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"Utah has this funny way of way taking what you think you know and dumping it out on the ground for a good mussing. Boulder was brilliant and comfortable, and spending a Saturday night drinking cold beer, wrenching on a bike, and tearing down a dirt road in shorts, sandals, and a borrowed helmet felt too much like home. It was like glimpsing another life. I thought, for instance, that I knew what it meant for a place to be heartbreakingly beautiful, but standing at an overlook off of Route 12 on the way out of town, I was met with a new understanding. Looking over the tortured valley behind us, I wanted to stay. I wanted to take a page from the crazy bastards who came here first and send for my wife back East. I wanted to buy the little gas station in town, fix up a tow truck and spend the rest of my nights reading a little, writing a lot, and waiting for the next fool to run himself off the road. That&amp;#039;s how you know a place has gotten into your bones.  RELATED: Photos: Million-Mile Miata, Sedona to Boulder Climbing up the mountain out of the valley, I could feel that life slipping through my fingers, and It hurt.  Cantle&amp;#039;s as quiet as I am as he rings the Miata&amp;#039;s neck up Highway 12. If we&amp;#039;re not going to stay, we best get the hell on. The car floats and wiggles and shakes so hard I think we&amp;#039;re going to lose the windshield. It&amp;#039;s the most playful three-legged dog you&amp;#039;ve ever met, and the three of us chase our way up the bluff to find snow lurking in the shadows. I dial in some heat, and we keep the top down as we plink over the other side and into the crossroads at Torrey. The landscape changes so quickly here. We wander from green hills to bare red-rock desert in minutes. Everything is in contrast, and I can&amp;#039;t shake the shock of it. Torn red earth spits at the blue sky in juts and jags with only a perfect two-lane road to split the bickering.  RELATED: The Million-Mile Miata&amp;#039;s 3500-mile Daytona odyssey - Part 1 Halfway through the Capitol Reef National Park, we catch up to a bone-stock second-generation Prelude and fall into every mid-&amp;#039;90s daydream I&amp;#039;ve ever had. The Honda&amp;#039;s keen to show us around, and we spend the next hour sprinting through an impossible canyon with more spirit than sense. A pair of bikes join in on our merry chase halfway through. We make gaps in the corners. They close them in the straights. When our caravan reaches Hanksville, the Prelude pulls off and the driver drops his window. He gives us a hearty wave and a big grin. We respond in kind. The road forks. We head north, the bikes head south, and within minutes we find ourselves in the middle of a cinematic wasteland. The road is perfectly straight. It draws out into improbable points ahead of us and behind us. Cantle sticks the speedometer at 90, and it doesn&amp;#039;t seem to make a difference. We never catch the CR-V ahead of us.  RELATED: This menacing Miata is like nothing you&amp;#039;ve ever seen That&amp;#039;s what I&amp;#039;m learning about life out here. You travel at Eastern arrest-me speeds just to get anywhere. In a place where there&amp;#039;s lots of nothing between you and where you&amp;#039;re headed, you want to spend as little time in the middle as possible. We&amp;#039;ve been in the car for hours by the time we hit the interstate. It&amp;#039;s no small coincidence that cell reception arrives just in time for the driving to become tedious. We&amp;#039;re only an hour and a half from Grand Junction, but it feels longer. When we finally hit town, we&amp;#039;re hungry, tired, dehydrated, and have just enough sense not to arrive empty-handed.  RELATED: Introducing Road &amp;amp;amp; Track&amp;#039;s Million-Mile Miata Cold beer has lubricated the mechanisms of more than one marathon wrenching session, and Cantle and I found ourselves on a miniature quest for libations. We&amp;#039;d stumble into a grocery store sweaty, smeared with sunblock, and barking about alcohol. The locals would look around nervously and mutter something about beer barns in response. None of this made any sense to anyone involved until a cashier took pity and pointed us toward the correct establishment. Having successfully navigated the intricacies of local blue laws, we rattled our way through the peach groves just outside town to the Flyin&amp;#039; Miata shop. Follow all of the Million Mile Miata&amp;#039;s adventures on Facebook. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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