It’s that time of year, for summer vacays and road trips. I myself am not going anywhere—in this horrendous heat? But plenty of folks hook up their campers and fire up their RVs to hit the road, especially here in the West. I remember East Coast summer road trips always including awful traffic, sometimes due to omnipresent seasonal highway maintenance, but also due to crowds.
I once owned a coach-style RV while living in rural central Nevada, with a dream to travel the length of Route 50 from Sacramento, CA, more than three thousand miles to Ocean City, MD. It’s also known as Highway 50, or the “Loneliest Highway” in Nevada. These days you couldn’t get me in an RV due to nightmare experiences with a sociopath on that very highway, but my Other Worldly series protagonist Rowan Layne will embark on a summer road trip in my seventh novel, Aliens Watch, currently with my editor.
Rowan will travel in style because she does so in the sane company of aliens of the extraterrestrial kind. Plus, the camper in which she heads to the Wisconsin hills in July and Minnesota lakes in August isn’t your typical American gas-guzzling monstrosity, nor is the fancy pickup truck hauling it. Camper and car have cloaking and warp speed capability to safely sail past road traffic, and can also morph into an amphibious craft for submarine or air travel. The ultimate fantasy as far as I’m concerned.
I have another fantasy this time of year because, like Rowan, I long to escape the traumatic noise nightmare that July 4—as well as weeks leading up to it—has become. Not to mention the heinous hijacking and desecration of the American flag, the meaning of patriotism, and the promise of liberty by those who are neither patriots nor decent human beings. They are domestic terrorists—not so pure but definitely simple. A favorite quote seen this week on Twitter: Republicans don’t own July 4, they own January 6.
Here’s what Rowan has to say about that in the upcoming Aliens Watch. The story begins on July 3 with a scene on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, which happens to be on the aforementioned Route 50 in Maryland. Therein, Rowan refers to the latest anti-alien group known as Patriots Glare, or PG, along with HUMANS FIRST!, or HUFI, cretins who’ve previously wreaked violent havoc in my Other Worldly novels:
“Tomorrow is the flipping Fourth of July, which has turned into a grotesque act of performance patriotism with illegal commercial grade fireworks and actual gunfire. I have no intention of starting my engagement with PG—whose members will likely act in moronic lockstep with the HUFI hapless—on this day of independence. If I had my druthers, I’d spend it in a spacecraft submerged underwater, free of atrocious noise for the sanity of me and my critters, beginning tonight. Because you know these poser-patriot punks never wait for the actual day of celebration to be unmitigated terrorizing assholes.”
I wish there was somewhere I could go with my critters like Rowan does in Aliens Watch, to escape relentless abuse from those who are in no way are celebrating our nation’s independence, not that we still have it after that appalling SCOTUS decision that completely ignored the actual Constitution, because it’s their aim to destroy democracy. As pursued by the Republican Party and the Federalist Society with its six bought-and-paid-for traitorous scumbags of SCOTUS.
It’s not possible to escape the auditory deluge in the Vegas Valley, and the choking haze that will follow. The absolute worst place I’ve ever been in terms of illegal firecrackers and cherry bombs that sound exactly like gun and cannon fire. Especially at midnight on Christmas Eve, with New Year’s Eve almost worse than July 4. Cretins here think any night is a good time to engage in domestic terrorism. As if their god bestowed an unfettered right to be selfish, mean, stupid, and downright dangerous. I hear it’s no better in many neighborhoods across the country.
It’s forecasted to reach 113 degrees here tomorrow on Independence Day, and 115 on Friday. No recent precipitation, and no rain in sight. I wouldn’t want be on a road trip anywhere near these parts either. Here’s hoping the idiots don’t manage to set the entire town on fire. Stay safe out there. If only there was an alien camper available…to launch into outer space.