10:30am MDT, June 22, 1999 ... or not. We asked at the Santa Fe post office, called the US Postal Service 800 number, and finally called to get the Mountain View post office. The first two said the part about ten days after we started, but then in Mountain View they said they started to forward the mail on the eleventh. Hmm. Well, maybe that pocket of a headache is gone. :)
Speed limit in Santa Fe is 75; gas is $1.15. Somehow, we're resisting the urge to go to Roswell while we're in New Mexico. Sure, it's the place that an alien space ship once crashed, or so the story's told. But that doesn't make it less of a nice place to visit, does it?
We had dinner at the Blue Corn Cafe, where it was a total of $25 for a (big-ass) burrito, a (big-ass) enchilada, some tortilla soup, two beers, and some iced tea. Deal! It was really good, too.
One billboard we went by was advertising The Big Texan. On it, they make a promise: you get your meal for free if you can finish your 72oz steak in an hour or less. Seventy-two ounces?? Is it a natural state for the human stomach to consume that much food?
We've tried new flavors of Gatorade: Lemon Ice and Alpine Snow. After a close contest, Alpine Snow came out the winner, having a nice subtle taste and refreshing, cooling ambiance. (It takes years to be a good Gatorade taster, though no Gatorade Tastings have been scheduled yet...)
Broke 2000 miles total, just after mile 325 on route 40 heading East.
2:34pm CDT, June 22, 1999 Entered Texas, now in the Central Time Zone. Had to get a picture at the state line cuz they were doing road work near the ``real'' state sign, oh well. Gas is $1.09.
Among the many tourist attractions in Texas, we were able to see one that hasn't been widely publicized: the largest cross on the western hemisphere. Really.
5pm CDT, June 22, 1999 About 200 miles left to Oklahoma City. Heard two radio ads in an hour about Internet providers offering services that do filtering of porn web sites. One bragged about having ``twenty-four hour monitoring.'' Ok, ignoring the technical validity of that gem, what do they use as the basis for their filtering? Is it possible for parents to customize the filtering criteria to their own beliefs or family practice? How's it updated? How do they add or remove other sites? Gahhhh. Thus if a teacher tells students to work on a class report, for which one person in the class chooses to investigate AIDS, they'll in all likelihood find information at the library instead, since their computer will probably end up blocking their searches. Can you tell Brendan's got some opinions on this? :)
We only saw one dead armadillo on the road in Texas. Hopefully that's a good thing! Saw a truck from Saskatoon, Canada, where a good friend of ours was born.
A grain elevator converted into indoor climbing: OKCRocks.
Made it through Oklahoma, though we didn't see very much other than trees streaming by us. :) On the way we were able to see a really pretty sunset.
7am CDT, June 23, 1999 Checked out of the Roland Inn, a relatively inexpensive Best Western just a couple of miles from the Oklahoma border with Arkansas. Checked in last night at 11:45pm, loooooooong day. When we left the hotel, we got Erin the Irish beanie baby from McDonalds while getting breakfast at a drive-thru. Erin's now seated securely on the speaker on the passenger side of the car, gazing in. Kind of appropriate, we thought. :)
Passed by ``Toad Suck Park''. Really.
Heard on a morning radio show: ``You know why they serve burgers square [in shape]? Cuz they don't want to cut corners.''
Ads for two Web sites: www.pleaseeatfish.com and www.creditunions.org.
While we stopped for gas, an older couple drove up with a magnificent Packard car on a trailer behind their van. They were apparently taking part in a contest called The History Channel Greatrace (www.greatrace.com).
The source of the name ``Ozark'' is apparently from a town in Arkansas called ``Aux Ark''. Wild. :)
There's a KHITS station in Arkansas that says their station name just like a similar one in Tulsa Oklahoma that B's brother worked for. Mebbe they're connected? (The stations, not Derry and the jingle. :) )
Wonder if we'll end up going through the entire state of Arkansas seeing nothing but rain? It's been going since we woke up, and looks like we'll fall asleep to the same.
If you're driving down the road while it's raining, a thick mist seems to pour out from the tires of 18-wheelers as they go over the road, almost floating through the miles.
(There's a town called Widener, Arkansas. That's the same name of the university that B went to.)
2pm CDT, June 23, 1999 Speed limit in Tennessee is 55. Gahhhhhh. We're used to seeing 70 listed, and all traffic actually going closer to 80. (Sounds scary, no?)
We got a call from Sabrina (married to Pat, both friends of ours). Turns out her birthday's on Friday the 25th, and that they're in fact going to Nifty Fifties for her birthday. That's a place in Pennsylvania that B used to visit with folks while in college, and in fact was where a bunch of us got together a couple of years ago when B and E were going through Pennsylvania. Anyway, we're planning on trying to meet our friends Chip and Linda there around lunchtime. We won't be there late enough to meet up with Pat and Sabrina though, since the plan is to end up in New York and B's aunt and uncle's place that night. Fudge! The coincidence of their planning to go there independently of our timing was great, anyway.
We broke 3000 miles at a point before Nashville (in Mount Juliet, where we stopped for gas at $1.08 per gallon). Rain's still here at 5pm. The show Fresh Air on NPR was an interview with Krushchev's son, who's applied for American citizenship. The irony is that his father was in office in Russia at the peak of the Cold War, where the US and Russia would consistently say disparaging remarks about each other.
Something we suspect: Hardee's on the East coast is the same as Carl's Jr. on the West coast. Same logo of a smiling star, same sort of food we think (didn't get any), the whole nine yards. This is similar to another connection we found: on the East coast, many folks buy Hellmann's mayonnaise; on the West coast, it's called Best Foods. Seemingly identical stuff, different names, but we suspect the same parent company with the same product model.
9am EDT, June 24, 1999 Switched to Eastern time as we entered Tennessee about 7pm last night. We couldn't get a state sign here cuz it's pouring out, and on top of that there's road work blocking access to get at the sign, and then again there's the fact that it was on a *bridge*. Fudge. Of interest: when we entered Arkansas, they made sure to point out that it was the home of President Bill Clinton. For Tennessee, they did a similar pitch: just under the state sign was a large notice that it was in fact the home of Vice President Al Gore. Our guess is that every state has done this at some point, when their favorite son (someday favorite daughter?) made it to the high office.
Left the Super-8 in Bristol, Virginia, just inside the border from Tennessee. Got in about 10:30pm last night. The hotel was only so-so, not worth the $50 price tag, but oh well, it looked like it would be cheaper. A BIG plus: their satellite TV feed included ZDTV, the internet/computer TV network that E worked for in San Francisco. (Everybody call your cable companies and say you want them to carry ZDTV, it's awesome.)
We came across Dublin Virginia, but it, like the California version, looks nothing like the ``real'' one we're destined to see soon.
Gas is 96 cents a gallon in Raphine, VA. Jeez.
We're going to be staying in Baltimore tonight, with our friends Sven and Daphne. Really looking forward to seeing 'em.
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6am EDT, June 24, 1999 Sign we saw in Maryland: ``Aggressive Driver Imaging In Use''. We're guessing that they mean they'll take pictures of you if you're speeding. Or, it's some bizarre science fiction novel where the other people you see driving cars are in fact projected images on a screen that you think is their car window.
So while living in the Bay Area, we were surrounded by technology. Tons at work, at home, TV shows related to computers, local newspaper (San Jose Mercury News, awesome paper) with lots of tech-related info, the works. Thus for two weeks we've only been going with very sporadic use of the laptop, and nothing else. Radio for news when we could find it, perhaps a newspaper if we're really curious. But computer stuff? Not really. At some point we recognized that we were going through withdrawl. Well, actually, the term we came up with was that we were ``jonesin' for geek shit''. Our phrase, trademarked, we'll make millions!
Listening to the radio on the way to Baltimore (around Washington DC), NPR's show All things Considered included a quote from the NATO ``Supreme Allied Commander''. What a cool-ass title. At the same time we were facing really nasty traffic on the 495 loop going around DC, to join 95 up to Baltimore. Really slow progress, erratic drivers, and all-around nuts. Didn't help that we were going through rush hour.
10am EDT, June 25, 1999 Left Baltimore with the odometer edging just over 3800 total miles driven. Holy cow.
We stayed at Sven and Daphne's last night. Sven made a yummy pesto and spaghetti dinner, after which we chatted in their living room. (He has one of those Bose Wave stereos with amazing sound. Cool!) Sven and B wired their laptops together and transferred some stuff between them. Ahhhhhhhh, geekness. B was able to use Sven's PPP script to get connected with a local call to download our mail. E was able to use that same local call to talk to her best friend in San Francisco in the zdchat room for about half an hour.
We won't be able to meet up with Chip at Nifty Fifties after all; we've got to make New York by the late afternoon, and he's got a meeting that starts at 1, thus making it difficult for him to make it to the place til after 3 or so. Darn! Ah well, we had a good chat on the phone, even though we were barraged by cellular phone signals dropping out from under us cuz of some problems in parts of New Jersey.
We paid a $2 toll in Maryland for I-95, then $2 again in Delaware. What's the deal? We didn't get any tolls West of the Mississippi.
On top of the Delaware Memorial Bridge, folks were tailgating us probably cuz we were holding at the speed limit of 50. On the Golden Gate Bridge back in San Francisco you get pulled over if you're going 2 miles per hour over the speed limit. Wonder why folks on this bridge are able to do things so differently?
Didn't get to hear Howard Stern this morning, by the time we were near a radio station that would carry it his show was long finished. Fudge.
Whoops, we also got to pay $4.60 for the New Jersey turnpike. LAME.
In the very southern tip section of New York, we stopped at a golf practice place to use their pay phone to call B's aunt and uncle to get directions. We saw some really interesting folks doing the ol' practicing: one fellow didn't have the calm collected look about him, as you'd see watching golf on TV. (Well, more like glimpsing golf as you change the channel past it.) This guy was hauling off and belting the golf ball as hard and quickly as was humanly possible. The result was kinda cool---the golf ball went a really good distance each time. A completely different direction, but still, lots of distance.
We tried and tried to get decent pictures of New York City, but only ever got really distant cloud-laden ones. Oh well!
And then we get to pay a $3 toll on the Tappen Zee Bridge. Man. We made it to B's aunt and uncle's house, yay! They have an adorable dog named Huey.
9am, June 27, 1999 Sunday morning heading North.
After a great stay at their place (yummy dinner, good time talking), we went down to New Rochelle to attend the wedding on Saturday of a friend of ours who worked with Elana down in Los Angeles. It was a great ceremony and an amazing dinner. On the way back to the hotel at 1:45am (hotel van from the Fountainhead where the wedding was held), people were singing songs with each other, choosing tunes including ``Good Night Irene''. (A slight play on words resulted in ``Good Night Ilene'', a friend of ours who was on the van also, and had done some of the organizational stuff for the wedding.) One group of folks was from Maine, and knew the places where we each grew up.
A motorcyclist went by us in Connecticut with no helmet, no coat, nothing. He must've been freezin'.
We got a picture as we went over to Rhode Island, but weren't able to get one for Connecticut, unfortunately. It's on the median on the interstate, and we weren't about to try to run across 70mph traffic twice to get a single picture. :)
Broke 4000 miles in New York. Whee! We're getting 27.7 miles per gallon now. My, my.
We swapped out the Freedom Sessions CD for Sarah McLachlan's new CD Mirrorball. It's a bunch of live shows that she did with about a dozen songs, sounds great! Though one mystery was why they elected to not mention where each performance took place. Not on the CD itself, not in the liner notes, nothing. Hmm. Maybe their web page includes the info?
Onward to Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
9am, June 28, 1999 Last night we had dinner at the Landfall in WH with Elana's mom Lois and step-dad Terry, along with her step-brother David and a friend of his, Ben. The food was really good, as were the Guinness and bloody mary that we had before dinner. (wink)
We visited a bench that E's family had put up for her brother Mark, who died a few years ago. It's really, really nice.
We went through New Hampshire...all 35 minutes of it.
Coming up I-95 to Portland Maine, there was stop and go traffic for better than half an hour. Why? Cuz some guys were doing work not on the road itself, but on a hillside to the left. There was absolutely nothing going on 95---certainly not to justify the 2-5 minute complete stops we had. Our only guess was that people didn't realize the collective side-effect of their gawking.
4pm, June 28, 1999 Hooked up with B's mom in Augusta, and spent some time with her. We'll be up here for the next couple of days, then have to head down to Islesboro (an island off the coast) where her mom and step-dad live, to pull all of our crap together into a form we think would be able to get to Ireland on a plane. :) Between now and our flight on Thursday July 8th, we have no only that minor challenge (cough), but we also have a barrage of things like E's high school reunion, meeting up with B's brother in from LA for a day, E's mom's birthday, and a few other little hurdles. They say that moving is in the top three stressful things you can do with your life. We'll vouch for that study. :-) More this weekend, we hope.
