Up and awake, 4:48 in the morning. Three-plus hours to finish the load-out in my halfbaked crepuscular way. Fuel her up. Head her out. Eight thirty three.

First seventy miles uneventful. Then at Magda the snow starts. I pull over, top off the fuel just in case, grab two bottles of water, and a small cheap burrito I don’t really intend to eat–emergency ration. I pull out of there grim and determined.

The higher up I go on the New Mexico side, the prettier and sunnier and drier it gets. I lose my grim and start to smile. The wind is up a bit but the trailer is tracking true behind me. The state line, into AZ.

Luna and then Luna Lake. At Alpine, but only within the town limits, it’s snowing fierce dry little pellets, and for a block or two they are swirling like dust across the road.

I get up to the highest point on the Alpine Divide, 8500 feet, and it’s briefly gorgeous and serene once more.

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Down into Springerville it deteriorates rapidly again. But by the time I pass the time and temperature sign it’s only 34, and as long as it’s more than 32 I’m as happy as I can be.

By St. Johns everything’s cool. I look at my phone and realize that I have an extra hour because of crossing the state line. I cruise the rest of the way and decide to use that hour to spot and drop the trailer, and do the first part of the unpacking.

That done, I use my own bathroom for the first time in a few months.

Within a minute or two of settling into that, here comes the Kali Mama with a look that says: Where you been, V?

It takes her three or four minutes to allow a proper petting. But three or four minutes after that she’s on the bed in heaven, rolling around and happy.

I strip my shirt off and leave it for her, and get a fresh one for the appointment.

I get my teeth cleaned. It feels great.