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