For the first eleven days in Mesa I didn’t get a damn thing except heartburn. On the twelfth day I was hanging out under the Super 8 sign with the other losers—most of them drinking Night Train, me doing shots of Milanta—when a posse of Mad Max-looking blind guys with welding masks, canes and target pistols all piled into a rust-colored ’66 Dodge A100 van driven by a kid who was maybe—maybe—fourteen. My Pinto had died on me on day four and I had traded it for an ’81 Littlejohn BMX bike (the other dude got the ass-end of that deal), so there I was, clown-bikin’ after the A100 with my knees around my ears. Luckily the kid couldn’t drive stick worth a damn, so I was able to catch up pretty good every time he had to shift.