I’m pretty sure being in your 50’s is the Kansas of middle-age.

Hear me out. There’s still shit worth seeing, and there’s some sense of urgency or need to get on. There are mountains in the western distance, looming but never approaching. Common sense dictates that distance is finite but the mountains never seem to get any closer.

You have aches and pains, but you’ve had those since your 30’s (which is like crossing the Mississippi River between Illinois and Missouri in a jon boat with a questionable motor and no experience at rowing). There’s an indignity to having to stretch before getting out of bed. The hip you didn’t get replaced complains more about the cold and you start to feel like an old dog and you argue with the TV meteorologists because your aches give you an accurate forecast. The landscape is flat and full of either fallow fields or unharvested crops, neither of which has anything to do with you. Kansas feels like it lasts forever. There’s a few populated areas, but mostly you’re driving with who you started out with in Kentucky, or who you picked up hitchhiking along Route 66, or who picked you up while you were hitch hiking. If you were the one who got picked up, you’ve been there long enough that you take a shift driving.

The mountains loom. You think you can make out the snow trails on the peaks, but then you hit some traffic and have to take a piss and suddenly remember you left the boombox on back in 1982, somewhere around Vermont.

go
go
go
go

shovel snow

go
go
go
go

but
get
a
good
night’s 
sleep

go
go
go
go

re
mem
ber
your
vitamins

coffee
coffee
coffee

go
go
go

westward
on

mountains
exits
largely
as
a
matter
of faith

that
some
day
will fall
on your
head