mileage: adrenaline road is here. highway drama. coincidence. reflection. near death.

mileage is a true story about a 14,000 mile road trip around the united states.

mileage is available for purchase and download as an ebook. right now.

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The second propane canister had broken from the coupling and a cloud of flame was billowing out of it like a flamethrower. I scrambled backwards and tripped over my stool and scraped my hands and knees in the gravel and then stumbled up. We ran for the car and in the windows of it was a clear reflection of two silhouettes sprinting towards us from their own cloud of flame.

Then we were hunched panting behind the car, gawking through the windows at the canister. Any second it would explode in a holocaust of flying metal. Our small camp was going to be annihilated. We hunkered there and waited.

It kept not happening. The wait was excruciating. And after a minute Hoyt said he thought he could fix it.

“What?”

“I can fix it.” He scurried out from behind the car.

He approached the canister opposite its flame. When he reached it he drew back a foot and kicked. The canister wheeled and the flame spewed around like a rogue firehose and he dodged and kicked again. It bounced across the sandstone, the flame spinning and Hoyt dancing around it and his shadow leaping wildly away from him in various directions. I caught on: he was going to kick it over the nearby cliff. It would go bounding down the rocky slope and over the vertical edge and then detonate in descent like a well executed stunt.

Apparently he'd had another idea, and whatever it was wasn’t working. He quit kicking and ran and got a paper bag from our pile of gear and ran back and bent down and seemed to caress the canister with the bag. As though he were trying to quell it.

Soon the bag caught fire as well, and his form was half disappeared in the growing flames and he was crouched over the burning assemblage like a sorcerer in the midst of a summoning gone badly wrong...

***

get mileage through the mattbonner.com store. when your order is processed, you'll be sent a link to download the book in .pdf format (the free adobe acrobat reader is available here).

it's that easy.

get mileage now.

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All contents ©2007 Matt Bonner, Red Ember Publishing, Deckboard Music, and/or Stone Circle Records, except where noted.