Alpha 9 Records in downtown Roswell, it’d plot a course and lead me straight on till morning.

I just hope they don’t think the Insight is another UFO landing…

- Leebo

Arizona meet New Mexico

Let me just point out the technology at work here.

Driving across the country in a car powered by electricity and stored in batteries my laptop and my phone charge as I type this. Unworried about our location, a satellite in outer space beams our exact coordinates to a hi-def nav computer ready to speak aloud exact directions to any location we might decide to go. Science fiction is becoming increasingly less fiction, and more science.

The road-trip part of the road-trip has set in and we’re now officially “out”. California lays 800 miles in the other direction as Arizona gives way to New Mexico with barely a wink and slight change in cacti. (Such cacti have wispy sticks at their tops with plumes that look unmistakably Dr. Seussian. Coupled with the Road Runner I almost hit in Palm Springs this trip has so far been a tour of my cartoon childhood in the great, vast, west.)

Road-trips, when they mature past the hectic first day of packing and leaving, sink in like a good tan. To set a destination and “fun” your way to it is divine. If I can boast one thing our European friends do not have it’s the great American road-trip, Paris is nice this time of year but America is sumpin else. And seeing it this efficiently is rad - I’ve never covered so much ground and spent so little on gas.

And we’ve seen some really cool things so far. Yesterday we took a detour into White Sands National Park after a border patrol crossing on the Arizona / New Mexico border. The sand was packed hard and kinda cold but just as gorgeous as any morning-after-snow I’ve ever seen. Jamal wanted some R&B album-cover shots so he put on his blazer and we shot a couple pix that would make Babyface jealous. As we left we saw a bunch of guys with sleds hanging ten down the dunes. If I wasn’t so obviously in Arizona I’d swear I was in Alaska.

Oh and I also had some beef jerkey on a roadside pit-stop that was hands-down the best beef jerkey out there. Pack-up-the-fam-and-move-just-to-be-cloer-good. I will not be the same after.

Looks like we’re headed to Roswell tonight – Jamal wants to go to the UFO museum to prove Aliens do exist, and I want to go to the UFO museum to prove they don’t – you’ll just have to find out tomorrow what we came up with.

So that’s it for now my inter-web friends. Tomorrow is of course another journey and another big day of getting somewhere far without stretching our footprint.

Doesn’t hurt I have a computer who tells me where to go along the way…

- Leebo

On our way to Area 51 son!

I don’t even know where to begin. It’s only been two days and already we’ve seen prehistoric dinosaurs, bowling Indians, crop fires, spitting camels and even a Zedonk, which is the uninspired name of a zebra crossed with a donkey, which, according to Wikipedia, “Is bred just because it’s funny to look at”.

As I write this Jamal and I are somewhere in Arizona, although I really couldn’t say where. Endless landscapes of mountains and terrain glide past us and while we haven’t seen any waves of grain yet, iiiiil bet they’ll be colored amber. Looks like we’re going to stay in Phoenix tonight as my buttocks need some serious help circulating blood and Insight is telling us we’re only 30 minutes away, which is nice as without the GPS I could honestly say we’d be in Oregon.

And man, this trip is blowing my mind. This country is BIG. I mean, I knew it was big before, but I had no idea of just how big “big” actually means. And what an amazing time of year to do this – when Jamal asked me if I wanted to go on this trip one of the reasons I was so exited is that late-spring early summer is a magical time of year. I always picture life on a farm this time of year – maybe I just watch too much Charlotte’s Web.

And lemme just say, Camels rock. Jamal and I stopped off at a camel farm today that happened to house a whole bunch of other wild animals. We saw some Scillian miniature horses that look as funny as they sound, this real dope Ox-looking thing with horns straight out of the movie Legend, and, of course, the Camels. Camels are kinda tempermental and do this weird thing where they puff out the inside of their cheek to say hello. It looks really funny and looking at the Camel you kinda get the sense they understand this too.

And that’s that for now. We’re gonna hunker down in AZ tonight and then make our way all the way to Roswell.

450 Miles can kiss my gas.

- Leebo

Twas the night before roadtrip...

And all through the flat, not a leebo had packed yet, and he should start it stat...

Hi. I'm Leebo. A little while ago my best friend Jamal won this thing where he gets to drive a brand-new Honda Insight across country as "efficiently" as possible, and, he gets to pick a friend to do it with. Why he picked me is anyone's guess but when your BFF asks if you wanna wagon-train to New Orleans in a pimp new ride, you say YES.

I'm so super psyched. I'm literally bouncing from corner to corner in my room wondering what to bring. I know I need a swim suit, but how many? Do I bring my own shampoo or just use the ones in the hotels (and is THAT efficient?). Do I need to bring lots of CDs or is that USB feature really what they say (that I can control my iPod THROUGH the car - whooooooo).

Whatever, this is a chance of a lifetime and there isn't a better person to do it with then the person you saw get his GI Joe kite stuck in a tree at his sixth birthday party who cried for two streight days - yeeees, this and other fine travel tidbits awat WHOMEVER might be reading this as Jamal and I go PAN USA BABY!

And seriously, you gotta see this car. I don't think I'm going to be able to return it...

-Leebo