The Entertaining Portion of the Story
About a month ago Justine and I loaded most of our belongings into our Chevy G20 Van and I drove it across the country in four days. It was a long, strange drive and I have no desire to do it again during the winter. At the outset of the drive I had intended to sleep in Wal Mart parking lots along the way. I had read about this club of RV'ers who do it all the time and I figured it sounded like a cheap way to go, plus I was hoping to get an article or something out of the experience. If you've never driven straight across the country alone, I highly recommend it. The scenery along the drive plays out like a long mix tape of songs from American icons like Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, and Neil Young. There is something purely American about the open road, it's the rumble of a V8, combined with classic rock, and a bag of Oberto's jerky. Redwood forests thinning into California's fertile central valley, Steinbeck's agrarian valley erupting into Muir's snow-covered Sierra Nevadas, the Sierra's melt into Johnny Cash's Nevada desert (Remember the 'dusty Winnemucca road'?), and from the desert comes the mighty Rocky Mountains in the distance. The Rocky Mountains are an experience onto themselves to drive through during the winter. I got lucky and started my drive in between winter storms. The roads were clear, but the surrounding hills were packed with snow-All the scenery, but none of white-knuckle 'Chains Required Beyond Point' driving. After dropping down from the Rockies and the beauty of the West, the senses are assaulted by the 'Great Plains'. Aside from their size and the incredible amount of time it takes to drive through them, there is nothing 'great' about them.
Planning for the trip consisted of watching the Weather Channel and little else, I figured as long as it was an Eastbound highway, then I was fine. As I said earlier, I figured that I could catch a bit of sleep in random Wal-Mart parking lots. I figured I could spot one from the highway, pull into an outside parking space, crash out for a few hours and then be on my merry way. The first hitch in my plan came in Reno, I had pulled into a Wal-Mart and was dozing off when a fat-gray haired security guard with an attitude came and decided to confirm my suspicions that Nevada has no shortage of assholes. He pounded on my window with the butt end of a big Mag-Lite and demanded I get out of my van and show him some ID. I took one look at the security patch on his little blue Wal-Mart vest and politely told him sit on his flashlight and leave me the f@$k alone! After a brief, yet entertaining quarrel with him, I gathered that he had called the cops and they were probably just as eager to harass a long-haired, unshaven, and bleary eyed 'hippy' with California plates as the rest of the town...I ended up cranking up some Led Zeppelin and making tracks down the road to a Motel 6 and a legal nap. The Motel 6 ended up being more of a mind trip than any confrontation in a Wal-Mart parking lot could be.
I was napping peacefully in my cheap room, when around midnight, the most drugged out collection of meth-crazed miscreants checked into the room next to me and began unloading a collection of gas-cans and bottles into their room. They were driving a big, rusted out Explorer that was pulling a ski boat that hadn't seen water in years and now apparently served as their trailer. Now at that point in the day, my nerves were about as frazzled as could be...I had been driving the entire day, I had crossed over Donner Pass in white-out conditions, and in my mind I had avoided a nasty confrontation with the Reno police and the Walton family. At some point while dozing in my roach motel it came to me that these ruffians next door to me were up to something nefarious. I figured they were setting up some sort of meth cooking operation or something equally disturbing. I tried to sleep with one eye open for a few hours, but to no avail. I ended up hitting the road before sunrise, putting Reno behind me and swearing off Wal-Marts and seedy motels for good.
Day two of my drive took me through Nevada, Utah and into Wyoming. Nevada and Utah is pretty much a collection of dumpy old mining towns with mountains looming in all directions. I did stop in Winnemucca to see the town made famous by Johnny Cash's song, 'I've Been Everywhere'. There are some beautiful places in both states, but seeing that I had neither the time nor desire to sight-see I kept the pedal to the metal and kept on driving. I was hoping to make Boulder during this day's drive, but Wyoming proved more than I could handle in one day. I ended up crashing out in the van at a Flying J. Nobody cared. What a novel idea...Letting someone sleep in their car on a road trip. I ended up stopping almost exclusively at Flying J's along the rest of my drive.
Day three found me driving through Wyoming and half of Colorado. I stopped in Boulder, meaning to say hi to some friends and then continue onto Kansas, but my buddy took me to lunch at a pub. After one sip of the IPA at Sun Mountain Brewery, I knew that my driving was over for the day. My buddy and I ended up having an afternoon pub session and then we went hiking/scrambling in the mountains around Boulder for sunset. After scrambling around the Flatirons, we walked around Boulder searching for beers and wings. We stayed up late into the night waxing poetically about Purdue Boilermakers, climbing, surfing, and the philosophical intricacies of western theology.
It took all of day four to get through Colorado, Kansas, and Missouri. I didn't run into any snow, but I suffered from horrible side winds the entire way through the Plains. I saw a couple semi-trucks that tipped over from 65mph wind gusts. Around St. Louis it started raining and sleeting, so I found a Flying J and caught a nap until the sun came up. I made quick work of Illinois and found myself drinking beers with my old college roommates by early afternoon in Indianapolis.
I figure that during my drive I drank around 24 cups of gut-rotting truck stop coffee, ate 48 inches of Subway sandwiches, consumed 4 1/2 bags of beef jerky, and ate enough processed snack foods to take months off of my life.
I spent two days in Indiana and then flew back to California where my wife was waiting with our Honda Fit all packed up and ready to go. I left Indiana in 10 degree weather, with an impending blizzard and landed in California with the weather in 70's and sunny. The plan had always been for me to haul ass across the country with our stuff and the van, then we were going to take several weeks to make the trip South along the California coast and then leisurely across the country...visiting friends and having adventures along the way.
It's a funny mind trip to drive that far alone. I think it's healthy to spend time in your own head, thinking your own thoughts, drinking truck stop coffee, and dreaming about the future.
The Political Rant (Feel Free to Skip Over)
After listening to NPR and conservative talk radio for 4 solid days, I feel like there is a definite difference in the rhetoric each viewpoint spews out. It seems like NPR is so in the tank for Obama that they lose all claim to objectivity, while most of talk radio is so in the tank for republican evangelicals that they lose their credibility on many issues. Both sides are constantly shouting about how bad things are and how they can only get worse...it seems like the one thing everybody can agree on. I'm no expert, but maybe things were a little out of hand economically. I mean, is it really that bad if people don't spend as much money at strip malls and movie theaters? On one hand people bemoan the decline of the environment and global warming, but on the other hand they bite their nails over the decline of the consumer based economy...Isn't an economy based on people spending and spending and spending a little bit irresponsible anyway? Maybe things are starting to correct and get back to a more 'sustainable' level of spending. Call me crazy...but maybe buying loads of worthless crap on a credit card which is mass produced in China by 9 year old peasants, shipped across the Pacific in huge container ships, driven across the U.S. of A in semi-trucks which get 4mpg's, and then sold to consumers at huge multi-national chain stores with just enough mark-up to make a couple hundred share-holders a %7 profit is a tad bit irresponsible.
Apologies for the rambling. I had a lot of time to think. Check back later for some stories about our trip down the California coast, the drive East, adventures in Colorado, and our brief return to the great state of Indiana.
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