I AM A PASSENGER; I RIDE AND I RIDE... Taking Pleasure in Life's Simplicity Beats the Alternative

NEAR THE OHIO-INDIANA BORDER (ZP) -- The crispness of autumn roars through the cab, the Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated" rattles away in the speakers.

I turn up the volume, light a cigarette, and floor the accelerator for no reason whatsoever.

There's just something about an empty stretch of country road, something mischievous and devilish that spurns all men in automobiles to behave like your average teenager.

Especially when that man's just passed to only cop he's seen for ten miles.

The iPod, through some metaphysical link, reads my mind, telepathic biometrics. The original Generation X version of the classic "Dancing with Myself," twists my lips into a Billy Idol sneer as I bang the beat out on the steering wheel.

Asphalt eats away rubber beneath the pickup's frame. The cracked windshield - the one I've been meaning to fix since, oh, 2004 - shimmers in the bleak grayed sun.

I'm a country road devil, Satan fucking the wives of speed law legislators, the baron of blacktop flying the Badass flag at 70 miles per hour.

Cigarette smoke swirls like a dragon's hellish fart. The harvested cornfields and plowed under soy plants blur into a sea of browns and yellows.

Me time.

Just a Hoosier-Buckeye bound Don Quixote with a slab of plastic and a Ford filling in for Sancho Panza. For miles and miles, just melting horizon and the likes of Iggy Pop belting out songs like "The Passenger," bands like Biohazard bleating out covers of Sabbath's "War Pigs," Eric B. and Rakim spinning and commanding that I refuse to sweat the technique.

I catch my reflection in the rear-view mirror and feel handsome, free, cavalier.

I'm a killer. A goddamn bandito, a highwayman, a motherfucking gunslinger for hire who'll skullfuck an angel with a Louisville goddamn Slugger just for the thrill of it.

I laugh as I talk to the mirror. I'm well-aware that, for a badass gunslinger wannabe, I've got a stomach full of herbal tea and tofu - not exactly a Wyatt Earp style feast.

But the heart's full of adrenaline, brain firing on all machismo cylinders. The asphalt whines beneath the tires of a late-model pickup.

All alone. With just the road and some tunes.

Jesus Fucking Christ, what a ride.

C'est la motherfucking vie.

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