Mary and I had a fine time at Drinking Liberally last night. Religion and politics are dangerous topics for conversation, so of course that's all we talked about all night long. And then, since we were all liberal Democrats who agreed in general principle on just about everything, we had to argue vociferously about all the fine details. That was quite fun.

Unfortunately, I seem to be cursed when it comes to long road trips this summer. We took off on our three hour drive home, and all went smoothly until we were maybe ten minutes from Morris…then boom, I had a tire blow out on me. I pulled over to change it, and realized I had another problem.

Morris really is way out in the middle of nowhere; we were 5 miles in either direction from the nearest house. There are no street lights out there in the country, and it was an utterly moonless night, at 12:30 AM. We're talking dark. Far rural, not even a hint of urban haze, pitch blackness, and even the stars were obscured by clouds. And, I'm afraid, we didn't have a flashlight in the car, and Mary had left her cell phone with our daughter.

As a brave and manly man, I struggled valiantly to change the tire blindly. It was hung up on something, though, and as I grappled with it, I slashed my hand on whatever it was that popped the tire. I was bleeding badly, and my hands were slick with road grime and blood. This was not going well.

We were not going to be able to change that tire in the dark.

So, we decided we'd just walk home. Five or six miles is a manageable hike, right? Off we went, even though we could barely see the edge of the road.

On country highways in the middle of the night you can hear all kinds of things. There are swarms of insects in the brush creaking strange tunes, and once I heard something make a squeaky wet cough in a ditch—I had visions of having to fend off swarms of rabid vermin by stomping on them with my tennis shoes, and wished I'd brought the tire iron along. And then there was the infrequent aroma of rich, ripe roadkill. Yikes. This was not looking like a pleasant end to the evening.

We were trudging along, though, when we noticed something else. There was a light breeze, and the clouds were blown away, and the stars came out. When you're miles away from any house lights, you really see the stars, dense and bright. We could barely pick out the few constellations we knew, simply because they were mottled with too many stars.

Next we saw the shooting stars. It wasn't a major swarm of them, maybe one every five minutes or so, but it passed the time trying to spot them.

And then we looked straight up, and there was the Milky Way. Wow. Ever stood in the middle of a road in the wee hours of the morning, in a place where the brightest light is coming from that glowing band in the sky? It was spectacular.

The heavens weren't done with us yet. We looked to the right towards the northern horizon, and what do we see but shifting, glowing curtains of light—the aurora borealis! This was getting ridiculous. We were just a few comets shy of omens and portents. I expected a fiery chariot with wheels of luminescent diamonds to descend any moment and it's brilliant occupant to decree the beginning of my imperial reign, or something. It would have been fitting, I think.

After two hours of dazzling late night trekking, though, we finally arrived at Morris, and the town lights washed out all sky signs. Oh, well. Now I'm home and just waiting for the buzz to wear off (and my lacerated hand to stop throbbing) so I can get some sleep.

I don't know whether I need to stay home from now on, or whether I should aspire to take advantage of more automotive failures.