Some trips are stranger than others. Our drive back to Austin ranked high on the delay side, as if something were trying to slow our return.

Delay #1: After our goodbye lunch, lanky teen with bleach-blonde teeny-tank-top-wearing girlfriend picks a fight with my friend as we’re leaving Taos Diner. I don’t want Cavanaugh to see punches thrown or hear what I expect is being said, so I drive to get my last double iced latte at Elevation Coffee, which is less than a mile away. Then I drive back hoping I won’t see bleeding noses or swelling eyes. Turns out kid’s girl says my friend blew kisses and winked at her. Why would a 15 year-old claim that 40-year-old man out to lunch with middle-aged woman and her toddler would do this? God knows. I go inside to tell teen and girl that’s not what happened, in hopes of sparing my friend a baseball bat to the tail light of his unique looking car, too easy to find in the small town of Taos.

Delay #2: Gas pump won’t take my card. I pull away from only available pump, go inside so Cavanaugh can pee, hear the computers are off and I should switch pumps. The next pump works. I think delay is small.  As we pull out of the Allsup’s parking lot, my stereo goes into Protect mode and stops playing. I cannot drive 14 hours without the fifth and last audiobook of the Septimus Heap series for Cavanaugh (and me).

I’d just replaced my front door speakers three days before so I wouldn’t have to listen to buzzing the whole way back to Texas. Now, it is Sunday afternoon and highly unlikely that the only stereo place in town (where I’d purchased said speakers) is actually open. Luckily, the store phone rings the owner’s cell and he comes to open the closed shop, then proceeds to spend the next two hours tracking down the wiring problem that sent the stereo into Protect mode. I leave Car Tunes then go back for another iced double latte before we hit the road at 5 p.m.

Delay #3: I get lost in Lubbock around 1 a.m. Am lost for about an hour, come out of the city just past the hotel with too-dark parking lot and decide to drive on to Post, Texas because I just can’t bear trying to turn around one more time. Cavanaugh wakes up at hotel, totally psyched to open mini-frig, saloon doors to ironing board closet, and to press button on the ice machine down the hall. We get to sleep around 3 a.m. Next morning, he doesn’t want to leave the hotel so we swim in the pool and enjoy the King mini-suite we were upgraded to after our third trip through the lobby  when I asked why we hadn’t been given the king bed I’d requested. Maybe it was the five foot long stuffed dolphin, or the need for a diaper run, or my cute toddler bouncing around in the middle of the night, but we didn’t have to stay in the freezing room with the two very soft queen size beds.

Delay #4: After we leave the Post Inn, I miss our highway change and end up driving through Abilene. Both the getting lost in Lubbock and the missed road are especially strange considering I’ve been driving the same route from Austin to Taos and back for about fifteen years.

We arrive in Austin at 7 p.m. after two days of delays. My dread at returning to Austin has played out in just about every stage of the drive. But when I pull up to the house and when I see Mike crossing the yard to see our son, I feel fine. It is not charged or heartbreaking. At least it wasn’t for the first couple of hours. It was just good to be back home.