Gayle's not here, Mrs. Torrance.

Gayle is back from Sacramento and will be giving a debrief sometime soon, but she is so tired, she can only refer to herself in the Third Person. To paraphrase Danny in The Shining (everyone hold up your index finger):



Here are some observations about the actual trip.

1. She should never take Red Vines on a 7-hour car ride. Even after she does not want another one, she must eat another one, and the last one tastes just like her salty tears because there are no more.

2. Singing along with Gladys (and Carole and Carly and well, you get the idea) at the top of her lungs is all well and good, but after such a long car ride and so much iPod music, her throat hurts.



3. When she is on the I-5, she can drive 75-80 miles an hour and run with the big dogs, but once she hits L.A. County, she is reduced to a whimpering pup as the Escalades and other large projectiles-on-wheels scream by her.

4. She passed a lot of Schneider National trucks on the way up and back, to the point that, as she followed the last one from the 210 to the 57, a story began forming in her head.

It involves a bad girl coming to a bad end, laying in the twisted wreckage, a vision of the Schneider National truck burning into her retina as Florence and the Machine pounds the Dog Days Are Over into the atmosphere, to join the coppery smell of blood turning sticky in the heat.

And with that, Gayle is going to turn on The Voice and turn off her brain.