She hadn't been to The Blue Moon since her college days. No scratch that. The place hadn't opened until a year after graduation.

She had not been to The Blue Moon Cafe since she was 25. That was when she finally departed from that wretched town.

Everything about

Westcity

was wretched. The people. The buildings. Even the color. The attitude soaked into almost all of the 41 square miles.

Her memories living there could not be classified objectively as good. She was fond of them however. Her days now could be seen by others as good. Yet she was less fond of today.

She returned this

winter

to revisit the fondness. She knew nobody who still lived here. At least no one who would want to talk to her. Could it be called a return, if nobody there awaited her?

She was now 30. Had gotten used to the number recently. Now 31 was already around the corner. Seemingly less happened in the 2nd half of her twenties than the first. Yet she herself felt more changed by the last few years than the prior.

A thought came to her. Would it always be like this? All of life's change happening in the past few years, causing all that which came before it to seem trivial?

No her dad told her. When you die you'll finally see it all as one piece. He said. She thought of this while driving on the highway to Westcity. No music playing this time. Just the sound of the heater. The hum of the engine. And the sound of wind.

There was a commercial airport in the city. However the flights to it were limited. She chose instead to fly elsewhere and drive in with a rental 

car

.

She had wanted something with good fuel economy. The only thing available was a large 

SUV

. The man at the car rental tried to convince her that cars nowadays had great gas mileage. That big SUV will have better gas mileage than a small station wagon from 15 years ago! He said. She didn't believe him fully. But it was nice to think that her large SUV wasn't the worse offender on the road.

There were many trucks that she saw on the highway. Some spewed black smoke. She had recently heard from a friend who was interested in commodities trading that the 

United States

consumed 19 million barrels of 

oil

each day. When she told him she was flying to go on vacation he got excited and told her that a commercial airplane burned on average one gallon of jet fuel a second.

He always knew how to make her feel uneasy about any decision she made. It felt nice to be alone in the car heading to this place of her past.