This is an excerpt from Jack Kerouac's "On the Road":

In the middle of the night we overtopped the lights of Palm Springs from a mountain road. Atdawn, in snowy passes, we labored toward the town of Mojave, which was the entryway to thegreat Tehachapi Pass. The Okie woke up and told funny stories; sweet little Alfred sat smiling. Okietold us he knew a man who forgave his wife for shooting him and got her out of prison, only to beshot a second time. We were passing the women’s prison when he told it. Up ahead we sawTehachapi Pass starting up. Dean took the wheel and carried us clear to the top of the world. Wepassed a great shroudy cement factory in the canyon. Then we started down. Dean cut off the gas,threw in the clutch, and negotiated every hairpin turn and passed cars and did everything in thebooks without the benefit of accelerator. I held on tight. Sometimes the road went up again briefly;he merely passed cars without a sound, on pure momentum. He knew every rhythm and every kickof a first-class pass. When it was time to U-turn left around a low stone wall that overlooked thebottom of the world, he just leaned far over to his left, hands on the wheel, stiff-armed, and carried itthat way; and when the turn snaked to the right again, this time with a cliff on our left, he leaned far tothe right, making Marylou and me lean with him. In this way we floated and flapped down to the SanJoaquin Valley. It lay spread a mile below, virtually the floor of California, green and wondrous fromour aerial shelf. We made thirty miles without using gas.