Trip day 3

We got up and discovered that the bitter cold weather we had been not enjoying had just gotten even colder. Neither of us felt that our stomachs were up to the challenge of another McDonald's breakfast, so we decided to head over to Perkin's for omlettes.

As we were leaving the restaurant, we could hear geese. After looking around for a minute, we noticed that there was a large field between us and the Cabela's HQ that was full of geese. I checked it out, and there was a pond there with open water. At that temperature, the only way to keep the water from freezing must have been to heat the water. The geese figured out that this was a good thing, and thousands of them were hanging out there. Good for Cabela's.

The drive across Wyoming was annoying as usual. Blowing, drifting snow, poor visibility, and a constant assault of flying gravel. Wyoming doesn't even bother using salt or sand for ice traction, they just go straight for gravel. Whenever we got passed, we got showered by flying gravel. No wonder we've had windshield breaks in the past (nothing this year, thank goodness).

We found an interesting little souvenier shop along the highway in Buford called "End of the Trail." Typical little tourist trap, with the assorted Indian hand crafts and other stuff. Only it wasn't overpriced here for some reason, so Norah decided to do a little shopping. I took a few minutes to talk to the owner while she was looking around. Somehow we started talking about the gang violence problems that Toronto has been having lately. He told me that he used to be in to drugs, alcohol, gangs, the whole bit, but he had a personal crisis and one day decided to turn his life around. He's now a minister in a local church. I'm not sure how much of his story was true and how much was exaggeration, but he was a really interesting guy to talk to nonetheless. Experiences like that make me wish I could just retire and spend my time driving around the country, seeing the sights and talking to people. It seems that if you stop and really talk to the people you meet rather than trying to get away from them as quickly as possible, you stand a pretty good chance of hearing some really interesting stories. It's too bad that the big cities train us to be afraid of each other.

There is really something to be said for rural America and Canada. The people, on average, are much more friendly, helpful and honest than people you meet in the cities. It's ironic that I would feel more afraid of having a mechanical problem at night in Toronto than I would in Wyoming or Nebraska. In Toronto getting out of your car makes you a target, but in Wyoming you're much more likely to find someone who would want to help you out. You'd still need to be careful, of course, as psychos are everywhere. But the more concentrated the population gets, the higher the psycho percentage is. Screw anyone who calls everything between Los Angeles and New York City "flyover country" or "those dumb square states". This is what makes this country truly great, not the shallow self-serving greedy city dwellers.

Anyway, we continued on our way and made it across despite the weather. It didn't get really bad until we got near Park City. We had almost zero visibility coming down Parley's Canyon, which was fun. But we made it. We grabbed a Quizno's sandwich for dinner and made it to my parent's house without any problems.

Trip day 2

Today we managed to get up and on the road on schedule. We ran down to McDonald's again for breakfast and got on the road. We made it over to Council Bluffs, IA almost exactly on schedule to meet Norah's friends Alenna and Shannon at La Mesa Mexican restaurant for lunch. We stayed there for almost two and a half hours and ate probably way too much food. But we definitely enjoyed our visit.

Unfortunately, we paid for it the rest of the afternoon, especially me. Indigestion is uncomfortable enough at home, but when you're driving across Nebraska it's just that much worse. I asked Norah to remind me never again to eat that much when we're on the road.

By this time I was starting to get a bit concerned about the fuel mileage we were getting. Our Dakota has the 4.7L V8 engine in it, which isn't exactly an economy-minded hybrid tree hugger mobile. But it was getting in the 15.2 mpg range, which is low even for it. We usually get more like 17.4. I was a bit worried that we might have a bad injector, or clogged filter, or something. Since it seemed to be running okay, I figured all I could do was to keep going and see if I could figure something out later.

We managed to push on to Sidney, NE that night. The Motel 6 there is in the complex right next to the Cabela's headquarters. There's also a super Wal-Mart right next door. For dinner, I just walked over to Wally World and got a sandwich from the deli, which we split. That was all either of us were able to eat.

The "no smoking" ashtray

What, you think I can make something like this up? They have these in all of the Motel 6 non-smoking rooms. I actually asked about it when I called the front desk to request a wake-up call. Apparently they're provided for people who like to use an ashtray to put their keys and spare change in. It makes sense now that I know that, but I still say the non-smoking ashtray makes for a pretty weird image.

Trip day 1

We got on the road this morning about an hour late. It could have been worse. Quick stops for fuel and breakfast at McDonald's and we were on our way.

We ran in to the duty free shop at the Blue Water Bridge in Sarnia. The duty free shop at the Peace Bridge is nicer, but this one isn't too bad. When we crossed the border the agent asked if we were bringing any dog food. Yes, we had two weeks worth of food for the dog with us, already measured out and everything. She wanted to know where it was made. Being Iams, it was made in the US. Good thing, as we wouldn't have been allowed to bring it across the border had it been made in Canada. We couldn't figure out what the big deal was with dog food until later that day: dog food might contain beef by-products, so Canadian dog food might possibly have Canadian beef in it. The US is taking their beef ban quite seriously, it seems.

Lunch this day was leftover pizza from the night before. Good thing we hadn't ordered hamburger on our pizza. We met Josh at Buffalo Wild Wings in Tinley Park, just south of Chicago. The traffic through the area south of Chicago was its usual insane construction mess. We sat in the construction zone for an hour, and when we got to the end they had their hands out looking for a toll. Sixty cents. Norah and I felt like handing them an invoice for our wasted time. All I had was a $20 bill. He have me fourteen $1 bills back in change. Thanks a bunch.

After dinner, we had a fairly uneventful drive and arrived as per our plan at the Motel 6 in Davenport, IA. Checking in was an adventure. The clerk's computer crashed four times in a row. Turns out they're running their hotel computers on Windows 98. Once it finally decided to keep working for more than two minutes at a time, we were set, and we headed off to bed.

The big trip

Well, we're getting ready to head out on our big road trip tomorrow morning. Here are the driving directions according to Mapquest.

We're planning on meeting Josh for dinner Saturday night in Tinley Park, Illinois, and spending Saturday night in Davenport, Iowa. Sunday we're meeting Alenna for lunch in Council Bluffs, Iowa and Sunday night we'll be staying in Sidney, Nebraska. Monday we don't have any plans to meet up with anyone, so we'll just see what Wyoming has in store for us this year, and we should be at my parents place on Monday night.

The weather so far is looking like it might actually cooperate, at least as well as it ever does in December. We'll try to post updates if we have Internet access in the motels. High speed wireless access isn't exactly a feature provided by Motel 6, they keep things to a minimum to keep the prices down. But they are pet friendly, which is a lot more than I can say for the other motel chains I looked at.

Wish us luck!

I listen to Jack

Heard this morning on Jack FM:

"Christmas is like a day at the office. You do all the work, and the fat guy in the suit takes all the credit."

Don't try this at home

moparts: another reason to tow in neutral

Just goes to prove, no matter how stupid you (or I) might feel, there's probably someone out there who's done something even more stupid.

Thank goodnes I'm not a game programmer

From a comment posted on Slashdot:

I cut back to 80 hours a week, even though people were bitching at me for the laziness. (Why couldn't I take my work seriously like the people who slept in their company provided sleeping bags under their desks 6 hours a night?)

Just goes to show, no matter how grumpy I get about working overtime, there are many who are much worse off.