We leave for California Saturday afternoon, shucking across Tennessee and Arkansas as a line of late-summer thunderstorms shoulder their way East. My wife, Beth, is four and a half months pregnant with our first child. She rides in the passenger seat with a hand on her belly where the ultrasound technicians wave their magic wands to make those impossible images show. Little feet. Little hands: our entire future swimming around in a water balloon just below her navel.

We're heading west because we've always wanted to, and because in five months, it'll be impossible for us to do something foolish like jump in our convertible and head for the Pacific.

Beth and I got married young, right out of college, and in the months leading up to the wedding, there was no shortage of friends telling us to keep away from the altar. They had a point. We'd known each other since high school and dated off and on. We'd cozy up and spin apart in spectacular fashion.

When we started dating again Beth's junior year of college, she made it clear: she was done with the back and forth. We were either going to be together forever or not at all. Three years later, we stood in the Virginia sun as her father pronounced us husband and wife. I pulled her close, breathed in the honeysuckle sweetness of her perfume, and kissed her as my spouse for the first time. With the satin of her wedding dress on my fingertips, I whispered my first words to my new wife:

"We made it."

2006 Mazda Miata Zach Bowman

A year later, I stood in our living room trying to explain how I'd fallen in love with someone else; how I didn't know it was possible to love two people so entirely and separately at the same time. I have never been so cruel or so selfish, so greedy. Her face screamed the words she wouldn't say. Disappointment. Hurt. Fury. Betrayal. I would have rather cut myself open from navel to neck than said those words. It felt like I had. But she didn't scream or curse. We were squared off in separate corners of the room. She crossed the space with paced determination, put her arms around me, and held me as close as she did the day we were married.

Beth and I have always used cars to put ourselves together. We can get in, cover a couple hundred miles, and remind ourselves why we put up with each other, or more specifically, why she puts up with me. Twelve months after that night in the living room, there were still plenty of pieces left on the ground. I'd stayed because I loved my wife, and because I'd stood in front of our friends and family on our wedding day, looked into her eyes and promised that I would always love her. That was it. A promise.

When Beth's birthday rolled around the following year, I did something for both of us. I flew into Tampa and brought back a bright red 2006 Miata with 80,000 miles on the clock. I handed her the keys when I got home. Having a car with two seats and a trunk the size of a carry on rewires you pretty quickly. You only take what you need in that moment. There's no space for the murky future, no room for contingencies.

The population pitters out as we blow through Oklahoma on the second day. The speed limit leaps up, and we cover ground at a righteous clip, only putting the top up for the most brutal hours of the day. We're in Oklahoma City in time for brunch, pop across Texas, and catch dinner in Albuquerque. We thumb through mid-continent radio stations and play the same CDs on repeat, the sound blurred by wind noise and the howl of our little four cylinder. Beth and I have been together most of our adult lives, and we're content to just sit together and watch the country change its clothes.

2006 Mazda Miata Beth Bowman

We're rolling with the time change, and the extra hours give us more daylight to travel by. When the sun finally grows weary of our chasing and sinks below the hills, we're in Arizona. Beth curls up and sleeps in the passenger seat. The top's down and the air's cool as we head for Flagstaff. The sky is dark and clear, and the Milky Way glimmers from horizon to horizon. When we finally stop for the night, we've blown 1,100 miles in a single day.

I want to say any car could have helped stitch the wounds I inflicted on us, but I know that's not true. There's something about the Miata. The top goes back in the time it takes to look at each other. Flip the latch, drop the canvas, and you're no longer riding across the world. You're in it, a part of it. Wide fields of wildflowers fill your nose before you see the first petal, and the grit and dust of construction labor sticks to your teeth well past the last orange barrel. You drive until you can smell the rain heavy on the air, and when the first drops hit the windshield, you point the nose for a break in the clouds and go a little quicker. Having that wide-open sky up above pulls you out of your head. You want to live in each moment fully, to hold onto each strand of time even as it pulls through your fingers.

It's a far cry from where we were. Being married young and hungry isn't some romantic trip. We spent our first two years running from fire to fire, me trying to kick in a foothold in the writing business and Beth doing her best to adjust to a new life four hours from her family. We worked constantly, for little money, or, in my case, none at all. I was worried about everything but my marriage: getting employed or staying that way, keeping the lights on or the refrigerator full. Beth picked up odd jobs waitressing or working for a collections agency just to keep us upright. We fell into a routine that devalued the most precious thing in our lives: being together.

In the morning, the Grand Canyon sits to the north. The winding and lonesome two lane headed to Sedona is to the south. There's not time for the both of them. I fill up the car in the cool morning air and watch a wagon train of RVs loaded with bicycles and mobility scooters trundle away from the station. They point their snouts towards the Grand Canyon. Beth looks up from the passenger seat.

"Let's go to Sedona."

Headed to Sedona Beth Bowman

The asphalt on 89A tumbles away from Flagstaff in an indecisive ribbon. Sparse traffic pulls to the side and points us by with a wave. Near-vertical bluffs loom over the road, shading us as we pass through. We dart from one splash of sunlight to the next, and the temperature jumps a good 15 degrees with each transition.

The air's heavy with the smell of pine as we break out into the first real clearing and eye Sedona's improbable red spires for the first time. A year from now, I won't remember sweating to death in Texas or listening to the Oklahoma wind play tympani on the soft top, but the look of the desert in my lover's eyes is a thing that will stay with me until they put me in the ground.

The Miata was something new for Beth. Her family never looked at a car as anything other than a tool for getting the brood from one place to another, and she was raised on a parade of faithful beaters that were big on character and short on things like air conditioning or reliable fourth cylinders. She'd never had a chance to fall for a car, to love one both wholly and irrationally, but that's what she found in our NC. We took it everywhere, collecting states like stamps in short order. We skipped time on the couch for nowhere drives through the county, abandoned sleeping in on Sunday mornings for pre-dawn blasts up the Blue Ridge Parkway to Asheville for brunch. We spent less time occupying the same space and more hours enjoying each other.

We grab breakfast at the Coffee Pot in downtown Sedona, scarfing down omelets the size of hubcaps and drinking water by the pitcher. When we finish, we keep our nose pointed south. We stick to 89A, winding it up through mule roads of Jerome and into the mountains pressed against the tiny town's back before turning north and heading to Las Vegas.

We tumble into town hours later. We're here to meet a few friends: other guys and girls with a set of Miata keys in their pockets. Three years ago, I co-drove in the Targa Newfoundland with the Flyin' Miata team. I spent six days crammed into the cabin of a supercharged NC with Brandon Fitch, a tech with the company. He's here, along with his wife, Leigh. Keith Tanner ran Targa that year in his V8-powered NA. He's here too, trailering his little monster to Monterey for the Miata's 25th Anniversary gathering. There's Adam Costa and his wife Tracy. They filmed all the minor catastrophes that unfolded during the week for the documentary Racing the Rock. Fellow R&T Editor Alex Kierstein rolls into town in the unflappable Million-Mile Miata a couple of hours later.

They're the kind of crew you keep around forever, and we would have never crossed paths with them if it weren't for these goofy little convertibles. We laugh about sunburns and the foolishness of blasting across a continent just to turn around and go home. We eat dinner beneath an approximation of the Eiffel Tower and watch rental Lamborghinis bash their rev limiters on the strip. We press our noses against the glass at the Ferrari dealer in the basement of another interchangeable casino. Three days ago, we were sitting in our living room clicking through Netflix and shoving pizza down our throats.

Miatas in Vegas Zach Bowman

The sun does cruel things to Las Vegas, and the next day, we're all a little anxious to get the hell out of here. The radiator cap on our car is throwing a fit as we clog the valet stand with a passel of Miatas, so Tanner pulls the one off the V8 car in his trailer and tosses it my way until we can find a replacement. Tanner's a sneaky guy, and I'm not sure if he's helping or just offering the first toke on the V8 conversion pipe. The first hit is, predictably, free.

We spend the morning driving up out of the low desert. Tanner splits off, taking his truck and trailer the easy way north while the rest of us gun for Angeles Crest. California always makes an easy case for itself up here. We're less than an hour from the tangled hell of freeway traffic in the valley, but on an early afternoon in the middle of the week, there's no one in the hills but us. The road tucks and curls around itself as it moves along the ridge sides. We're all grinning like fools as we take turns chasing each other through the sparse evergreens and exposed rock before falling into Ventura for a cheap motel, conch fritters, and good drinks on the pier.

We drive back from dinner, skirting the shore under the silhouettes of indifferent palm trees. The night air's cool coming off of the Pacific. I'm struck by how easy it was to get here. It was a choice, a simple decision. That's the Miata in a nutshell: a rolling choice that tips the scales just enough for you to risk the long way home. Four years after that night in our living room, our marriage is the same way. We make the choice to love each other every day. We can complicate it all we want in our minds, mire it in ifs and maybes, saddle it with complexities of every nature, but it's our call, minute to minute, second to second.

Betty in the mountains Beth Bowman

In the morning, we head for Ojai, follow 33 out of the national forest and into the petroleum wasteland just outside of Taft. We drive through endless fields of oil derricks, all bobbing their heads in patient syncopation. When we can no longer stand the sand in our teeth, we grab the twisted tail of highway 58 and head back for the shore. The road contorts back on itself again and again, and the car's happy to cut through the slow second-gear turns. Beth and I catch glimpses of the others on the road below, splotches of color and noise on the gold hills. She waves and laughs into the wind.

The country greens up as we head towards the water, and the shadows are just starting to grow long when we reach the Pacific. A pod of humpbacks show their dorsals just off shore. We're awash in the salt-smell of the sea and the warm late-summer sun. It's all so impossibly beautiful, so perfect I can hardly bear it.

Miatas at the Pacific Zach Bowman

Beth and I wanted to drive Highway 1 for our honeymoon, but couldn't afford it. Driving along the coast now with her hand in mine and a line of friends behind us, I know we wouldn't have appreciated it then as we do now. It feels like something earned, something grasped at the last possible moment. I look at my wife in the passenger seat. Her excitement is contagious. She's glowing with it. She's grinning and looking through me at the water rocking against the low cliffs, a few strands of hair whipping around her face in the California wind.

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