Day Twelve: Truck Day

The start was in Arkansas, the morning so hot and humid that my sunglasses fogged up as soon as we left the motel room.

Arkansas looks a lot like Tennessee, which looks a lot like Virginia, which looks a lot like West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania ... you must understand that aside from the topography, and the strangely brown rivers, ponds, streams, we weren't seeing much that was different. I saw a few butterfly weed wildflowers today, but nothing took my breath away.

After the first hour of "same old" I saw a truck carrying something (I have no idea what) with massive chains securing the load to the flat of the truck. I wished my camera had been ready to take a picture of it.

That's it! A quest! I unpacked my camera and prepared to take pictures of Things on the Back of Trucks.

My friend Bill (see above post of Day Nine) is fond of doing projects that are a series, in part because once you have a series, you find yourself doing multiple works instead of just one effort and then lying down on a sybaritic couch with wine and goodies to congratulate yourself. Thus, the idea of a photo series excited me with the prospect of at least six hours to exercise my photographic skills.

I snapped pics of trucks as we overtook them, looking for something interesting, juggling the zoom, trying to ride the bumps in the road. A silly project, to be sure, but instead of hating the slow trucks we got stuck behind, I welcomed the prospect; and it kept me alert and watching, rather than yawning and checking my watch and map over and over again.

As we overtook trucks on the two-lane I-40 West, I felt giddily akin to the Plains Indians as they rode alongside the buffalo on horseback, poised to let fly an arrow into the heart of the thundering beasts at close range. Rumbling along the rough road, I would position my camera at my window: if Bernie was passing them too quickly, I'd miss my shot; if a bump in the road bounced me, I'd get something I wasn't aiming at; if I didn't aim right, the camera would automatically focus on the smashed bugs on the windshield and not the truck I wanted.

No, it wasn't an exhilarating experience, but it did make the day pass quickly. In fact, by the time the drive was nearly done, and I had to put the camera away, I was moderately annoyed that about four trucks with really interesting loads appeared.

What to do with the pictures? I'm not yet sure, but I'm encouraged that I want to play with them in some manner.

Having vowed to stop early on the far side of Oklahoma City, we did so, but defected from our preference of Holiday Inn Express when we stopped there, only to find that they lied on their website and did not indeed accept pets. Over the fence we went, to La Quinta Inn, whose rooms have very high ceilings (airy-like) and is very pet-friendly. (Howie approves.) Though the wind and the heat made us feel blow-torched when we arrived, a swim in the cool indoor pool helped us to relax; I have two bottles of water in the mini-fridge for the morning draught, and their soap smells very, very nice. Tomorrow should put us in New Mexico.

I haven't decided whether or not to continue the "Trucks" series, but my camera battery is charging anyway.

Day Two: Evanston, Wyoming to ... North Platte, Nebraska

This lovely wind-and-rain carved stone overlooks the little city of Green River, Wyoming.

We stayed in this town the last time we came through here three years ago. We arrived at night and left in the wee hours before dawn, so I had been unable to appreciate the beauty of the land there.

Good thing there was beauty there (we stopped for breakfast) because the night in Evanston was a nightmare of broken sleep. The air conditioner of the Days Inn sounded like a jet engine being fired up in the room, the beds were uncomfortable, and the walls so paper thin that I knew exactly when the occupants of the next room started and finished coitus.

Howie was distressed from the long drive, and put his back up against mine. My goal for the night was "any sleep at all" and "do not disturb Bernie" -- he was so tired. At one point during the night, Howie put all four of his feet up against the base of my spine and pushed gently. It was a strangely comforting feeling, and I think that's when I finally fell asleep.

Again, the day's trek was broken by accursed road repairs. I know the infrastructure of the roads of the US is crumbling, and needs desperately to be fixed, but what a pain in the ass to fall father and farther behind in our travel. Good thing we had set our goal as North Platte, Nebraska, because to have gone farther would have kilt us.

Night Two of the Return: Rawlins, Wyoming

I'm so tired my body can't understand that it's exhausted.

We covered 950 miles today, from Davenport, Iowa to Rawlins, Wyoming. Bernie dozed for a while today while I drove out a tankful of gas on the long, long, long, mobius strip of Nebraska. He likes to drive; driving makes me irritable and nervous. Riding as a passenger makes him faintly motion-sick; the only problem I have with being a passenger is the amount of shit I muster around my feet (maps, tourbooks, purse, camera, bottles of water, notebook, etc.)

We're hoping to be home again tomorrow night sometime. I'll drive in Nevada, at least. 80 mph and no challenges, I can do that. Bernie can sleep and then take us through the winding mountain lanes over the Sierras.

Howie continues to be perfect, though I can see that he's a bit tired of the stress of traveling, too. He has a hard time focusing on taking a pee and poop if both his "parents" aren't in sight. He's going to be a case once we're home and one of us has to leave -- or both -- and he's not loaded into the car.

Not wishing to insult Nebraska at all ... the rest stops were lovely, the regularity of I-80's services adequate (except for toilet seat covers, which Nebraskan authorities really ought to consider), and the people were nice ...

God help us, Nebraska looks the same from Omaha to Kearney. That's a lot of hours where everything looks like what you saw five minutes before. Hours. Something like eight or nine hours where everything looks the same as it did five minutes before. Even the road kills of possum, raccoon, and deer are indistinguishable. I had to turn on the radio in order to keep myself in crabby adrenaline for driving. Otherwise, I would have fallen asleep from sheer lack of sensory input. Nice state -- but where do they have a Macy's??

Put that also on the list for Nebraskan legislators. Thank you.

More Oddly-Interlocked Things Than You Can Shake a Stick At

June 27, 2007

So we made the leap, and shot off in the dark morning air, shivering in the Vibe in spite of our jackets. Full of trepidation, we headed north on Highway 99 to meet the transcontinental Interstate 80, which would take us from California to Pennsylvania.

2673 miles, two adults and a Howie, a tent, bedding, and two scanty bags with just enough clothes to get by. Yes, off we went, and in Reno, Nevada (read into this that we only traveled two hours or less before we had to stop and buy the things I'd forgotten to pack: paper towels, doggie poop bags, doggie treats, and something else that was the most essential on the list but which I have already forgotten again) after we stopped to let Howie do his morning thing, I was bitten twice on the face by mosquitoes. Nothing like traveling while sporting pimple-like structures on the face. Serves me right, I should have been keeping up with my grape seed extract, the taste of which mosquitoes seem to hate.

We stopped for lunch in Winnemucca, where I was bitten on the leg by a fly. Yes, a fly. My skin swelled in a patch about four inches across and burned like fire. Damn flies.

After that, however, it was clear sailing across the empty expanses of Nevada, for hours and hours and hours. Thrills. Highlights? Nightingale Hot Springs. When I once again have unlimited internet access, I must investigate them. The steam rising from them looked like smoke. Got to figure out how to work that into a story somehow.

Hours and hours and hours. I wondered if we would camp for the night in Elko, Nevada, or push on towards Salt Lake; the desire to see the white sea of the Utah salt flats again was irresistible, and we did indeed push on.

We stopped at a rest stop on the far side of Salt Lake City, and when we let Howie out, we were arrested by a sign that said, "Watch for snakes and scorpions". Suddenly camping out didn't seem like a very good idea at all. Instead of looking for campgrounds, we opted to drive for another couple hours to Green River, Wyoming, where there was an affordable small hotel that allowed pets. Pets, no scorpions. It was good.

Remembering that we had once driven from Des Moines, Iowa to Cheyenne, Wyoming in a day's jaunt, we set off in the morning with the goal of getting to Des Moines, to spend the night with Filthy Pikers Cheryl and Terry Haimann. We forgot that the time change works against the traveler who goes from West to East, and we utterly underestimated how much of the busiest parts of the interstate would be messed up due to construction. We missed our ETA in Des Moines by two hours, though along the way, in Wyoming, we did see more pronghorn antelope than we could count. And a moose, grazing in a small pond!

We thought we could get to Pennsylvania in one more day. The miles were right. We were hyped. We got up early and set off ... and then hit so much damn roadwork that we lost three full hours of driving time. And then there was the reduction of speed: west, the limit was 75 mph. East, the best pace was 65. Remember those math questions from junior high about speed and distance traveled? No lie, you can't get as far as fast at 65 mph. Or at 55. Or at 45. Or at "Road Work: 15 MPH."

Exhausted and brain-fried, we stopped in Elysia, Ohio, at a scrumptious little hotel that allowed us to have Howie and only charged $60. We slept there the sleep of the emotionally and physically exhausted, but that was where the coincidences kicked in.

We had free Wi-Fi, and wanted to book our stay at a hotel in Pennsylvania that was in the right town and allowed pets. Bernie called up the hotel's website -- and found that they no longer allowed any pets. Campgrounds in the area did not allow pets. "We're screwed," he said to me.

"Coincidentally" I had just emailed my friend of 47 years, Bill, to let him know we would be in the area. He replied in seconds, because he was on his computer, too. Bill owns an apartment building, and though my next step in the "screwed traveler" occupation was to try to book a hotel some 40 minutes away from where we wanted to be, I flippantly asked if he had an empty apartment we could rent for a week.

The answer was within seconds again. Bill did have an empty apartment. And although we didn't camp out at all as intended, we did have an inflatable air mattress and bedding in the car.

I nominated Bill as Landlord of the Year, and thus, here we are, in an apartment, saving major amounts of dollars, our dog with us, and just spent an hour standing on the porch, cooling off to the feel of a thunderstorm's rain. The apartment is lovely ... and COINCIDENTALLY ... just happens to be three houses up from where we lived when we were still in Pennsylvania. Familiar street, familiar sounds. Too bad all the neighbors are different from 20 years ago.

The houses are the same, though. And so is the beguiling sound of thunder as the evening storms roll in.

Good and Ick

Cleveland. Six hours short of goal.

The cross-country road trip has been both good and bad. We had intended to find campsites and throw up the tent and giggle under the stars, but our first night found us in terrain in which signs exhorted us to check for rattlesnakes and scorpions. Scorpions! Scorpions are funny in comics, but loathsome in any other setting. And they are bugs. They crawl into shit just because they can. Neither of us was happy about the rattlesnake thing, either, but a snake would just as soon avoid something as big as a person; who knows what scorpions would do?

So we pushed on until after dark on the road, and traveled from Ripon, California to Green River, Wyoming, and took a hotel room.

From Green River we made it to Des Moines, Iowa, to spend an all-too-brief visit with Cheryl, Poetry Editor for the Piker Press. (it felt like coming home, but that's a subject for a future post)

Today we basically halved our journey output, due to @#!!#&! (please add your very worst epithets to that symbolic array) construction delays, and thus are brain-fried and ready to rest for a night.

The bad is that we are delayed for a day in reaching our destination.

The good is that these days have allowed us to talk at length about what things need to be done, what things can be done, and what things we actually expect will be done. Had we flown back east, we would have gone from anxiety to panic to turmoil; driving allowed us to go from anxiety to wonder to irritation to wonder to deep discussion to wonder to hating roadwork to wonder to more discussion to ... acceptance of the hard choices we are going to have to make.