From Day 6 to the Home: Though the Looking Glass is Frosted

Are you buckled in? Good. It's time to ride.

Left from our hamlet of Harvey Heights early in the morning. Blew like burning tumble weeds down the road until we got to Calgary where we hit the morning traffic. Our good Leader-Van-Trailer got lost somewhere in the pack; however, one of our vehicles took no notice of this. Thus: we hit the outskirts of Calgary doing 150 clicks trying to catch this truck, who in turn speed up even more thinking Leader-Van-Trailer is miles ahead of them (perhaps waiting for hours at a small gas station in Medicine Hat helplessly being battered by the flirtations of desperate female truckers). HIGH SPEED CHASE! I have never driven this fast in a van before, and I think it may even be icy, oh! and lets add that there are oil slicks and thick fog - no, even better, thick smoke from the flaming walls of a forest fire! So we're going so fast the g-force makes it impossible to lean forward, but as we pull up beside them I manage to raise my arm with a Herculean effort and motion for them to stop. Roll Credits.
The rest of the trip is like being a coccoon in a hammock ~ I rest, only to burst forth from time to time to take the wheel again. When the day winds down our sweetest moment: reading from anthologies or reciting from memory our favorite poems. Here and there falls a Shakespearean monologue or the soft patter of Plath. Our faces illuminated like at a campfire, only from the small reading lights of the van, we form beatiful imaginary worlds: vases that are crafted then shattered. By the time we reach Portage there are shards all over the floor.
I am surprised to find that my car starts, after having rested outside for the whole trip in the coldest weather of our winter. I drive back to Riverside, my car an iceburg on a flat and frozen sea.
The next days are so cold I think trees are sculptures. I say inside, warm and telling stories about the trip: often expressing my entusiasm in vain. Hoodoos? Oh, that's nice. We've seen some before. Boris' soup? What are you talking about? Such is always the death of euphoria after returning home. And eventually we are kneaded back into the dough of the day to day.