but soon enough we were back in the penske and back on the road. and it was awesome. it ranged from farm to prairie to plain to mountain. it was lush, it was barren, it was in between. ranches dotted the landscape. herds roamed. the sky was huge and magnificent and unstoppable. it was driving across montana, on a sunny sunday morning that i had my new york magazine prophesied moment: listening to the national's high violet while sitting in a u-haul* (i didn't know about penske back when i made my new york magazine claims), the sun warming my arm, moving to the other side of the country for love. and it felt precisely as i thought it might, the land so big, the sun so warm, the sky so massive, my heart bursting with excitement and fear and love and being alive. montana held a lot of a-ha moments for me, i was pretty good at having them when ryan was napping or i had sunglasses on, best for everyone that way. but me and montana, we bonded. the landscape, the reality, the unfolding new chapter brought me to tears many times within her borders. she took it, she took it all in her magnificent and massive expanse. in a matter of simple osmosis, so much of the tangled saturated volume of everything that was tied up in tight, confined, new york-paced, high-strung julia poured out like simple scientific law demands from higher concentration to lower, in an attempt to create a balance. i am not religious, in the traditional sense of the word, i never have been, it's never served me, it's never been there for me, and too much has happened for me not to know with all my heart and soul that it is people and words and actions that matter and make things better or worse, not lip service to an institution. my break with belief in someone else's god and someone else's set of rules came young and is a conversation for another time and place. the point here is that there were moments on this road trip when the natural world around me gave me an experience that was, for me, what i can only describe as religious: a moment of clarity, a moment of alignment, a moment of peace, a moment of understanding. there is so much simplicity and so much complexity in the natural world, and it's breathtakingly beautiful if you stop to see it from time to time. i know now that though i may be quite adept at diving beneath the surface, jumping on the fast train and being a slave to the grind, i will not ever feel at peace with myself and i will not ever feel truly fulfilled if i can't have more time like i had in montana (and then in yellowstone). i am grateful, to my core, for my time in big sky country.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
and sometimes things are just like you claim they will be in new york magazine.
oh montana. big sky country indeed. we hit it at sunset, a pretty spectacular thing. then we stopped for the night after a looooooooooong day of driving in glendive, montana. somehow we ended up with pretty much the last room in town. a town where seemingly everything shuts down at 8pm. and also a town where teenagers step right off the set of a tv show, forehead piercings and brightly colored hair streaks a requirement for the role of small town, dissatisfied rebel without a cause. most of these rebel clones seem to be working at restaurants and convenience stores, where they can show their angst and display their piercings to locals and travelers alike. but i guess that's what life is as a teenager when you are in the middle of nowhere that is seemingly also a "destination" for lots of other folks. montana was also the first of the ever-so-popular gas station-truck stop-convenience store-casino with bar establishments that populate the sides of highways in many parts of the country. when we encountered our first of these, still early on sunday morning, there were people who had been sitting at those game machines in that casino for a real long time already. and ryan was probably the only person all day to sit down, play one quick game, and walk away with the couple bucks in cash he made. it was mindblowingly desperate inside that truck stop, from the casino to the bar to the washing machines to the showers to the dirty vagabonds buying whole changes of clothes to the semi-toothless locals roaming the aisles of the convenience store to the forehead (right above the eyebrow) pierced, hot pink and black streaked hair checkout girl ready, eager and waiting for the dirty vagabond boys picking out tee shirts and underwear to try to pick her up.
Friday, September 10, 2010
keep on truckin'...
ah, back on the open road. for narrative's sake, let's just say it felt great to get back in the penske. and, also, for narrative's sake, let's kind of jump cut right over minnesota. there was construction and traffic and it was lackluster. i say that understanding that it's a brash and glib judgment, i am positive that those 10,000 lakes exist somewhere, not anywhere you can see from the highway, mind you, and that they are absolutely lovely. but we took the highway, and the scenery was mediocre in comparison to the other farmlands i had seen and the sky was in transition, and sometimes transition is not a pretty site. the magnitude remained. it was definitely bigger and more open than the skies i am used to, having grown up in massachusetts and having spent the last nine years in new york. but the color lost some vibrancy, it became a more muted, paler shade of light blue. not nearly as complex or exciting as the blue skies of wisconsin. and the clouds thinned out and spread out. they were smaller, less dense, further away. gone were the mammoth puffy monsters. but we were not quite at the take your breath away enormity of north dakota or montana skies yet. and so we pressed full steam ahead, anxious for north dakota. fargo fargo fargo, i could not wait to drive through fargo. my favorite accent, one of my favorite movies of all time. i was amped. i'm not sure what i expected. but it was magnificent, whatever it was i had in mind.
and then we crossed the state line.
and i don't know what i was thinking, but it certainly had nothing to do with anything in front of my eyes. wow. you win some, you lose some. i lost this one.
the landscape of the country changed and it changed fast in north dakota. spread out, wide, open, more gold and amber and brown and yellow in the landscape as we drove through in our big ol' penske. the fields were bigger, more calculated, more industrial. signs of energy plants and oil drills crept into the picture. but not a lot of signs of life. where do all the people of north dakota live? the fields of sunflowers were amazing, i will definitely give eastern north dakota that much. and the skies stretched on forever in all directions. it felt limitless. gazing at the horizons it felt as though when i exhaled, i poured out in every direction, rushing hundreds of miles out in all directions at once, taking up more space than ever before, than i ever thought possible. it seemed limitless. everything seemed absolutely limitless out there.
the best part of north dakota is that clearly it carries some sort of napolean complex and has a real competitive streak. who can blame it? south dakota has got mt rushmore, montana has got all those ranches and yellowstone, not to mention dibs on the phrase "big sky country", minnesota claims to have 10,000 lakes...and so driving through north dakota it's constantly screaming out at you, "hey! i'm special too!! look what i've got!" everything is "home of the biggest _____" we've got the biggest cow! well, we've got the biggest buffalo! well, we've got the biggest dinosaur fossil! and they all have gigantic statues to commemorate their peculiarity and visitor shops/museums where you can learn more (*if learning more means buying souvenirs). it's kitsch and gimmick on a grandiose scale. and that is awesome. weird, but awesome.
it was not until we had long since passed bismarck and hit the western edge of north dakota that it became truly awesome. the painted canyon? i had. no. idea. it was a scene that could not have been better orchestrated and devised, driving through the badlands and the painted canyon heading due west towards montana watching the sunset. (friendly reminder for the non-directional savvy readers of this oh-so-captivating blog: the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. or, to be obnoxiously direct, we drove right into the sunset.) i don't think i will ever forget that sunset as long as i live.
Friday, August 20, 2010
the wonders of wisconsin.
who knew that a dairy free lady like me would fall so entirely head over heels over the dairy state - where cheese and cows and corn reign supreme?
well, i did. hook, line and sinker. rumor has it that we rolled into town for the first stretch of gorgeous sunny summer weather, which further implies that the reason everything was so green and lush and full was because of the immense amount of rain the state has been receiving, causing everything to grow like crazy. but reasons schmeasons. WISCONSIN WAS GORGEOUS!
the first thing that impressed me about the midwest was the sky. man oh man, it's something else. it's massive and its expanse becomes a larger, more dominant character than the land below. the clouds are huge, you see weather over there move over there then come through here and go over there. it's a totally different perspective and scale than anything i've seen before. it was breathtaking. giant puffy cottonball cumulus clouds dotting a perfectly blue sky. green green pastures and, depending on the time of the day and the farm, picturesque scenes of cows grazing, cows standing around doing nothing, cows lying down relaxing. old farmhouses and barns, some in disrepair, a pangful and sharp reminder of just how damn hard it is to be a farmer in this country, in this economy, in this day and age.
and the farms. oh my. the barns, the cows, the fields, the horses, the corn...they are beautiful. they look like exactly what i picture when i think of a farm.
we worked hard while we were there. and we relaxed like champs. it was a meticulous and amazing balance. perfect, i would dare say. there were things of ryan's to sort through and clean out and pack into the truck. there was a kitchen table we refurbished by sanding the rust off of the legs and giving her a new coat of paint and which now sits proudly and beautifully in our berkeley digs. there was an organ to demolish - all of its wires and pieces and cables and speakers and parts to be sorted through for salvage or dumping. but there was also time to play with the dogs and visit with family and float down the river in canoes and kayaks.
it was hard to leave wisconsin.
but yellowstone called, and we had no choice but to answer...
well, i did. hook, line and sinker. rumor has it that we rolled into town for the first stretch of gorgeous sunny summer weather, which further implies that the reason everything was so green and lush and full was because of the immense amount of rain the state has been receiving, causing everything to grow like crazy. but reasons schmeasons. WISCONSIN WAS GORGEOUS!
the first thing that impressed me about the midwest was the sky. man oh man, it's something else. it's massive and its expanse becomes a larger, more dominant character than the land below. the clouds are huge, you see weather over there move over there then come through here and go over there. it's a totally different perspective and scale than anything i've seen before. it was breathtaking. giant puffy cottonball cumulus clouds dotting a perfectly blue sky. green green pastures and, depending on the time of the day and the farm, picturesque scenes of cows grazing, cows standing around doing nothing, cows lying down relaxing. old farmhouses and barns, some in disrepair, a pangful and sharp reminder of just how damn hard it is to be a farmer in this country, in this economy, in this day and age.
and the farms. oh my. the barns, the cows, the fields, the horses, the corn...they are beautiful. they look like exactly what i picture when i think of a farm.
we worked hard while we were there. and we relaxed like champs. it was a meticulous and amazing balance. perfect, i would dare say. there were things of ryan's to sort through and clean out and pack into the truck. there was a kitchen table we refurbished by sanding the rust off of the legs and giving her a new coat of paint and which now sits proudly and beautifully in our berkeley digs. there was an organ to demolish - all of its wires and pieces and cables and speakers and parts to be sorted through for salvage or dumping. but there was also time to play with the dogs and visit with family and float down the river in canoes and kayaks.
it was hard to leave wisconsin.
but yellowstone called, and we had no choice but to answer...
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
side track. #1.
there were so very many things that i noticed about this country, about myself, about the land, about other people, about driving, about horizons, about patience, about penske trucks on this little road trip. no way will i ever share them all. i don't really want to. or have the time to. and there is no need to. and no one wants to read them all. so i'll expound here and there throughout the loose narrative of our travels upon some observations i feel like sharing and divulging with you. and by *you* i know that i mean probably no one.
so let me start with a hidden peril of driving across the country. one that i didn't anticipate being as major of an issue as it turned out to be. and, no, i don't mean the check engine light that was lit up on the dashboard for the entire duration of the trip. and, no, i don't mean the deer and rabbits and prairie dogs and whatnot that jot out into moving traffic along the highways. i expected to be tired, i expected that sitting for so long might get uncomfortable, i was braced for night driving and driving in rain or other inclement weather, i was prepared for detours and narrow lanes and construction and heavy traffic. i was even prepared for something like a flat tire in the middle of nowhere. i was not prepared for starvation. ladies and gentlemen, if you care in the very least about nutrition or what you put into your body, if you are in any way, shape or form a vegetarian, it is quite possible to starve to death on a cross country trip. if you are allergic to wheat and gluten, you are almost certain to. i did not know this. i only half-ass packed a few standby items in the truck for nourishment - some cereal, carrot sticks and grape tomatoes. i thought these would be fillers, you know, items to tide me over between stops. i did not know my survival would depend on rationing these items like a refugee. i could not believe the food situation on the road. we weren't traversing siberia, for the love of god, we were driving across america, through populated states with major cities, people do it all the time! it's not that i learned anything i didn't already know. it's just that difference of knowing something and experiencing it. so, yes, i know that the lowest common denominator, the foods that are cheapest and store longest and most easily are those that are by and large chemical concoctions high in fat and high fructose corn syrup. and i know that most of america, myself included, has one eye nervously on his or her bank account and the other despondently on his or her wallet. i also know how to do math, so i know that the foods corporate america is going to put on the shelves at road stops are going to be among the worst there are for you. they're cheap to make, easy to store, and most affordable for americans, who just spent a mindnumbing amount of money on gas at the pump, to buy. but i was, nonetheless, shocked and saddened to see this food as the opposite of nourishment coup play out the entire way across the country. at every single *store* or *mart* at every single turnpike service place or major highway truck stop, gas station and *travel plaza* the only things you could buy to eat were artificially processed or flavored: soft drinks, candy, chips, crackers, snacks, ice cream, sugar laden juice drinks, jerky, highly processed cheeses and some luncheon meats. all i wanted was to find a banana. i set that as my goal. a simple, attainable goal i had thought. i thought bananas are everywhere. they store easily. if i found one i could trust it enough to eat it since i would be discarding the peel, so it would not matter as much where or how it had been stored or who else's hands had touched it before i bought it. i mean these stops are there because they know that there are people who are travelling distances such as we were, who require food and drink in order to stay alive. we are not the first and will not be the last to travel from here to there in an automobile. and furthermore, they cater to people who make their living driving huge trucks gigantic distances all day and night long. anything else you could need to survive while making such a journey you could find - from clothes to toiletries to knives to maps to batteries and cords and adapators up the whazoo to lottery tickets to over the counter medications to books to magazines to caffeine in any form you could imagine it to keep you awake on the road to showers and changing rooms even. there were laundry facilities in some of these stops! but a piece of fruit or a fresh vegetable? not one. i did not find a banana until reno, nevada. we had driven over 3000 miles at that point. now, don't get me wrong, who doesn't love a piece of candy now and then? or a soda? because i admittedly certainly do. sure i'd love some gummy bears!! or should i get the sour gummy worms? decisions, decisions!! that's fun for the first couple of stops. no problem if your trip is only a day or a few days. try existing on that stuff for 12 days. even a junk food whore is going to get bored. you've got to cleanse your palate. you've got to get some nutrients. you're about to spend 10-12 hours in a car, half of which you will be driving that car, you need something in your belly that's gonna help get you through. you don't need to throw yourself into a two week cycle of sugar highs and lows. a crash and burn dance with addiction that's going to wreak havoc on your metabolism and sanity. and you don't need to know that everyone else on the road is either flying on a sugar rush or in that post-sugar crash coma. as if i wasn't already a distrusting, defensive driver. just kidding! i'm a good driver - at least that's what the dude in berkeley who sold us our 1986 bronco told me (in moderate disbelief which he didn't even try to hide) while i was test driving it.
at any rate, thank god for carrot sticks and rice cakes. it was a challenge to keep myself fed, but i managed to and lived to see california, where produce is abundant and i am loving it. it was sobering to see how difficult our economy makes it to be healthy and to take care of ourselves. to not be able to find any piece of produce at any rest stop between new york and california? it seems preposterous to me. driving through all that farm land, past all those ranges and ranches and witnessing with every passing mile the disconnect between the land, what it's producing, what it's capable of producing and the people who live on it, near it, or drive through it. and with that, i will get off my soap box about the implications of the food stuffs available or not available on the shelves and in the coolers. and i will enjoy living within walking distance of the berkeley bowl. and i will never ever get in a car for a road trip again without doing some serious food prep and stock up beforehand. lesson learned.
so let me start with a hidden peril of driving across the country. one that i didn't anticipate being as major of an issue as it turned out to be. and, no, i don't mean the check engine light that was lit up on the dashboard for the entire duration of the trip. and, no, i don't mean the deer and rabbits and prairie dogs and whatnot that jot out into moving traffic along the highways. i expected to be tired, i expected that sitting for so long might get uncomfortable, i was braced for night driving and driving in rain or other inclement weather, i was prepared for detours and narrow lanes and construction and heavy traffic. i was even prepared for something like a flat tire in the middle of nowhere. i was not prepared for starvation. ladies and gentlemen, if you care in the very least about nutrition or what you put into your body, if you are in any way, shape or form a vegetarian, it is quite possible to starve to death on a cross country trip. if you are allergic to wheat and gluten, you are almost certain to. i did not know this. i only half-ass packed a few standby items in the truck for nourishment - some cereal, carrot sticks and grape tomatoes. i thought these would be fillers, you know, items to tide me over between stops. i did not know my survival would depend on rationing these items like a refugee. i could not believe the food situation on the road. we weren't traversing siberia, for the love of god, we were driving across america, through populated states with major cities, people do it all the time! it's not that i learned anything i didn't already know. it's just that difference of knowing something and experiencing it. so, yes, i know that the lowest common denominator, the foods that are cheapest and store longest and most easily are those that are by and large chemical concoctions high in fat and high fructose corn syrup. and i know that most of america, myself included, has one eye nervously on his or her bank account and the other despondently on his or her wallet. i also know how to do math, so i know that the foods corporate america is going to put on the shelves at road stops are going to be among the worst there are for you. they're cheap to make, easy to store, and most affordable for americans, who just spent a mindnumbing amount of money on gas at the pump, to buy. but i was, nonetheless, shocked and saddened to see this food as the opposite of nourishment coup play out the entire way across the country. at every single *store* or *mart* at every single turnpike service place or major highway truck stop, gas station and *travel plaza* the only things you could buy to eat were artificially processed or flavored: soft drinks, candy, chips, crackers, snacks, ice cream, sugar laden juice drinks, jerky, highly processed cheeses and some luncheon meats. all i wanted was to find a banana. i set that as my goal. a simple, attainable goal i had thought. i thought bananas are everywhere. they store easily. if i found one i could trust it enough to eat it since i would be discarding the peel, so it would not matter as much where or how it had been stored or who else's hands had touched it before i bought it. i mean these stops are there because they know that there are people who are travelling distances such as we were, who require food and drink in order to stay alive. we are not the first and will not be the last to travel from here to there in an automobile. and furthermore, they cater to people who make their living driving huge trucks gigantic distances all day and night long. anything else you could need to survive while making such a journey you could find - from clothes to toiletries to knives to maps to batteries and cords and adapators up the whazoo to lottery tickets to over the counter medications to books to magazines to caffeine in any form you could imagine it to keep you awake on the road to showers and changing rooms even. there were laundry facilities in some of these stops! but a piece of fruit or a fresh vegetable? not one. i did not find a banana until reno, nevada. we had driven over 3000 miles at that point. now, don't get me wrong, who doesn't love a piece of candy now and then? or a soda? because i admittedly certainly do. sure i'd love some gummy bears!! or should i get the sour gummy worms? decisions, decisions!! that's fun for the first couple of stops. no problem if your trip is only a day or a few days. try existing on that stuff for 12 days. even a junk food whore is going to get bored. you've got to cleanse your palate. you've got to get some nutrients. you're about to spend 10-12 hours in a car, half of which you will be driving that car, you need something in your belly that's gonna help get you through. you don't need to throw yourself into a two week cycle of sugar highs and lows. a crash and burn dance with addiction that's going to wreak havoc on your metabolism and sanity. and you don't need to know that everyone else on the road is either flying on a sugar rush or in that post-sugar crash coma. as if i wasn't already a distrusting, defensive driver. just kidding! i'm a good driver - at least that's what the dude in berkeley who sold us our 1986 bronco told me (in moderate disbelief which he didn't even try to hide) while i was test driving it.
at any rate, thank god for carrot sticks and rice cakes. it was a challenge to keep myself fed, but i managed to and lived to see california, where produce is abundant and i am loving it. it was sobering to see how difficult our economy makes it to be healthy and to take care of ourselves. to not be able to find any piece of produce at any rest stop between new york and california? it seems preposterous to me. driving through all that farm land, past all those ranges and ranches and witnessing with every passing mile the disconnect between the land, what it's producing, what it's capable of producing and the people who live on it, near it, or drive through it. and with that, i will get off my soap box about the implications of the food stuffs available or not available on the shelves and in the coolers. and i will enjoy living within walking distance of the berkeley bowl. and i will never ever get in a car for a road trip again without doing some serious food prep and stock up beforehand. lesson learned.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
gettin this show on the road.
the roadtrip that always seemed like a fantasy, a faraway dream became a reality. it really happened. and here is how the first 2 days - saturday, july 31st and sunday, august 1st - and 1000 miles went.
somehow our saturday departure went off without a hitch. we picked up the truck at 8am like we were supposed to - having literally just finished packing up the last of our stuff and sneaking in a couple of hours of restless sleep when it was time to venture down to the penske pick up place. we made it back to greenpoint. pete, the first of our amazing helpers already there and waiting for us, the other 2, graham and thayer, right on his heels, and anna not too far behind those. we dove in and got started immediately. it was as seamless and painless as possible for the sheer volume of miscellaneous stuff the two of us possess: the furniture, clothing, instruments, art supplies, books, knick knacks, keepsakes, tools etc that two people can amass in 30 years (give or take) of life, it's somewhat mindblowing. we had aimed to be on the road at noon. and we were on the road just a little after noon. we almost immediately hit a wall of traffic on the bqe. i think the first mile of our 3500+ mile trip took nearly an hour. of course. and of course jersey is just a mess of highways and construction. the first part of the road trip was the kind of driving you'd rather go your whole life without having to do, let alone, attempting it in a 16 foot moving truck. oh well. what's the point of complaining? it is what it is and exactly what we anticipated it would be. eventually we got through the tangle of new jersey and saw the signs for the delaware water gap. oh my. who knew that pennsylvania was so beautiful? okay, lots of people, like ryan who has driven through it many times and all the people who live there, all the people who travel there to see it and camp in it and experience it, all the people who have passed through pennsylvania on road trips of their own. but the point is i had no idea. and i'm the one writing this post and isn't blogging the most self-centered, self-serving form of communication out there? so aren't i just following the nature of the beast by throwing out sweeping generalizations based on my own narrow world view and life experience? so, like i said, who knew pennsylvania was so beautiful?? i was really struck by its hills and mountains and trees and rivers and farms. the poconos, man, they are some really pretty little mountains. (don't tell north dakota, but sometimes biggest doesn't mean best). these crazy crowded mountain sides that look like they are exploding with life. the trees - deciduous and coniferous alike, all mixed in together, fighting for the sun, their lifeline, that chlorophyll fix that will let them keep doing their thing til we come in and cut them down to subsidize our crazy cruel out of control needs - growing out and not just up. having just been in washington for a wedding at mt rainier, i was astounded by how differently these trees played their hand at survival. instead of tall and symmetrical reaching higher and higher into the sky in an orderely fashion, these trees gave their branches and leaves full persmission to go in any direction possible in order to get around above beyond their neighbors and stick themselves into the line of the sun. it was full and fat and bursting and chaotic and beautiful. and i knew it was just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what we would see. and that rendered me more or less speechless. within a few miles of the trip commencing i went to a place where i felt like i couldn't even blink and that no matter how hard i tried, i couldn't look hard enough at everything. even when there was nothing. for as far as the eye could see. i was mesmerized. it was a full on act 3 emily moment (*thornton wilder's "our town" reference for those who have no idea what i'm referring to). i was a fairly boring co-captain for most of the trip - my breath taken from me, my tongue tied, my jaw on the floor...i was not much for communication. too much to process. too much i was afraid i would miss. i did a lot of staring out the window. a lot. over 3500 miles we logged in that truck, and though we split the driving pretty equally, that still leaves a lot of time that i was in the passenger's seat. and still, i did not sleep for a single minute in that truck the entire time.
ohio and indiana are horrible. (sweeping generalization based on my own narrow world view & life experience). or at least the parts of them that we drove through are more or less horrible. we did the eastern, more industrial half of ohio on saturday night. night is probably a pretty good time to undertake such a boring and unimpressive drive. we had left our end point for the first day open. we knew that anywhere between bellevue, oh and maumee, oh would make driving from ohio to green bay, wi possible on sunday. and so we were feeling tired but confident and pushed on past bellevue with the plan to stop and spend the night in sandusky, more or less the midpoint between bellevue and maumee and it would have meant checking into a motel in the 10-11p timeframe, which seemed like a good end to the first day and enough time to sleep a decent amount and hit the road around 8a the next morning. every single motel and hotel in the sandusky area was SOLD OUT. it's in the middle of nowhere ugly ohio and not even a best western or super 8 or econolodge has a single room open?! seriously? all these rooms in all these flea bag joints are filled with people who want to be here? what kind of twilight zone alternate universe have i fallen into? it's 11 o'clock at night and we are having to find this out by going parking lot to parking lot and inquiring. because, thank you at&t, my cell service is wonky at best and my 3g connection nowhere to be found. we are doing this old school. and there is no room at the inn. and, unlike mary, i am not into mangers. this takes a fair amount of time - motel hopping. and so we eventually get back on the ohio turnpike and keep going. silently hoping to ourselves that sandusky was a crazy fluke and maumee will take us in. it's ohio. it cannot possibly be that popular. right? so we finally reach maumee, out by toledo. it's almost 1a, which feels like 2a to us, since we are now in the central time zone. we get off the turnpike and stop at the first motel off the highway. it has a sign in the window "no vacancy tonight". at this point i think we might well spend our first night on the road in the truck. which, to be perfectly honest, the thought of sleeping in the truck does not bother me in the slightest, it's the crazy notion i have that automatically ties the vision of being awoken by some lunatic in a parking lot just before dawn who will steal all our money, violate me and leave us for dead into the scenario that makes me a little scared of it. luckily that fear was just overtired panic setting in and the days inn right behind the econolodge had a room available for us. it was everything you would expect a days inn motel in maumee, oh to be. right down to the continental breakfast room that by 8a looked as though it had been ransacked by raccoons with just donut wrappers and cereal crumbs and almost empty milk cartons remaining.
we had a pretty extensive collection of things that we kept in the giant cab of the moving truck with us. from things like snacks and cameras and books and whatnot that we needed access to to valauble things like laptops and hard drives that could be thrown in the back of the truck with the rest of our worldly possessions. and every time we got out of that truck for the day, we had to unload the cab so that there would be nothing to tempt would-be thieves. and every time we checked out of a place and got back on the road, we had to reload the cab. it was an intricate and increasingly tedious process. and so we reloaded the truck for the first of many times on sunday morning in maumee, oh and got back on the tigerbird trail. westward, ho!
ohio is depressing. the farms are somewhere between industrial and totally dilapidated, in disrepair with no sign of saving or mending anywhere to be found. some of the barns, the layout of the land, the poetry of the pastures is still quite pretty. but the melancholy feel of deterioration that is rampant most often overpowers any awe or nostalgia the landscape may invoke and leaves you heartbroken.
indiana is even worse. it's not pretty. it's not special. it's just a state we had to get through so we could go up through chicago and into wisconsin. and so we did.
oh chicago. i have such a weird connection to that city. it being where my father died. and then the new years trip with anna and colleen and spoon a few years ago. it's so familiar and so foreign to me. it was pretty scary to drive through it in a 16 foot truck. even though at this point i had long gotten over just how scary it is to drive a 16 foot truck. IT'S SCARY. it's big, it's unruly, it has blind spots up the ying yang, it's hard to judge, and to the very end i never lost the phantom pain-like urge to use the non-existent rearview mirror. but after cruising through the end of ohio and straight through indiana, even with a little rain and a lot of construction, i was not intimidated by that mammoth machine that was our ride. but, then, all of a sudden, there we were in a city, on a crazy highway with wall to wall traffic and infuriating jams and delays, and, at some point, as i was watching the front left corner (we had a little aligment trick and if you could line up your front left corner with the lane line on your left you were fine for space on the passenger side) and making sure i was keeping that lined up and paying attention to the impatient fed up drivers who were bailing from that lane into mine, my passenger side mirror and the driver side mirror of a giant blue 18 wheeler, who arguably was spilling over into my lane anyway, met face to face and made out. his mirror pinned my mirror back against the penske and then, when he was done with her, pushed on and released her back into place, which made a popping sound that will probably haunt both ryan and myself until the day we die. and in the mix of her freeway rendezvous, the lower side view mirror, the fisheye one, popped clean off and fell to the asphalt below. our first road casualty. the sound was terrifying. the startle was nearly lethal. the damage was minor and minimal. and i had no choice but to keep driving. we were in the middle of at least a 4 lane highway in a slow moving traffic jam. i was shaking and crying, totally startled, totally freaked out, totally embarassed. i felt like such an idiot, having busted the truck within the first 48 hours of the trip. and in such a stupid accident. and so, yeah, chicago was not a highlight of the trip. clearly chicago hates the hendersons - first it kills my dad, now it busts my moving truck. it makes me wonder what i did there in a past life...but who has time to figure that crap out and what can i do about it now anyway, except to cross my fingers each time i'm in chicago and pray i come out alive? and so we pressed on and, without further collision, we made it to wisconsin, a far kinder and gentler and more welcoming landscape. oh wisconsin, where we got to have one of the most wonderful weeks of our lives together. and got a break from the penske prison for a few days. oh, little did we know when we stopped in wisconsin just how real things would get with the penske as time pressed on and the miles and engine and brake wear and tear added up...but that's all later. now it's time for some quality time with the smiths.
ohio and indiana are horrible. (sweeping generalization based on my own narrow world view & life experience). or at least the parts of them that we drove through are more or less horrible. we did the eastern, more industrial half of ohio on saturday night. night is probably a pretty good time to undertake such a boring and unimpressive drive. we had left our end point for the first day open. we knew that anywhere between bellevue, oh and maumee, oh would make driving from ohio to green bay, wi possible on sunday. and so we were feeling tired but confident and pushed on past bellevue with the plan to stop and spend the night in sandusky, more or less the midpoint between bellevue and maumee and it would have meant checking into a motel in the 10-11p timeframe, which seemed like a good end to the first day and enough time to sleep a decent amount and hit the road around 8a the next morning. every single motel and hotel in the sandusky area was SOLD OUT. it's in the middle of nowhere ugly ohio and not even a best western or super 8 or econolodge has a single room open?! seriously? all these rooms in all these flea bag joints are filled with people who want to be here? what kind of twilight zone alternate universe have i fallen into? it's 11 o'clock at night and we are having to find this out by going parking lot to parking lot and inquiring. because, thank you at&t, my cell service is wonky at best and my 3g connection nowhere to be found. we are doing this old school. and there is no room at the inn. and, unlike mary, i am not into mangers. this takes a fair amount of time - motel hopping. and so we eventually get back on the ohio turnpike and keep going. silently hoping to ourselves that sandusky was a crazy fluke and maumee will take us in. it's ohio. it cannot possibly be that popular. right? so we finally reach maumee, out by toledo. it's almost 1a, which feels like 2a to us, since we are now in the central time zone. we get off the turnpike and stop at the first motel off the highway. it has a sign in the window "no vacancy tonight". at this point i think we might well spend our first night on the road in the truck. which, to be perfectly honest, the thought of sleeping in the truck does not bother me in the slightest, it's the crazy notion i have that automatically ties the vision of being awoken by some lunatic in a parking lot just before dawn who will steal all our money, violate me and leave us for dead into the scenario that makes me a little scared of it. luckily that fear was just overtired panic setting in and the days inn right behind the econolodge had a room available for us. it was everything you would expect a days inn motel in maumee, oh to be. right down to the continental breakfast room that by 8a looked as though it had been ransacked by raccoons with just donut wrappers and cereal crumbs and almost empty milk cartons remaining.
we had a pretty extensive collection of things that we kept in the giant cab of the moving truck with us. from things like snacks and cameras and books and whatnot that we needed access to to valauble things like laptops and hard drives that could be thrown in the back of the truck with the rest of our worldly possessions. and every time we got out of that truck for the day, we had to unload the cab so that there would be nothing to tempt would-be thieves. and every time we checked out of a place and got back on the road, we had to reload the cab. it was an intricate and increasingly tedious process. and so we reloaded the truck for the first of many times on sunday morning in maumee, oh and got back on the tigerbird trail. westward, ho!
ohio is depressing. the farms are somewhere between industrial and totally dilapidated, in disrepair with no sign of saving or mending anywhere to be found. some of the barns, the layout of the land, the poetry of the pastures is still quite pretty. but the melancholy feel of deterioration that is rampant most often overpowers any awe or nostalgia the landscape may invoke and leaves you heartbroken.
indiana is even worse. it's not pretty. it's not special. it's just a state we had to get through so we could go up through chicago and into wisconsin. and so we did.
oh chicago. i have such a weird connection to that city. it being where my father died. and then the new years trip with anna and colleen and spoon a few years ago. it's so familiar and so foreign to me. it was pretty scary to drive through it in a 16 foot truck. even though at this point i had long gotten over just how scary it is to drive a 16 foot truck. IT'S SCARY. it's big, it's unruly, it has blind spots up the ying yang, it's hard to judge, and to the very end i never lost the phantom pain-like urge to use the non-existent rearview mirror. but after cruising through the end of ohio and straight through indiana, even with a little rain and a lot of construction, i was not intimidated by that mammoth machine that was our ride. but, then, all of a sudden, there we were in a city, on a crazy highway with wall to wall traffic and infuriating jams and delays, and, at some point, as i was watching the front left corner (we had a little aligment trick and if you could line up your front left corner with the lane line on your left you were fine for space on the passenger side) and making sure i was keeping that lined up and paying attention to the impatient fed up drivers who were bailing from that lane into mine, my passenger side mirror and the driver side mirror of a giant blue 18 wheeler, who arguably was spilling over into my lane anyway, met face to face and made out. his mirror pinned my mirror back against the penske and then, when he was done with her, pushed on and released her back into place, which made a popping sound that will probably haunt both ryan and myself until the day we die. and in the mix of her freeway rendezvous, the lower side view mirror, the fisheye one, popped clean off and fell to the asphalt below. our first road casualty. the sound was terrifying. the startle was nearly lethal. the damage was minor and minimal. and i had no choice but to keep driving. we were in the middle of at least a 4 lane highway in a slow moving traffic jam. i was shaking and crying, totally startled, totally freaked out, totally embarassed. i felt like such an idiot, having busted the truck within the first 48 hours of the trip. and in such a stupid accident. and so, yeah, chicago was not a highlight of the trip. clearly chicago hates the hendersons - first it kills my dad, now it busts my moving truck. it makes me wonder what i did there in a past life...but who has time to figure that crap out and what can i do about it now anyway, except to cross my fingers each time i'm in chicago and pray i come out alive? and so we pressed on and, without further collision, we made it to wisconsin, a far kinder and gentler and more welcoming landscape. oh wisconsin, where we got to have one of the most wonderful weeks of our lives together. and got a break from the penske prison for a few days. oh, little did we know when we stopped in wisconsin just how real things would get with the penske as time pressed on and the miles and engine and brake wear and tear added up...but that's all later. now it's time for some quality time with the smiths.
Friday, July 30, 2010
preparing for take off...
in less than 12 hours we hit the road. in just over 12 days we will land in berkeley, california.
this is just a test. tomorrow it gets real.
this is just a test. tomorrow it gets real.
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