The Sun sets near Flagstaff

I remember rolling evening into night, having passed the plains of Kansas with their giant windmills imposing a sort of Don Quixotic view of a land otehrwise brown and flat. Flyover country at its finest. Low buildings and the American lonely road, route 66 indeed, down to northern Arizona. I had borrowed a book from my seatmate and read it, an uninspired drama mystery ending in extortion and love and of course an oozing blood trunk. And then there was nothing to do at all. I sat crosslegged watching the road, counting mile after mile and twentyfive minutes seemed so long a time to wait. Nothing but darkness and an illuminated shrub here and there and the endlessly repeating reflective strips on the side of the road, signalling towers on the horizon blinking red in the distance. And the bus rolled on in my impatience.