Dante's Inferno!

I've been kicking this one around a while and finally got motivated to finish it when I saw this months image challenge over at Gnomon of Dante's Inferno. I got inspired for this one driving down a wide open country road just east of the foothills between Boulder and Louisville CO. In the middle of blistering hot August day, a couple of road workers were filling potholes and touching up the asphalt with these long propane torches. It struck me as a sort of vision of hell to be out on such a hot day dressed in protective gear and torching a wide open, heat rippled expanse. Anyway that vision stuck with me for a while until I've finally purged it to pixel paint!