The Summer of 76: A Journey to Self Discovery

By Jamie Flynn

Have you ever thought about just breaking away from the confi nes of a hum-drum, boring life? or, maybe you are in an abusive or destructive relationship that you dream of escaping? Well, thats exactly what Jamie & Lisa did in the summer of 1976! The day after Jamies 16th birthday party, high on mushrooms, Jamie and Lisa stole her dads car and ran away from home!
Too many years of constant fi ghting at home, and a mother who was needlessly harsh & strict, Jamie just wanted OUT at any cost! Her BFF, Lisa was more than happy to oblige! Come join the fun on this incredible journey, complete with romance, fun, partying, soul-seeking & non-stop adventure! Jamie was also in love with the late great singer/songwriter, Dan Fogelberg, and was
dead-set on fi nding him in the Rockies, where she was convinced they would ultimately fall in love and live happily-ever-after, and make beautiful music together!
Their spirit-quest took these two 16 year-old blonde bombshells from the suburbs of Houston, to a 5 month trip all over the western U.S.. From Aspen to Los Angeles, from mansions to sleeping bags in the car: from living it up to not knowing where they would find their next meal: from glamorous cocaine parties with rockstars, to peyote-trips with Indian Shaman in the Sangrede- Cristo Mountains, to a fi eld in Kansas full of marijuana trees that grew like cornfields!
For these two little babes in the woods, this was One Incredible Summer!
Everybody has seen Thelma & Louise, and Cheech & Chong! so, just imagine the
combination of these two movies, and throw in a real- life-first-time-love-affair coupled with the desire to find the deeper meaning of life, and answers to the questions we have about life, and youve got one
helluva great trip you just wish youd taken yourself!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499031201

Jamie Flynn

Jamie Flynn is an artist, writer, chef, and jewelry designer, living in Houston, Texas with her cat, Babyface, and her daughter and 6 year old grand-daughter, Taylor and Jordin. Originally from New Orleans, she's been a Texan most of her life; although several nomadic, extended journeys to places like California and Colorado, even Jackson, Ms. have been life-changing. Jamie is that quintessential "free-spirit" who is impossible to pigeon-hole either professionally or personally, as she's never entirely "settled down" from a life of seeking life's true meaning, and as always, likes to have a lot of fun on the way! A recovering alcoholic and drug-addict, nothing gives Ms. Flynn greater joy than sharing her stories of adventure, discovery, and subsequent recovery with others. Her lifelong dream, besides the publishing of this book, is to have a big farm full of rescue animals, called Valentine's Sanctuary.

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Copyright © 2014 by Jamie Flynn.

ISBN:     Softcover      978-1-4990-3121-8

               eBook           978-1-4990-3120-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ev. date: 11/13/2014

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CONTENTS

The Get Away

Moving On…

Any Given Night

Dan, My Man

Going To California

Ventura Highway

Get To Work Already!!

California Dreamin’

One Of These Nights

Surf’s Up

Heartbreak

Leaving Los Angeles

Another Goodbye, Another Hello

Run, Baby Run!

The Yellow Brick Road

We’re Not In Kansas Anymore, Toto!

Never Give Up

Meanwhile, Back At The Ranch….

The Return Of Rocky Horror & Bull-Weevil

Damn We’re Good!!!

Boulder-Bound!

Heavenly Boulder

A Close Call

Lassie, (I Mean Lisa) Come Home!!!

Just A Matter Of Time

Part Of The Plan

Lessons Learned

Bye- Bye Boulder

You Can Go Home Again

Growing Up

THE GET AWAY

July 16, 1976

Oh my God, get me outta here!! If I don’t leave, & leave NOW, I swear, I’ll KILL her!!!

That was all I could think or feel at that moment. I mean, of course I’d thought about leaving about a million times, but this time, I had a PLAN!

This time I was serious. It had become LIFE or DEATH!!!

MY life or HER death!!!

It’s probably somewhat normal teenage angst for 16 year olds to hate their mom’s, but this was different, I’d had it!

I was DONE!!

Of course, I’d considered running away lots of times, even done a few trial runs, but I needed to get away from her! This was not something that was gonna get resolved unless I did leave…I hated my mother, and she hated me even more! I hated my life, and I knew there had to be a better way to live! I wanted to leave there, and have my freedom. I wanted to…..

HAD to….

RUN AWAY!

So, that’s what I did….

Sayonara, Au-Revoire, Adios Mother-Fucker,

We were about to become HISTORY!!!

To say we’d planned this thing out very well in advance, well, what do you think? All I knew was that it was time to go………….

My birthday party had been a few nights earlier, and that’s when we had a keg of beer, a few bags of shrooms, and who-knows-what-else, and we’d made our decision. A few friends; Kim, Missy, Ed, Glen, Jo-Beth donated to the cause, and I believe we had a whole $120.00 between the two of us! That’s OK; we’d make it somehow….

Cause we were never coming back! So, bright and early on this HOT, but beautiful Saturday July Texas morning, Lisa, my best-friend, and I grabbed just a few of our favorite things, and were about to be gone……….FOREVER!!

I grabbed my classical Ventura guitar, a small leather duffel bag, and a few prs. of faded Levi’s, my navy blue leather halter top I loved that my mom forbade me to wear, a few other cotton-hippie-embroidered tops, a baby blue string bikini, (I would definitely need that!) & not much else! I was too excited about bailin’ outta there, so I didn’t really care about much baggage. I was leaving baggage far behind, if you know what I mean!!

I had a little brother, Stuart, he was not quite 14. His bedroom was downstairs, right off the kitchen and he was still asleep. I kinda wished I could wake him up to tell him goodbye, but didn’t want him calling mom, who was at her one-day-a-week job. I’ll never forget his chubby little face, all asleep under his oh-so-famous Farrah Fawcett poster!! You know, that iconic poster, which is etched indelibly in the hearts of every red-blooded teenage kid back in the seventies!!!

I used to get compared to her ALL the time, which I really didn’t have a problem with at all! I did look a lot like her; I definitely had the long, thick blonde hair, blue-green eyes, and tall and tan body…

But more on me later,

We were about to make our escape!!

Lisa was the best-friend a girl could ever ask for….Totally easy-going, laid-back, fun, generous, and amenable to anything I suggested we do! Not like she was a total pushover, but if I suggested anything, she was usually more than willing to oblige!!

We had to drop by her place and get her shit, where we encountered a bunch of questions from her beautiful, older, kicker-chick sister, Shelby. It just so happened to be Shelby’s 18th birthday, and as this was only about 8:30 a.m., she was quite curious about just what the hell we were up to so early.

Always good with a story, usually a made-up one at that, we threw her off track with some bullshit story. She just looked at us, like she knew we were full of shit, but let it go, for once!

Lisa’s mom, Barbara, was one cool lady! I always was welcomed over there, and she let us smoke, drink, stay out ’til whenever we decided to roll in…..usually about 3am., all bleary, and messed-up on something! Her mom was a secretary at an architecture firm downtown, and a real career woman, something my mother never was at all…

So, Lisa grabbed her stuff, mostly the weed, the bags of mushrooms, pipes, papers, oh, and 2 big, old, hot-as-hell looking sleeping bags. I had no idea how much we’d come to need these! I thought she was being ridiculous!! Good thing we were opposites in so many ways!! She was much more practical and I was the creative drive, the instigator. A regular Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, the two of us were! Just guess who was which one there! We did, of course have a destination in mind! What? Did you think we were THAT scatter-brained? Not a chance. I was blonde, but never a dumb-blonde!!

Well, Aspen, Colorado, of course…!

Ok, a little back-story is needed here:

*****

I grew up in New Orleans, and my best friend who I just loved, and was so influenced by, had moved to Aspen in the summer of ’75, to live with her mom, Sunny… I was fortunate enough to be able to spend the month of July with Angele, at her mom’s. I was in love with Colorado, the Rockies, Aspen, the lifestyle, the climate, the sheer beauty, the lifestyle, and the gorgeous, sexy men. I mean I was in love with the whole world of Aspen. That summer totally changed my life, and for the following year, all I could think or dream about was getting back there. In the meantime, back in miserable, ugly ole Houston, I spoke with Angele frequently, who always invited me to come back up there and we’d get a place together…

Well, hell yea!

That’s what I’m talking about!

We were Aspen-bound!!

We just knew that Angele would be so excited to see us….

Lisa had never been there, and was just excited for the chance at the adventure and excitement! Ever the map-enthusiast as I was, I still had a map of Colorado from the summer before, so I was the navigator.

We took off in the shit-brown maverick that I guess you could say we STOLE! I mean, it was Lisa’s dad’s car that she had the permission of driving to school, that is, when we weren’t getting stoned and skipping!! But we certainly didn’t have permission to hi-jack it, and run away from home in it!

So, we left Lisa’s place at about 9:30, as soon as Shelby got off our backs….As usual, we fired up a couple joints, one for each of course. We set out on our Spirit-Quest, cruising up hwy. 290, on up and out towards Austin. We’d been to Austin millions of times, camping at Lake Travis, partying on 6th street, all that other cool stuff there is to do in that awesome place….

We stopped at a rest-area, drank a miller-high-life, finished smoking a little herb, got back in the car and drove for a bit. We never had a problem buying alcohol, as we looked every bit of 19 or so. The drinking age was 18, and since we definitely looked at least 20, we had no problem acquiring anything we wanted. Actually, there was no age requirement for most of things we did, as most were illegal as shit!

We’d picked about 3 grocery bags full of psilocybin mushrooms in our horse pasture right before my birthday my party, and I mean those big, old brown paper bags, not the little flaky plastic ones that never melt in the landfills. I mean these honkin, big-ass bags that probably held 10 pounds in each….

To say we were ELATED would be an understatement! I mean, we could feel the negativity of the Houston suburbs and parents and smog just being lifted off of us, just as soon as we got 30 minutes away! We really loved Austin, but we wanted to get far, far away. We were just about as happy as two human beings could be! Happy about leaving the confines, the sheer hell of living with my mother, I mean, that is no way to LIVE! My beloved brother, John, always said that life is meant to be enjoyed, not endured! Well, I was so far from being able to even ENDURE what it was I had been suffering through! I suffered every kind of abuse imaginable: PHYSICAL, EMOTIONAL, SEXUAL, MENTAL, etc…

I mean, no normal child at 16 y.o. wakes up one day and says, I think I’m gonna run away from home, maybe even live on the streets, potentially starve to death or eat out of dumpsters, risk getting killed, robbed, raped, sold into teenage prostitution, whatever other heinous things you can think of, but at least I won’t have to suffer at the hands of my parents anymore! I’ll cover this much more later, but I bet a lot of ya’ll can relate to this….

The fights with my mother were so bad, we actually had physical fights and she even told me she hated me more times than I can remember, and was unbelievably strict. The only times she talked to me, were when she was bitching, screaming, threatening, punishing and grounding me. And this was a lot!! So, I guess you could say that she spoke to me A LOT!!! Just wasn’t a positive experience for me! Not by a long shot!

Our fights were screaming matches the neighbors could hear; they even called the cops a few times. Her perv husband, my pathetic stepfather, Steve, actually got involved once, and he threatened to kill me, came in my room and started yelling at me. He went to hit me, and I blocked him, and kicked him in the solar-plexus with a well-executed front snap kick, learned in my last 6 years of karate lessons. He pinned me up against the wall, and almost broke my collarbone. I hated him with a passion. They deserved eachother. It was a very sick, toxic relationship built on sexual attraction and lust. He was the reason we left Louisiana to move to Houston, and he was the reason why she left my dad. She divorced a very successful, wealthy, powerful State Appellate Judge to run off with a 20 year old college kid who worked part-time at a Popeye’s Fried Chicken! Unbelievable, but true. She made a deal with him when they got married that she wouldn’t give up her other man friends, so he was left home alone with my 2 brothers and me to baby-sit, while she went out with other guys. Even at the age of 10 and 11, I couldn’t understand this, since she acted like she was so in love with him. He was her BOY-TOY, as he would no-doubt be referred to as that in today’s terms. It was classic-text-book-style. She was the divorcee who was neglected romantically by her prominent, prestigious, career-driven, money-hungry, politician- husband, and he had found her status quite attractive. Then he was this good-looking, young stud-muffin who would enjoy all that could be provided for him by his COUGAR! He loved living in this beautiful home we had on a gorgeous oak-tree-lined-equestrian-facility on 40 acres on a river in the tranquil little town of Covington, La., which was right across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans. When my mother first met Steve, he didn’t have a pot to pee in, and she totally supported him. I think he felt cuckolded by her when she continued to see other guys, so he took out his anger on her by molesting me at night when she was gone. I was scared to death and couldn’t tell anyone. So I had a lot of inner-turmoil going on. I was angry, confused, sad, just to name a few.

**********************************************************

My story is NOT a mommy-dearest! I just had to share a little about what drove me to run away from home, not knowing what would happen to me. I have raised a daughter 100% on my own, who is 26 today. The mere thought of her running away just makes me shudder! I cannot imagine my precious daughter being out on the run like that, experiencing the things we did, seeing some of the things we saw, meeting up with some of the characters we met! We were very lucky to survive a lot of what we did.

Anyway, this story I’m telling you about has so much more to do with the entire positive, wondrous, magical, and life-changing things, but I had to let you know just what drove a couple nice, normal, teenage, cute, innocent-looking, wide-eyed kids from leaving their homes and setting in the supposed safe suburbs of Houston, Texas, to live a life on the run, on the road, not knowing at all what we could’ve encountered! I wished for freedom at any price! I just thought that any life had to be better than what I’d been living! Yes, I lived in a nice home, had clothes to wear, food to eat, and all those things, but I wanted more! And I knew that not all families lived with the serious level of dysfunction that my family endured. I just knew it was not normal, it sure as hell wasn’t healthy, and it made me rebel, and I just wanted OUT!

If I received any kind of love, nurturance, guidance, positive encouragement, I probably never would’ve done what we did. I have absolutely NO regrets, just the contrary! This journey helped make me who I am today, and I’d not change a thing….. For example, my Father was not a man to lavish praise on me for many things I did, but he told me a thousand times that he thought I was absolutely the most creative, resourceful person he’d ever met. He said that if I was dropped out of a helicopter into the jungles in Central America, with nothing but a piece of string, I’d manage to find my way, start a fire, catch some fish, build a boat, whatever I needed to do to get to where I needed to go! That was totally cool, coming from my Dad! Somehow, I knew that he loved me, even though those words were not spoken when I was a child. He said it to me later on in life, however. He’s no longer here, and I surely do miss the man.

**********************************************************

We drove all day, heading to Colorado, always going the scenic route, since I was the nature-girl with the map! We’d been driving five or six hours, so it was time for a beer-break, a smoke of herb, and maybe a dried-powdered psilocybin shroom. So, we pulled off to the shoulder of the road, in this beautiful, hilly area. There were rolling hills everywhere by now and even an old-fashioned-covered-bridge over a creek or river. I don’t think I’d ever seen one of those. Underneath it, a beautiful rocky creek that looked like a great place to take a dip! As we were the only ones around, I felt like a swim, so off with the jeans, the tie-dye top, and in I go! I felt like getting really clean, so I had Lisa throw me a bar of soap and some shampoo. I didn’t have any idea that it wasn’t cool for the cows to drink water that had Irish Spring soap and Revlon Milk-Plus-6 shampoo bubbles in it! I know now that this is not good for the livestock that drinks this same bath water, So I’m sorry, moo-cows…..(at least I don’t eat ya’ll) YAY COWS!!!

So, as I emerged from my oh-so-refreshing bath, a little blue station- wagon pulled up, and these nice people asked if we needed a ride, assuming we were broke -down or otherwise stranded. When they saw me standing there in my birthday suit, they just kinda smiled and looked at eachother funny! Thought for a minute they wanted to join us! I was definitely a free-spirit, just not THAT free! Remember I was a virgin, and had only turned 16 a few days before we left!! My birthday is 7/11……Aren’t those the best LUCKY NUMBERS???!!

Well I was lucky on this trip. Ha-ha! You are just wondering if I ever got lucky?! You’ll have to stay tuned…

Back in the shit-brown, 4-door maverick, away we went, drove for a few more hours…At this point, I think we were somewhere between Sweetwater and Big Spring…Everything was so new and beautiful, I felt like a completely different person already, as if my soul had left those chains and shackles way behind in Houston, and that mother I hated so much.

We’d been driving all day, and were a little tired and started thinking about food and sleep, as these commodities became more and more obsolete…..stay tuned!

**********************************************************

We pulled over behind a grocery store, made some PBJ sandwiches, ate a granola bar, downed with some apple juice, and fell asleep in the car for the night. This was a boring, little plain looking town; we didn’t know until we hit the road at 6 a.m., that the actual name of this town was PLAINVIEW!!!! How apropos!! The person who named that town was a total fucking genius! However, we were very grateful for a somewhat good, well really GREAT night of undisturbed sleep, albeit a tad cramped…..

And, NO, I didn’t miss Houston, anyone else there, or had any doubt, second-thoughts or any of that bullshit! I mean, I knew exactly what I was doing, where I was going, and just who I was destined to find there….

Leaving Plainview, watching the sunrise was truly magical. The sky changed second-by-second, I mean, it was purple, crimson, gold, silver, and shades of blues and other colors I’d never seen in Houston….I took this as a good-luck sign that the angels in the sky would light our way, protect us, and keep us safe no matter what… I always believed strongly in my guardian angels!

Whatever happened from here on out, I think that just seeing that sunrise made every struggle we may have gone through all worthwhile! Lisa did almost all of the driving, as I’d not been able to take drivers’-ed in school, so I never got a driver’s license…..Not that I was such a conformist, but I really did eventually need one of those plastic things in my wallet, just in case. Oh, I didn’t even have a wallet!

My modus-operandi was to ride shotgun, wearing cutoffs, dangling my long legs out the window as to get a tan, usually with my Ventura guitar on my lap. I didn’t sing worth a crap, I was like the female Bob Dylan!! I love, love, love Bob Dylan, but I couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket either! However, I played my guitar pretty well, and just ’cause I sounded like a bullfrog on crack, that never kept me from singing anyway! God love that Lisa, she was a captive audience (or was it CAPTURED AUDIENCE!!) And she never even laughed, complained or gave me dirty looks when I sang! I played all the stuff I liked; lots of Eagles, CSNY, America, and of course, Dan Fogelberg… Oh, in a minute I promise to tell ya’ll about my love-affair with Dan Fogelberg!! He’s one of my biggest, hell, THE biggest reason for this whole experience!

Ok, ok, I know you’re curious, so I’ll tell ya’ll:

Surely everyone knows about groupies, fantasies, rock-star dreams, Beatlemania, Bieber-Fever, etc…

Well, this was nothing like that. You see, I really was in love with the MAN! I just ……

Loved

His music

His energy

His lyrics

His voice

His looks

His Passion

His heart

His persona

His lifestyle.

I could go on and on, and usually I do, but you get the drift….Well, I had no doubt in my soul, that we were meant to be together, I’d be his muse, he’d be my man. I mean, he already was, I just hadn’t shown up yet… but all of those love- songs he’d written,

HE WROTE THEM FOR MEEEE!!!!

Especially Looking for a Lady. I’d seen him in concert a few times, and I just knew that he could feel my energy there, and he kept coming back to Houston to find me! Well, this was his, (oh, and of course, MY)

LUCKY DAY!!!

You see, all I had to do was show up, find him up there in Colorado; we’d look at eachother, and fall in love immediately. I mean, what more could he want? I was young, beautiful, spiritual, fun, and I played and knew ALL of his songs by heart. His pics were all over my walls, not like in some deranged fan kind of way, but like I was his wife, waiting for him to come home to me. I knew he was busy, probably touring, or recording in L.A., so I thought I’d make it easy for him and just show up, and surprise him…

I mean, I know he really was expecting me…

AFTER ALL, WE WERE SOULMATES!! I have always believed in reincarnation, and I really thought we had been husband and wife before. So, we needed to be reunited! Made perfect sense to me!

THERE WAS NO TURNING BACK!

I pinched myself over and over! It felt so right and natural for us both to be gone, free at last, but it was almost surreal!! Ya know that expression, be careful what you wish for, you might actually get it?! Well, it was just what I wanted for so long, I actually couldn’t believe my dream was finally…..

A reality….

I’d never in my life known anything like this feeling! Not even close. I grew up going to a straight-laced, Catholic school; my Father was a big, super-important, prestigious Judge, even Appellate and Supreme court, as well. Stern? Rigid? Mean? Exacting? Cruel at times? Oh, hell, that doesn’t even begin to tell half of how hard of a dad he could be!

This was freedom I’d never known in anyway, it had to be better than SEX! And since I was a virgin at 16, I had no idea what that was anyway, but nothing could be better than absolute freedom, especially when I felt like I was an enslaved, captured hostage all my life! Right now, all I wanted was freedom. Like that song, Me and Bobby McGee! Freedom is just another word for nothin’ left to lose… Thank you Kris Kristofferson!! And my girl, Janis Joplin too!

Remember 8-Tracks? Well, we had just a few for when I got tried of playing, or Lisa got tired of listening, whichever came first. We were listening to Fleetwood Mac, Rumors, I think, at the time. I always played Landslide, never that great, though… I loved Heart and tried to play Dreamboat Annie. I loved it, but I doubt it made Nancy Wilson very proud! Or threatened!!

I used to try to get my mom to come in my room and hear me play, and she was so not interested. When she’d punish me, like GROUND me for 2-4 weeks, she’d hide my guitar in the trunk of her car, where it would warp the neck, therefore ruined forever! At least, she got her point across….

PUNISHING was a big pleasure of both of my parents. I always felt like if my mother ever came into my room, sat down, and LOOKED at me, and asked me what was going on, and just LISTENED to what I would say, things could have been a whole lot different. That was, sadly, not to be…

So, if you’ve never done that, or it’s been awhile, please sit down, look at and listen to your children. That would help a lot, more than you could ever know. All kids want is their parent’s love, time, attention, and acceptance… I can’t stress this enough. NO, I am not Dr. Phil!! But I love him, and believe he would say the same thing…

Anyway, I always felt like I had something special about me; call it the gift of compassion, an understanding of others less fortunate than I. I know I was always rebellious, and fought the normal, conventional ways in which I was brought up. I hated rules, being told what to do, pre-judged, ordered around, and criticized for everything I did. Everything was a sin, fun was not allowed; I always felt that absolutely nobody understood me. From as young as 8, I read every book I could get my hands on…. Books saved my life!

I’ve always been a seeker, always in search of the deeper meaning of things. I mean, this can’t possibly be all there is….

I wanted freedom at any cost, but freedom isn’t easily captured….and it isn’t free!

I always wrote in journals from as far back as I can remember…That’s the only way I knew how to have an outlet for this deluge of feelings. Some people feel very little, some not at all, (like my mother) and others, like me, just seem to have an abundance of feelings. I always felt alone, as if nobody had a clue, or really cared at all about the way I felt. Certainly not those people I refer to as family. The quotations are not an accident…

As far as relationships, or even just friendships, the way I determined whether it had any potential was how I felt in the presence of this person. Never did I day, this person MAKES me feel this, that, whatever…

It was merely the way I felt in this person’s presence….so that’s a lot different than saying that a certain person actually makes you feel a certain way. For that way, you end up giving your power away. Then you’ve lost before you’ve begun. I like to think of myself as a volunteer, not a victim…

I want to feel my own feelings, and another person can never really make us happy, they can only enhance what we already have…Like, the first time I ever fell in love, it was certainly about the other person, but more so, it was the way that I FELT in the presence of this person. Which was, beautiful, magical, illuminated, content, at peace, ecstatic, harmonious, fantastic, all of those other superlatives that really don’t even come close to the way I really felt in his presence….

But oh, my…. Why do these feelings ever have to end?

Maybe true love really does exist. And I was certainly ready to find out…

I like to say that instead of finding the right person, we have to BECOME the "right person.

Gee, how did I become so profound at barely sixteen years of age?!

**********************************************************

MOVING ON…

By this time, we’d been traveling almost 2 days, and still in Texas! Most states take an hour to get out of, but our exodus was taking days…

Did I mention that we never drove the speed limit? HELL NO! We were so antsy to just get outta Texas, and we knew it would eventually happen, but WHEN??!!

We had lots of time to talk, smoke cigarettes, speculate about our new lives, and look at the most beautiful countryside in Texas. We just couldn’t wait to get to Colorado, and mountains, and Dan Fogelberg….

I’m listening to Dan right now, singing Part of the Plan, which is the first song I ever played on the guitar. Super easy, all chords D, A, and G. And I believed this was really part of our plan….. Sometimes the message comes through to you… love when you can, cry when you have to, be who you must; it’s a part of the plan…

After what seemed like forever, we were finally out of Texas!! Just that much closer to Dan! We had to go through New Mexico awhile, up through Raton Pass. I believe we did a little dance, and honked and yelled and screamed YAYYY!!!! Just getting

That much

Closer

To our GOAL!!!

I’d never felt so happy in all my life!!!

I think it’s about 750 miles from Houston to Amarillo. Isn’t that something, I mean to some of you from New England states, where you can get across 9 states in one short day?!

So, it was a major feat to just be outta TEXAS…..bye- bye Texas!

By now, we’re ensconced in the mountains. We stopped at a little truck stop, filled up that shit-brown maverick for about 5 bucks!!! I know, can you believe it, gas was barely .50 cents! It’s almost 5 dollars now!!! Enough of that, we’re not here to talk about gas prices, that’s a whole new book that I WON’T be writing!!!

One memory I have of being at that truck stop getting gas: I saw this older, (like 34, probably, haha) woman emerge ever so gracefully from an old classic t-bird, and I swear she had the darkest, deepest, most intense tan I’ve ever seen in my life! She was stunning, super tall