Thursday arrived as usual, sandwiched in between Weds and Fri. It was down to crunch time as the plan called for me to be in Laredo that and this was it as far as accomplishing anything.

I had some work done on the Jeep and then headed to Wal-Mart to acquire an ion air purifier to hopefully filter out some of the smoke the Mexicans delight in creating. That accomplished I headed for the storage area and one more pass at finding the disks. I checked and rechecked the likely places they might be and even the unlikely places but nada, so I packed what I had acquired, and sifted from among my treasures, and loaded the Jeep for the long trek home.

About noon I was pulling out of storage and checked the cell phone to find I’d missed a call from George and so I checked in with him. He suggested having lunch, but I declined saying I’d like to get to Laredo early to rest for the long segment Friday. The wind continued to howl blowing dust and anything not securely anchored to terra firma. The drive to Laredo takes about 4 hours so I was in great shape.

I meandered down through San Antonio weaving like a drunk from the side wind, but everyone else was doing the same so we were doing a 70mph waltz on 281. North of Laredo I could see there was a big brush fire to the west blowing smoke across the road. A helicopter was circling and all of a sudden we came to a screeching halt– and there we sat. When it became obvious we were going nowhere fast I shut down the car and leaned back and in no time was in lala land, napping in the fast lane of I35, what a concept. I figured if we needed to move I’d be awakened by the truck behind me starting up or blowing his air horn loud enough to wake the dead, but having lived in MX for 4 months now I can sleep through anything short of Hillary’s shrill screeching. There was something else going on as INS (Immigration) vehicles were running up and down the side access roads with light flashing etc., maybe it’s sort of symbiotic relationship, where’s there’s smoke there’s Mexicans (illegals in this case).

After waiting an hour, I wasn’t having fun anymore and so cranked up the car, drove through the median and through the far ditch onto the access road – driving a Jeep has its moments. About a mile down the road we stopped at a road block and the highway guy said smoke had the road closed – a little smoke? - he’s obviously never been in MX. Rational thought no longer an option I selected plan B from the menu which required back tracking 8 miles up the highway, turning east and going about 50 miles east, 40 miles south and eventually angling back to Laredo only taking some 2+ hours and adding at least 60 miles to the total.

In the process I hit a 5 miles stretch of dirt road construction which had been nicely sprinkled so any remains of my $16 wash job was covered in mud spray. Then as I was motoring along toward Freer I got the “gong” once again reminding me that I was about to suck everything out of the gas tank including combustible fumes (getting to be a bad habit this was the 3^rd time). Sure enough I ran the console readout to “0 miles left to empty” with miles to go and nothing but sage brush in sight and no hills to coast down. I managed to roll into Freer on fumes and finally Laredo. Instead of getting to Laredo early in 4 hours it took nearly 8, I should have had lunch with George!

The final day in the collection will be “Friday morning mayhem in Monterey”