gypsy morning

a few days ago, i was riding w/ dad toward Minneapolis at 5:30 a.m. and the fog was so thick, we could only see about 15 yards in front of the car. the world is very quiet at that hour. it was still dark, and it was easy to imagine that we were nomads (probably gypsies) trying to cover as much ground that day as we could, braving the dangers of the early darkness to try to reach our destination.
for a while there was a car just far enough ahead of us on the road that all i could make out were its fuzzy red tail lights. so i decided those were the glowing red eyes of some dangerous creature, watching our caravan. actually, unless you knew to look for the lights, they were very easy to miss, making them even creepier.
i had all sorts of other metaphorical substitutions for things i saw along the way, but by the time we reached the suburbs, the game was wearing off, and there's really no mystical explanation for a HOM store or a McDonald's. but it's easy to think that way when it's 5:30 and i've been up for 15 minutes.