Our first stop was Abilene.  I had gone to school here for a couple of years, and so I was pretty familiar with the town.  James and I were hungry and it was dinnertime (about 7:00 PM) so we went looking for somewhere we could stop long enough to go pee and grab some takeout.  We settled on Quizno’s because James was fond of it, and I wanted something better than a hamburger.  So we went to the bathroom, grabbed our food and hit the road.  My plan was to drive straight through to Albuquerque, arrive around 3 AM and check into a motel and crash until the next morning.

This was not to be.

By about 10 PM, my stomach was growling.  I figured I must still be hungry, so I stopped and got some snacks to keep me going.  These comprised a couple of packages of Carl Buddig thin sliced turkey and some chocolate milk (to split with my son).  I also had some good quality beef jerky, chips and sodas that my wife had packed in the cooler, along with a few other things.  I wolfed these down and continued driving.  Unfortunately, these did not settle my stomach for very long.

After this stop, James decided to get some sleep, and I decided to speed.  There is a long stretch of road between a town called Post and the city of Lubbock (all in West Texas) which is flat, empty, and barren of anything except the lights of scattered farmhouses and communities.  The night sky in this area is stunning, but I was more interested in getting to my destination quickly.

We arrived at Lubbock around Midnight.  For this trip, it was an ideal place to make a final pit stop and get gas for the car.  By this time, what was stomach growling had turned into full scale stomach churning.  Not enough to make me want to stop, but enough to make me miserable on the road.  Nevertheless, I decided that a little rumbly-tummy was not going to stop me!  We journeyed on.

Clovis is just over the border between New Mexico and Texas.  The time also changes from Central time to Mountain time.   So the approximately 100 mile trip from Lubbock to Clovis takes about 2 hours.  Part of the reason for this is the number of small communities that you drive through on this trip.  The major reason is the number of State Troopers, County Sherrifs, and small town police on this stretch is approximately equal to the state of Alaska, and each community believes that their town should be gone through in such a way as you can see the sights.

By the time we hit Clovis, rumbly-tummy had graduated to “Oh dear Lord, please make this stop.”  So I decided that I’d best stop so that if I got any sicker, I would at least have access to a shower and toilet.  We settled on the Motel 6 in Clovis, because it was open at 1AM and was cheap, which was important to me as I was unemployed at the time.  So we check in, go upstairs and settle in.  James had been sleeping since not long after we left Abilene and so he was wired, and I was to nauseous to sleep, so we watched some B– movie on the Sci-Fi channel.  James remembers it as being something about a radio-active spider biting a man turning into a monster.

The movie ended about 2AM local time, and so I insisted we try and sleep.  I was in the bed closest to the bathroom (my muddled brain told me I was so clever) .  I had it in my head that we’d sleep in till nine or so hoping I would feel better by then.  My timing was a bit off.

I dozed off and was suddenly awakened by an enormous desire to remove both the contents of my stomach and if that wasn’t enough to call for divine intervention.  I kicked the covers off and desperately rushed to the bathroom, intending to vomit into the toilet or sink.  I had barely cleared the door when my body took over.  As I was rushing in, I told my rebellious body  to hold my head down to aim for the toilet.  My body had decided that what was in my stomach needed to go the express route instead and told my head to go up to straighten the path for what was coming.  Suddenly, foul smelling vomit started painting the walls 8 feet up over the toilet, spraying everywhere.  As my brain (which was no longer in control) reeled at the horror, it also registered the fact that while I had nicely coated the walls, the toilet tank, the toilet paper dispenser, and the seat of the toilet, not one drop had gone into the toilet itself.

Seeing how thoroughly I had painted the walls around the toilet, I figured that was the entirety of what was to happen, so I went to the sink and rinsed my mouth out.  I felt so much better that I decided to go back to bed.  I was not going to risk a bout of dry heaves by trying to clean it up thoroughly, but I did attempt to get the worst of it isolated with the towels we had been provided.  I did have the foresight to think just maybe I might have a little left to go, and rather than reacquaint myself with dinner I would open the shower door as my next target.  This may have been the best move I made all evening.

I managed to doze off again, probably for 20-30 minutes when lightening struck again.  This time my brain managed to send the signal to my body in time for me to hit my (admittedly larger now) target in spite of the greater range.  I proceeded to paint the shower with what appeared to be my undigested breakfast and lunch as well.  My miserable state was enough to wake up James.  He came in and saw the abstract art I had painted on the bathroom and shower wall.  “Dad, I didn’t know you could keep that much stuff in your stomach.”   This observation prompted a renewed attack of nausea, but fortunately, I had finally completed my review of my diet that day.

I then told James (who is and was very responsible) that he was going to have to try and clean it up.  Knowing that we didn’t have the right supplies, I called down to the front desk and explained what happend (or at least tried to) and asked them to bring us a bucket and a mop.  A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door and the clerk stood there with a small handful of towels, the sort that are as absorbent as soft and as aborbent as a steel wool pad.  When I asked him about the mop, he just looked at me like I was stupid and told me he’d brought what I had asked for.  Realizing I was going to get nowhere, I took the towels and thanked him.

James pushed the stuff on the floor around with the towels, but it wasn’t going to work, they would have had to bring a mass of towels roughly the size of my body to clean the mess up.  I’d already paid for the room, so we checked out early.   Leaving the mess behind, James and I swore we would never go near that Motel 6 in Clovis, New Mexico again.