This year's trip to Art Car Weekend was to be the Project Trip. Not only was I planning to drive Whip It! to Houston and back; I also planned to take part in various projects:

1. The Payphone Project (to gather payphone numbers)

2. The Degree Confluence Project (to photograph latitude/longitude intersections)

3. The Boxoffice Project (to review films at Houston's film festival for Boxoffice magazine)

4. The Earring Project (to hunt down & purchase earrings for a friend--earrings allegedly available only in Lordsburg, New Mexico)

Whip It! scotched them all. (Or at least three out of four.) Instead of the Project Trip, I had unknowingly embarked on the Contingency Trip. The Vanity of Human Wishes Trip. The Open Hood Trip. The Talk to God Trip. I already knew how difficult it can be to drive an art car thousands of miles. I already knew that breakdowns are an everyday possibility with a three-and-a-half-decades-old automobile.

But Whip It! had yet more lessons to teach . . . .