Ladies and gentlemen, as the TV show says: Greetings from Tucson.

Folks, let me introduce you to the Beast. The Beast is a Ford F-350 cab bolted to a rather large cargo area, which -- all told -- measured 14 feet in length. The Beast is not a pleasant creature. Its driver-side door is bent so it does not close all the way, making for an incredible amount of road noise and it also means that when it rains, the driver gets a bit wet. Once it gets above 50 miles an hour, its speedometer begins waving like a three-year-old saying goodbye to a close relative at the airport. (Or it's jumpin' jumpin' like Destiny's Child. You choose which simile you like best.) It rides so rough that even its mirrors are vibrating to the point where I can barely judge where the cars are around me because the mirrors wobble so much and looking at them for more than 3 seconds gives me a headache, but I need at least that amount of time to determine where the cars around me are. Mind you, I was promised a new truck that had been thoroughly checked out by U-Haul since they always save their best and newest for the cross-country trips. The Beast had 122,000 miles on it. Not exactly a spring chicken.

However, the Beast is a menacing creature -- one that I would've expected to strike fear in the hearts of the meek. The meek being the little old ladies in their tiny little cars doing just under the speed limit in the left lane, most of which were decked out in "I believe in the Power of Christ" bumperstickers (not to generalize, but it was mostly true in the cases I found). The Power of Christ compels you to be chaste and pure, but the Power of Ford compels you to get the hell out of my way.

I made good time in the beginning, at least. I stopped in Roanoke my first night on the road, Memphis my second -- where I saw the Angels take the Series and had some kick-ass barbeque. But Texas is where it all started to go to hell. I didn't mess with Texas. Texas messed with me. And I believe I lost.

I was honestly having a good time that night. I met up with one of my co-workers who works out of his house in Dallas, we had dinner together. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is home to one of my favorite radio stations, so I was listening to it rather loudly -- not just because the road noise was so incredibly loud, but also because it's hard not to when you're on a road trip and one of your favorite stations is playing U2's "Where The Streets Have No Name." So what if it was 9PM and I still had 3 more hours of driving to do that night?

Then, as I passed the 30-miles-outside-of-Fort-Worth-beginning-to-enter-the-Middle-of-Nowhere mile marker, I noticed the temp gauge beginning to make its way up. Not good. I pulled off the road, and smoke began billowing from under the hood. Really not good. So I pulled out the cell phone and called the U-Haul Emergency Hotline, who put me on hold for 10 minutes. Not good when I'm heading into the Middle of Nowhere and I won't be able to charge my phone battery. They claim they're contacting people to help me. Half an hour goes by. 45 minutes. I start to call back to harass them. They put me on hold some more. They're locating a mechanic. They tell me to wait. I attempt to limp back to Fort Worth for the night because it's getting incredibly late and I'm incredibly tired, but 2 minutes into the trip and the temp gauge starts to soar again. No dice. Finally -- finally -- at 12:30AM... 3 1/2 hours after I'd made my first call to U-Haul's Emergency Hotline, the mechanic shows up. A quick fix, and it's done. A coolant line blew. Except now the transmission is giving me problems. Either way, I'm done for the night and I decide to take care of it in the morning. I found out later that the brilliant people at the Emergency Hotline Headquarters faxed a repair/mechanic order to the Fort Worth office -- despite the fact that since it was 9PM, they'd already closed for the night and wouldn't be re-opening until 7AM, which would've left me on the side of the road freezing my ass off all night.

Morning comes after a night of fitful sleep. I take the Beast over the local U-Haul repair shop, who tells me that the transmission is indeed in need of service, and they're going to give me a new truck. More lost time as all of my parents' worldly possessions are transferred from one truck to the other, and I'm on my way again with the assurance that this new truck that I'm driving -- despite the fact that it has 115,000 miles on it -- just came out of a maintenance inspection and should give me no problems.

Murphy's Law of Mechanics says that when the repair shop says there won't be a problem, there inevitably is. This one occurred 50 miles outside of Fort Worth, when the "Check Engine" light comes on. I pull over and call U-Haul again, who tells me to go to the nearest repair center in Abilene and they'll take care of it, but they close at 4PM and it's now 2:30. 90 minutes to cover 100 miles. Can we say "haul ass"? I knew we could.

I roar into the parking lot of U-Haul in Abilene at 3:50. I turn off the truck, lock it up and go inside to ask about repairs. They tell me that the repair shop is 500 feet behind the building I'm in now. So I run outside to the truck to pull it around back to catch them before they all leave -- and my key won't open the door. People, I don't have the time or energy to make this kind of stuff up. So I run all the way to the repair shop and thankfully, they're still there. I explain the situation. They come out, we all cluster around the truck, and it's determined there's something wrong with the fuel injectors and their sensors. It's a 10 minute fix. Except it's not that. It's something else. And the transmission on this truck is leaking fluid and needs to be worked on. A 10 minute fix turns into a 3 hour fix, and the deadline for cancelling my hotel reservation that night in Las Cruces, New Mexico passes. So I'm locked into it, whether I like it or not. The key thing couldn't be fixed, they tell me to jiggle the key in the lock (which is what I've been doing ever since then -- I feel like I'm breaking into this thing every time I try to unlock the door), but everything else was supposedly fixed and I'm on my way again.

I leave Abilene at around 7PM local time. I have 500 miles to go before I sleep. Go time. Except Texas decides to try and keep me in the state one more time by sending the Texas Highway Patrol after me. Literally in the middle of nowhere, about 50 miles outside of Midland -- where there is nothing except highway and desert and the occasional oil refinery and wellfield -- I got pulled over for speeding.

At this point, I'm at the end of my rope. My head is pounding, I'm nauseous from dinner, and I'm still hours away from getting to a bed for the night. And it really doesn't help that on top of everything, the cop asks me if I've had the engine on the truck checked recently because it smells like it's burning oil. As if I weren't paranoid about the truck breaking down in the Middle of Nowhere Where There's No Cell Phone Coverage already. Long story short, after an 19 hour day, I pull into the hotel in Las Cruces at just past 2AM local time -- only because I'd passed a time zone line a few miles before the Texas/New Mexico border.

Either way, I have made it to Tucson and I have unloaded the truck. 2767.8 miles later, my objective is complete. I don't have much to do tomorrow except go to U-Haul, raise holy hell and tell them that they are refunding my money for the rental and covering all of my expenses -- especially the $600 I've spent on fueling the Beasts because they suck up gas like an alcoholic puts away liquor. Then I'm turning in the truck because quite frankly, I've had enough of it, and I'm renting a nice car to get myself from here back to Los Angeles, where I have to go back to work on Monday.

Quite frankly, the expression "I need a vacation from my vacation" never applied as readily as it does here. I'm mentally and physically drained, man. I need some serious relaxation time, which I'm not going to get. By the way, have I mentioned that I've had to develop the annoying habit of asking people what day it is? I have lost all track of time. My time is measured in miles now, not days.

Texas did give me one small gift before I left the state, though. I was going westward on I-10 nearing El Paso when the thought occurred to me that the highway follows the Rio Grande. Off to my left as I glanced out the window, there was the river. And just beyond that, Mexico. I could see its lights twinkling in the night. Hey, when you're exhausted and it's 2AM, you get a little poetic when the thought runs through your head: Man, that's another country out there that you're looking at.

Well, readers, I've hopefully given you enough fodder to last you another day until the cable guy comes and installs my parents' cable and cable modem on Friday morning. Despite the fact that Kinko's charges next to nothing rates for use of their computers, I've somehow managed to rack up a $10 charge already.