Where'd I go? Part 2

Riley was pretty excited that we didn't leave him behind.

Oh, the humanity.

The orange flames made us faster . . .

The Drive

In the space of 10 days I spent about 60 hours staring through a windshield. Sure, that’s nothing by long-distance trucker standards, but I ain’t no trucker.

First was the drive to Grass Valley to meet up with my dad, then I got to ride shotgun while he did all the driving to and from Ferndale, then I had to get myself home. That was about 12 hours total. Then I got home to a flurry of packing and cleaning. Monday we packed, Tuesday we cleaned. Wednesday we left Reno. Mapquest says it’s about 48 hours to drive from Reno, NV to Gloucester, MA, and about 2900 miles. It’s not quite all the way across the country, but pretty damn close. We have two cars, 2 cats, 1 dog, and 5 bikes (which is well down from what it was just a month ago). As such, we each drove solo, accompanied only by our furry friends and the sound of eachother’s wisecracks through the walkie-talkies we brought. And, in my case anyway, several audiobooks. It probably took us a little longer than Mapquest predicted because we were towing a trailer with the Jetta and we put all the heavy stuff in the back of my ol’ Hombre. What I mean is, we rarely could go faster than 60, except for those stretches of Nebraska where we had a killer tailwind and we could kick it up to 65.

We started with the kitties in a crate in the Jetta and Riley with me. This was my idea, as I thought the kitties would overheat if they were crammed in a crate in my non-air-conditioned truck. Unfortunately, Cody and the cats have a relationship of mutual dislike but forced tolerance (forced by yours truly, of course). What can I say – Cody is not a cat person and they’re perceptive little buggers. After a day and a half of listening to the cats yelling at him, and repeated attempts to drown it out with music and ear plugs, Cody couldn’t take anymore and we swapped furry friends. Riley thought it was great that he was finally allowed to ride shotgun in the Jetta, and the cats were so thrilled to either get out of the crate or get away from Cody that they stopped hollering and found cozy places to sleep.

Anyway, most of the trip is kind of a blur of staring at the back of the trailer (I just followed Cody the whole time). We stayed in Motel 6s, which, along with the food, got progressively worse as we entered the Midwest and improved again as we approached the East Coast. When we finally crossed out of Ohio and into Pennsylvania I privately to never, ever, ever live in the Midwest. As a matter of fact, the Pennsylvania Motel 6 on our last night was the nicest of the trip (although the Wyoming one wasn’t half bad either).

Saturday was our shortest day and when we got to our nice Motel 6 we had time to go for a walk and go out to dinner. We walked to a little diner really close to our hotel and were thrilled to be eating non-fast food. We even got ice cream (because there’s nothing you need more after spending 10 hours a day in a car than a bunch of empty calories!). I got a Frownie, which I found hilarious and also worthy of mention. The other funny thing was our waiter, who, whenever I would say thank you, which was quite frequent because I’m so fucking polite, would respond with . . . wanna guess? No, it wasn’t “you’re welcome”, or “no problem” or anything like that. He would say “Yes.” Just like that. Totally deadpan and serious. I loved it, and kept saying thank you to elicit more Yes’s. It was awesome. I think I love Pennsylvania. Or, I loved it until the next day, when we got a flat tire on the trailer. This was actually kind of scary, since we were going 60+ on the freeway and one of the tires totally blew out, and started smoking as it ground down. I expected the trailer to flip over off of the road and drag Cody to a horrible firey death, but it maintained its vertical integrity and we were able to safely stop to fix the flat. But I’m getting to the part about not liking PA anymore. As we were stopped we noticed that there were HUGE MILLIPEDES EVERYWHERE! Yes, HUGE FUCKING MILLIPEDES! Okay, I only saw a couple, but come on, ONE is too many. Anyway, we had a spare tire and got the trailer up and rolling again and proceeded on our way. That day was the day of crazy drivers too, further affirming my suspicion that east coast drivers suck. No offense or anything, crazy East coast people, but you’re crazy.

We left on Wednesday and arrived in Gloucester on Sunday evening, just in time for dinner. It was a surreal feeling to finally be here, with my cats and dog and all my earthly belongings. To tell myself, “We’re home.” Still getting used to it – well, duh, we’ve only been here a week and a half. But we’re mostly unpacked now and I think I have a job, which I’ll tell you all about if I actually get it. Now I should probably go do something productive with my day, like ride my bike or find some internet access so I can actually publish this post.