Today's Manic Episode

GRAND CANYON, AZ - I just woke up from a three hour nap and I'm feeling kind of beat. My mouth hurts. I grind my teeth a lot. It's a bad habit but I don't even realize when I'm doing it. I guess I did it as a kid a lot in my sleep... very loud. Sometimes I'll catch myself doing it. I even grind my teeth to the beat of music when I'm listening.

You can actually see a difference in my canines where the bottom teeth have ground the top. Here's what a normal set of canines looks like.



Here's what one of my canines looks like.



I just don't want to end up like this guy.



Alright, enough about that crap. Here's what happened last night.

I stopped in the middle of the desert to get a shot of sunset.



The plan was to drive to Flagstaff, get there late, get some sleep, then leave in the morning to make the hour or so trek to the Grand Canyon. I originally planned to get to Flagstaff around 3 or 4am, due to the time zones. Unfortunately, due to leaving late and stopping for food, I was way behind schedule for that. Somewhere around my second tall coffee and 2am, I decided it was imperative that I make it to the Grand Canyon for sunrise. And I was totally convinced it was a good idea.

Around 3:30 in the morning, I stopped in a gas station to get a tallboy Rockstar (because adding more caffeine to this was only going to improve the situation). I asked when the sun rose around those parts and was told "about 6:15." That gave me about 2 1/2 hours to make the rest of what was probably at least a 3 1/2 hour trip.

So out the door I ran.

When the going gets weird...



You know at the end of Dracula, when the Dracula gypsy crew is racing the sunlight with Van Helsing and the rest of them in hot pursuit?

Well, in this story, the Grand Canyon is Dracula.

And I'm going to kill it. (This all made sense at 6am after up 24 hours, loaded on caffeine, and in the car for 15 hours).

Additional good news: Along the way I worked out lots of songs I would do as acoustic covers.

Just as soon as I learn to play guitar. And sing.

I worked on that for about... well... five hours. I was worried I was going to run out of music on my Zen to sing/play along to. It would have been a pretty awesome set in real life (at least it was in my fantasy world).

You should have been there.



I was somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the caffeine began to take hold...

I was cutting it close and was afraid I wouldn't make it. As the sunlight was creeping over the horizon, I hit the park but ended up behind some SUV that decided to follow the speed limit. Can you believe it? The nerve.



After swinging into the nearest parking lot and hustling to the edge, I was able to catch this.

















Turns out, it was a pretty damn good idea.