The Timely Arrival of Chaos

8/7

I left the sleepy town of Baker late in the morning - and yes, it was still sleepy at 10 AM - and hopped back on America's Loneliest Highway. I'm at the point in my trip now where 6 hours of highway driving seems only like a hop, skip, and a jump. Nothing major, 6 hours. It's just 360 minutes, plus some time for gas stops. Just 400 miles, or roughly 640 kilometers, if you're metrically inclined. Easy peasy.

Nevada is, for the most part, a barren desert. It can be kind of rough to drive through. But there's something about Highway 50 that is just pleasant even in its desolation. As you head across the state, you find yourself blasting across wide flat plains with the road laid out in front of you for miles.

And just when you get bored with those plains, you come to a gentle rise, which turns into a kind of large hill that could almost count as a mountain, and you make your way up into the clouds themselves. And just when you start to wonder where the road ends and the clouds begin, you've reached the summit and then you're down through to the other side and... it's back to the wide plains.

This pattern repeats over, and over, and over again. It's mesmerizing - and even better, it keeps you from realizing how much time has passed! Is this the third time you've been through a valley, or the fifth? If you cover up the clock, time can only be measured by the slow sweep of the gas gauge towards empty.

Of course, being Highway 50, you've really gotta keep an eye on that gas gauge, because there are very few places to fill up. But as long as you sort yourself out with a good halfway point station, then you've got nothing to worry about.

Six hours passed this way in an almost leisurely fashion as Jane ate up the blacktop, the howl of the wind and the scream of the exhaust evaporating into the desert like rain after a summer storm. I found myself entranced, lulled into a kind of languid complacence. I was nothing but a foot on a pedal and a hand on the steering wheel, and that was just wonderful.

And then, at the end of those six hours, chaos arrived. An urban sprawl dotted with glittering high-rise casinos suddenly materialized out of the desert, mirage-like but oh so real. I had arrived at Reno.

Every year it's almost shocking transitioning from the open road to the bustling city. Suddenly, I have to remember how to navigate traffic, and stoplights, and signs, and freeway exits. And everywhere there are distractions: clean classic cars bedecked in hues of decades long past cruising up side streets, hot rods snarling and barking their way up the interstate, rat rods slouching against curbs, and everywhere miles of dazzling chrome. I white-knuckled my way to the Grand Sierra Resort, host of Hot August Nights, where I joined a staggering number of other classics in the hunt for a parking spot amidst crowds of thousands of spectators and owners. Fortunately I was able to snag a spot, shoehorning my very bedraggled, very dusty little pony car between two immaculate but completely different classics.

I sorted out my registration and then roamed the lot for a bit. If you want variety, Hot August Nights is the place to go. Each car has its own story, its own history. But the thing that makes every single car here unique is in the way it reflects the lives, personalities, wants and desires of the owners. In all of the cars, you can see bits and pieces of the people who own them: a flair for the dramatic, the need for order, an inclination to let things slide, a quirky proclivity, a desire for a challenge. It's all there, laid bare in the vehicles sitting in the lot, if you're looking out for it.

If this doesn't say "flair for the dramatic", nothing does.

I spy a couple gallons of coolant...

A challenge: a truck with no reproduced parts

A silly badge on an otherwise very clean Biscayne

Bizarrely engineered huge amounts of horsepower.

I sometimes wonder what people see of me when they look at Jane.

It was the wondering that led me to realize that my car was absolutely, atrociously filthy, and people probably either thought that my car was a barn find, or that I am the world's biggest slob and most neglectful owner. So I cleaned Jane up - half of her, at least - as the evening wore on and Reno came alive.

The chaos of Reno and Hot August Nights is always something to be cherished.

Kelly signing out.