The lizard runs amuck no more

 Tase that scaly bug eating nuisance! Sic the professionals on him.

Three days in the rear captain seat of Brook Brayman’s 1995 Chevy Gladiator luxury van to enjoy great company, America’s western countryside, and to battle an anxiety that has had liberty for far to many years. My long time comrade, and co-pilot for numerous college era road trips to Southern California will be navigating our trip toward Las Vegas. Back in the day we raced through the Mojave Desert for SoCal adventures: lounging on Huntington Beach, catching the first Coachella festival in 1999, blaring Rage Against the Machine down Rodeo Drive, tattoo conventions, or searching for Morrison’s ghost in Venice’s bazaars. We lived for the road. Then, as now, I prefer to pilot all my trips. But this time the calm road warrior has no control over the steering wheel. Will the lizard beast stay cool?

Since my early twenties I have managed proximity anxiety with mental trickery and dictatorial control of the wheel. Calm driver with a resting heart rate just above sedation, and a mind free to enjoy the passing landscape for optimum creative thought. Quickly the experience goes grim once I am assigned the back seat. My reptile brain hijacks the faculties. I fear the cornered animal. If the lizard smells it’s own death there is no controlling lash-outs. It is an odd sight to come upon a grown man escaping a slowing vehicle for the deep foliage lining a lonely stretch of hairpin mountainous byway. My hypersensitive qualms of heeding all federally funded road signs reading, “NO SERVICES FOR 100 MILES” or “NO BREAK CHECKS” quickly turns toward a rationalization that all fines and penalties are worth fleeing the four-wheeled straightjacket. Good speed and metal fortitude will save us all.

Green is the new green

We’ll be traveling through recreational marijuana country. Long gone are the days a gangster DuPont chemical empire held a crushing prohibition over the hemp industry — high priced K-Street lobbyist and cult classics like Reefer Madness scaring people of all the fears of the creeper. For good or ill, four western states have legal marijuana for taxable consumption. State revenue coffers are exploding! The government’s cut after voters legitimize green as a cash crop puts lotteries on par with a child’s lemonade stand as an offset to mama’s internet shopping addiction. Smoke it for the schools and kids.

The country roads have an air of calm as we set out for our dear friend Scot Eliott’s Bend, Oregon wedding, happening this day. 330 miles by early evening is easy for us. Yet word from the wire contradicts the calm and sense of ease. Highway patrol is frustrated with little recourse to hassling two bit reefer addicts now that the Mary Jane is state sponsored. They have little distraction from the long days and stale coffee. We surely are prime targets! A van with two males and a female cruising at or below the posted speed limit. These mace happy lawmen will jump on a “stop and frisk” opportunity every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Oh thank goodness, it’s only Saturday… I have been sober for years upon years, but the nervous eye of J.Q. Law catching sight of a 1995 Chevy van with Eddie Vedder’s stunt-double lookalike behind the wheel might lead to my first field sobriety test. Excuse me sir! I have the authority vested unto me by this great state to pistol whip you if necessity deems.

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The thought of a cornered lizard boring through my endocrine system with a Chinese knockoff drill bit keeps me on edge. Luckily a head full of pharmaceuticals dispatched daily under strict orders from my insurance approved medical provider keeps fogging the lizard swarm at my spine’s base. The key code to full meltdown would be punched into the keypad at the site of red and blue lights through the rear window curtains. The swarm will send me fleeing in all directions. I’ll turn my back on street thugs and politicians before showing my six to the lizards. Ruthless bastards!