I Just Drove the Hell Across America
I took I80 west out of State College. Most of you are probably somewhat familiar with this route. 80 is a toll road in Ohio, but you get what you pay for. It was six lanes nearly the whole way, very smooth and very nice. Indiana was dark and rainy. My main impression of it was noticing that, despite the fact that all truckers are by definition professional drivers, every single one of them will do that annoying manouevre where, when coming up to you to pass, no matter what the speed differential is, they'll pull up to within ten feet of your vehicle and just hang out there half a minute or so, shining their lights directly in your eyes, before giving up and going around.
I80 runs directly through Gary, Indiana and the Southern outskirts of Chicago. Luckily, it was Monday night, so traffic was light. I was planning to stop for gas once I got through Chicago, which was kind of a strange phenomenon. The outskirts, bedroom communities, and other external areas of Chicago ran on thickly for a little bit, and then: nothing. It was black. No buildings, no civilisation. A fox or coyote ran in front of my van and nearly got itself smooshed. When I finally pulled off to get gas, I realised I was quite tired and figured it was time for a nap. The gas station was very windy. I back my moving van up next to the truck rest area, and climbed inside with my coat on. Propping the door open an inch or so with one of Dangerfan's legs, I went to sleep.
I woke up two hours or so later, frozen to the bone and shivering. I figured I wasn't going to get anymore sleep at night here in the cold, windswept moors of Illinois, so I headed out. "Just till the next lodging," I figured. Well, the next lodging came and went, and the next and the next and I started to get my strength back. I crossed the Mississippi in the Quad Cities, none of whose name I can remember now. "Now," I thought, "I am in the West." How wrong I was! Except for radio station call signs.
I went on in Iowa for only a few hours, till just around sunrise or so. I was getting quite tired, and I pulled off at a motel fully intending to take a room for the day. Then I decided to save my money, backed my van up into a parking spot with a vegetative screen behind it, and crawled in for another nap.
Two hours or so later, I woke up shivering and frozen again. All the trees and ivies had stopped the sun from warming the van. I set off. Iowa was foggy, a rolling landscape with farms everywhere. Trees along the road were less common. Eventually I pulled into a gas station in Stuart. "Fod", advertised a nearby sign, one of the Os having fallen off. I couldn't figure out how to use the pumps. They just wouldn't start. After having two give this reaction, I walked into the store to see what was up. Evidently I had to lift the handle to get the gas to start. Oh.
Premium was less than standard. I figured this was a glitch in the programming of their pumps, so I started filling up with premium. Four gallons or so later, I noticed that under the sticker for premium was another, saying "clean-burning ethanol". "What happens," I asked the cashier, "when you put ethanol into a car that doesn't like it?" I was told that it was only ten per cent ethanol, and if since it was only a few gallons I could mix it with some other gas and it would be fine. I bought a Zero Bar and that cashier probably thought I was the dumber traveller ever. I filled up with regular.
Nebraska. Nebraska is like the State That Never Ends. Nebraska is your hell. A more cunning driver would have taken note of the ruler-straight roads, the ground so flat you could see the horizon in front of and behind you, and the 75 mile per hour speed limit; that driver would have chained his wheel straight, set his cruise control to 65 (or maybe 60, to be safe), and gone to sleep. Since my van didn't have cruise control, I was forced to experience the whole of Nebraska manually, from end to end.
It didn't start out too badly. I80 runs straight through Omaha. There was a city, a river, a hill, all sorts of interesting things. Suddenly: flat; farm; nowhere. At first, corn was omnipresent. There was road, sky, and corn. This went on for six or eight weeks, and I started to run out of gas and feel sleepy.
I pulled into a gas station with a motel next to it, fully intending to take a room for the night. Instead I bought a Butterfinger and went back on the road. In Nebraska, there are no conventional clocks as you or I would know them. Time is measured by the suffering of men. The only thing to break the monotony is an occasional pickup truck driving on a dirt road parallelling the interstate. An indeterminate amount of time later, I was very tired, and had to use the bathroom. I pulled off the road and into a lot near a motel, fully intending to take a room for the night. Instead I pulled around behind the building, and climbed into my van for a nap. It was hot. I took of my shirt, socks, and shoes, and changed into shorts. I got my battery-powered fan and put it on my stomach.
Two hours later, I woke up, choking and gasping. In my sleep-addled mind, my first thought was that I has exhausted the oxygen in the van. This proved not to be the case. Eventually, I got changed back into clothes. I really needed to pee, but I didn't want to rent a room or buy a hamburger, so I backed the van around, sat on the gate, and peed on the ground.
Nebraska, it turns out, does not like to be peed on. Almost as soon as I got back on the road, my eyes started to hurt. The sun was still high in the sky, and initially I took it to be pain from glare or brightness. Then my eyes got really, sore, like there was oil in them or something. It was painful to keep them open, and I wiped and wiped them, but there was nowhere to pull off. Twenty minutes or so this went on. My eyes hurt so much. I pulled off as soon as possible and cleaned them as best I could with a damp paper towel. I also pulled out all my loose eyelashes, just in case.
After I got back on the road, I soon entered Western Nebraska. Whilst the first part of my journey ws green, the rest would be brown. Western Nebraska, empty of farms, was full of bugs. The entire front of my car was coated in splatted insects, called down by vengeful Nebraska to attack me. The sun was setting. In my eyes. Refracting off every single patch of bug guts. I could see nothing: nothing but glare. The windshield wipers, even with the windex, only made things worse. I stopped off at the nearest exit, intending to use their gas station's squeegee. The next exit, it turned out, was two miles from the town it serviced. I shook up a can of Diet Pepsi, sprayed it on the windshield, and wiped off the fluid and the bugs with some paper towels, which I subsequently littered. The results were not good, but I could see a patch of road in front of me.
In a flat place, driving West, sunsets are awful. Nothing occluded it. Though we were climbing in elevation, there were no hills. There were no trees. The road never turned. The sun shone straight in the windshield. I could see nothing except the road revealed under the visor. I stopped at the first place possible.
This was Sidney. Sidney must have been at the crossroads of something, because the service area was packed. Florida, California, license plates from all over. A Wal-Mart was there. Gas was thirty cents more expensive than anywhere else in America. I had to fill up. There was nothing for another fifty miles, which I didn't have. I cleaned my windshield.
By the time I finished, the sun had set. Sunset in the scrubland of Western Nebraska was a total thing. I'm used to sunsets where, after the sun dips below the horizon, the sky remains illuminated for awhile. Maybe an hour or so. In Nebraska, there was total dark within like two minutes. Some little mesas were around, which I mistakenly called 'buttes'.
Less than an hour later, I left hateful Nebraska behind me. Wyoming was, well, dark. Hilly. I went up a big hill or a mountain; I couldn't tell which, in the dark. On the curvy, dark downslope, I got passed by like three trucks. I decided to sop soon. Cheyenne was near: "Cheyenne: Next 4 Exits". I'll stop off and go to sleep, I thought. First exit: oil refinery. I didn't want to sleep near that, so I skipped the next exit too. The last two exits never materialised. Maybe they were added to make Cheyenne sound important. Laramie was the next town of any size.
An hour later, I reached it. I started watching the signs for lodging. Finally, at the last exit (of which Laramie actually did have four), a sign for Super 8 with Free Wireless. Surprisingly, when I pulled in I actually booked a room. Then I checked my email, went to the bathroom (my second time for the whole trip), and went to sleep. I woke up eight hours later looking forward to a continental breakfast. After a shower and bathroom break, I ended up eating a piece of toast with jelly and drinking about six ounces of orange juice.
Wyoming is steppe. In Western Nebraska, cows and llamas grazed. Wyoming was bare. I stopped off to get gas and maybe buy a Double Crispy Sandwich. Despite the "Open" sign, though, the KFC was closed. Wyoming continued. It went on and on. No one went slower than 75. Most went over 80. On any given moment, there are more people driving through Wyoming, on route 80 alone, than there are residents of Wyoming. Whilst the terrain could have been the moon for the animal life it sported, the road was full to bursting.
Wyoming, though, was the land of weird signs. A sign of an Asian child in a cowboy hat, eating a hamburger patty sandwiched between two Cinnabons. Or maybe I was tired. Another sign was not a billboard at all. It was, in fact a schoolbus. "Adults" was painted on it, in letters ten feet high. Though intrigued, I dared not investigate. Another sign said "Vegan Option", though this later turned out to be "Weigh Station". More frequent, and much scarier, were the "Freeway Closed When Flashing" signs, typically followed by an "Interstate Closed When Flashing. Prepare to Exit" sign, followed by some railroad gates. I guessed they closed it for snow. I'm glad they didn't close it on me.
Wyoming continued. My only source of reassurance was my knowledge that, though it takes about six hours to drive though Wyoming, during the great Oregon Trail days of James K. Polk, the average trip time was between nine and twelve months. I climbed up some hills, and eventually was in Utah.
I should explain something I've been leaving out. In 2006, a massively pork-laden transportation bill passed the US Congress. This bills granted enough money to every state to buy enough orange-and-white traffic barrels to shut down one lane of each road within two miles of any city. There was not quite enough money, however, to afford workers to do anything to the roads. Presumably this was done as insurance so the states would continue to receive money the next year. "Look at the road," they would claim, "they're in terrible shape! Half shut down! More money is needed."
Utah was different in a single respect. Although the roads were still half shit down anywhere within artillery range of any settlement larger than two thousand persons, Utah actually had some people on one of its roads. They were, in fact, unlike any road workers I had ever seen before: they were working. Maybe they were in training or actually convicts or something. I never learned.
Utah was actually - and I use this word guardedly - picturesque. The road wound through cliffs, and when I made my turn onto I84, that road followed a stream down out of the mountains. It was very pretty. Some horses were there. They may have been wild. Eventually, there was Ogden. Ogden looks like Almaty: nestled in the mountains. Very pretty, if I hadn't at this point been shunted off the interstate onto another one because mine was under construction. This detour lasted quite awhile and was quite trafficky. Where I filled up for gas, country music was playing and army press gangs were prowling. I was glad to be back on my way. The road continued, mountains on one side and salt flats on the other. Ranches on dirt roads were occasionally visible. I shuddered. A cowboy showed up. I got to Idaho.
Eastern Idaho was terrifying. Dust devils swirled across the landscape. Signs warned "Dust Storm Area" or "High Winds Area" every few miles. There were not gates which closed the interstate in case of snowstorm, unlike in Wyoming, but I suspect this is likely because there were no exits. Every thirty miles or so would be a "Ranch Exit", with the frightening caveat "No Services". "If I break down here," I knew, "I shall surely die. My body will rot and my car rust down to its wheels before help can arrive." Eastern Idaho is empty. It is badlands; it is blighted. There were literally patched of blight here and there where the indigenous scrub was dead and the ground black. It was the poison of Idaho. At least the roads were not under construction, but I suspect that is primary because no one ever drove on them. I think I84 through Eastern Idaho is still the original gutta-percha-topped cobblestones personally laid down by Secretary of the Interior John Willock Noble and his debt-prisoner chain-gangs one thousand years ago during the semi-mythical hundred-year reign of President Benjamin Harrison II Philopater.
Look at all those hyphens! I feel like the Hegelian antithesis of James Joyce.
Once out of the desert, Idaho wasn't that bad. Here and there were farms. Everything was smooth sailing until Boise, which was half closed like everything else. It was Wyoming and Idaho where trucks' wakes and bow shots really started to bother me. Maybe I was just tired, or it was the cross winds, but it seemed the wakes would shimmy and shake my van more than before, and the bow shocks push me further onto the shoulder. I actually did see a person broken down in Western Idaho, steam pouring out of her Jeep. I hope her death was not unpleasant. Eventually I got to Oregon.
"My new home state," I thought. The speed limit was only 65. There were some mountains. Interestingly, Oregon had closed one half of each of its bridges. Maybe they thought it more efficient to close all the bridges, then fix them, then, presumably, open them up again, rather than work on them one at a time. Maybe I'll write the transportation secretary.
It got dark in the mountains. The curvy, unfamiliar mountains. I would be going downhill, and a sign would come up. A curvy arrow with an advisory limit of 50 MPH. I'd play it safe and slow down to 45. Several minutes and 720 degrees later, careening down the mountain at 65 or 70, the wheel clutched in my hands so hard they hurt, not breathing, I'd brake on the curve. "Fucking mountains!" I called into the dark. Why couldn't they have had a straightaway to brake on? What do people do when it rains? Eventually I got to Pendleton. It was about 210 miles from Portland, and I called my roommate, letting him know I'd be in Portland that night. State law mandated the attendant pump my gas. Confused, I tipped him.
Soon I should have stopped, but I wanted to get to Portland. I made a nearby truck my driving buddy. I'd follow him, about ten car lengths back, using him as a focal point and a preview of the road ahead. I was getting pretty sleepy, but pushed on. Eventually I began to notice a smell. At first I couldn't place it, though it teased the edges of my consciousness. Then it smelled like death. Then my grandparents' house. Then shoe leather, then pepper, then oxygen. I put it down to a brain tumor and resigned myself to death. Since then I've come to believe that it was mills along the Columbia River, or maybe the river itself, but I'm no doctor.
I had forgotten to read my directions. I would hold them up whenever I'd pass a light. Take exit what? Onto which? Toward where? Portland, finally. Things went smoothly, and when I saw the famous "Made in Oregon" sign peeking between the freeways, my spirits rose. I exited the freeway at about 12:30 local time, having been on the road almost exactly 60 hours.
My directions, though by this time I had read them, left something to be desired. After being lost for about half an hour and ending up on the wrong side of the river, I asked a security guard for help. He was cool and actually had me follow him to the bridge I was supposed to take, and then pointed at it out his window. I found the way. Even though I was clearly in a moving van, someone tailgated me. I found the right road and made the left turn. I saw a house that looked like the picture, though I couldn't see any numbers. All the lights were on. Someone came out and greeted me, arms in the air, shouting happily.
And here I am.
Driving cross-country, especially in a vehicle with bad gas mileage, is ungodly expensive. I estimate I will be in debt for nine generations to pay back the gas companies. Fortunately, I plan to die without issue, so technically it will be their loss.
Tips for driving across a continent of some size: Be male. The whole trip, I went to the bathroom three times, and two of these were in my motel room. Had I been a woman, needing to stop to pee every forty or fifty minutes, I would have turned back while still in Pennsylvania, burned all my possessions, and taken the plane. Have an audiobook. Propers go out to Danny for this one, which I surely would have forgotten. My audiobook was Peter Stearns's A Brief History of the World, by the Great Courses company. I highly recommend it, as it sustained me through the majority of Idaho, all of Utah, Wyoming, and even through all of hellish Nebraska. I would have gone mad with nothing but music the whole time. Speed liberally. The speed limit is 75 in Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, and Idaho. Sometimes the speed limit sign is covered with sheeting. This is for three reasons. Firstly, the roads are primarily flat and difficult to screw up on. Secondly, the states are not someplace a person would want to stick around in anyway. Lastly, at least in the case of Wyoming and Idaho, there are not enough people to provide basic services, so state patrol gets cut. In places like the desert of Eastern Idaho, there are no patrol cars. There are no services, no people. You can go 120, 150, 180 if you feel like it, but if you break down, take the easy way out and just drink your antifreeze. For the record, I only exceeded 90 a couple of times the whole trip, and never exceeded 95.So, that was an eventful three days.
I80 runs directly through Gary, Indiana and the Southern outskirts of Chicago. Luckily, it was Monday night, so traffic was light. I was planning to stop for gas once I got through Chicago, which was kind of a strange phenomenon. The outskirts, bedroom communities, and other external areas of Chicago ran on thickly for a little bit, and then: nothing. It was black. No buildings, no civilisation. A fox or coyote ran in front of my van and nearly got itself smooshed. When I finally pulled off to get gas, I realised I was quite tired and figured it was time for a nap. The gas station was very windy. I back my moving van up next to the truck rest area, and climbed inside with my coat on. Propping the door open an inch or so with one of Dangerfan's legs, I went to sleep.
I woke up two hours or so later, frozen to the bone and shivering. I figured I wasn't going to get anymore sleep at night here in the cold, windswept moors of Illinois, so I headed out. "Just till the next lodging," I figured. Well, the next lodging came and went, and the next and the next and I started to get my strength back. I crossed the Mississippi in the Quad Cities, none of whose name I can remember now. "Now," I thought, "I am in the West." How wrong I was! Except for radio station call signs.
I went on in Iowa for only a few hours, till just around sunrise or so. I was getting quite tired, and I pulled off at a motel fully intending to take a room for the day. Then I decided to save my money, backed my van up into a parking spot with a vegetative screen behind it, and crawled in for another nap.
Two hours or so later, I woke up shivering and frozen again. All the trees and ivies had stopped the sun from warming the van. I set off. Iowa was foggy, a rolling landscape with farms everywhere. Trees along the road were less common. Eventually I pulled into a gas station in Stuart. "Fod", advertised a nearby sign, one of the Os having fallen off. I couldn't figure out how to use the pumps. They just wouldn't start. After having two give this reaction, I walked into the store to see what was up. Evidently I had to lift the handle to get the gas to start. Oh.
Premium was less than standard. I figured this was a glitch in the programming of their pumps, so I started filling up with premium. Four gallons or so later, I noticed that under the sticker for premium was another, saying "clean-burning ethanol". "What happens," I asked the cashier, "when you put ethanol into a car that doesn't like it?" I was told that it was only ten per cent ethanol, and if since it was only a few gallons I could mix it with some other gas and it would be fine. I bought a Zero Bar and that cashier probably thought I was the dumber traveller ever. I filled up with regular.
Nebraska. Nebraska is like the State That Never Ends. Nebraska is your hell. A more cunning driver would have taken note of the ruler-straight roads, the ground so flat you could see the horizon in front of and behind you, and the 75 mile per hour speed limit; that driver would have chained his wheel straight, set his cruise control to 65 (or maybe 60, to be safe), and gone to sleep. Since my van didn't have cruise control, I was forced to experience the whole of Nebraska manually, from end to end.
It didn't start out too badly. I80 runs straight through Omaha. There was a city, a river, a hill, all sorts of interesting things. Suddenly: flat; farm; nowhere. At first, corn was omnipresent. There was road, sky, and corn. This went on for six or eight weeks, and I started to run out of gas and feel sleepy.
I pulled into a gas station with a motel next to it, fully intending to take a room for the night. Instead I bought a Butterfinger and went back on the road. In Nebraska, there are no conventional clocks as you or I would know them. Time is measured by the suffering of men. The only thing to break the monotony is an occasional pickup truck driving on a dirt road parallelling the interstate. An indeterminate amount of time later, I was very tired, and had to use the bathroom. I pulled off the road and into a lot near a motel, fully intending to take a room for the night. Instead I pulled around behind the building, and climbed into my van for a nap. It was hot. I took of my shirt, socks, and shoes, and changed into shorts. I got my battery-powered fan and put it on my stomach.
Two hours later, I woke up, choking and gasping. In my sleep-addled mind, my first thought was that I has exhausted the oxygen in the van. This proved not to be the case. Eventually, I got changed back into clothes. I really needed to pee, but I didn't want to rent a room or buy a hamburger, so I backed the van around, sat on the gate, and peed on the ground.
Nebraska, it turns out, does not like to be peed on. Almost as soon as I got back on the road, my eyes started to hurt. The sun was still high in the sky, and initially I took it to be pain from glare or brightness. Then my eyes got really, sore, like there was oil in them or something. It was painful to keep them open, and I wiped and wiped them, but there was nowhere to pull off. Twenty minutes or so this went on. My eyes hurt so much. I pulled off as soon as possible and cleaned them as best I could with a damp paper towel. I also pulled out all my loose eyelashes, just in case.
After I got back on the road, I soon entered Western Nebraska. Whilst the first part of my journey ws green, the rest would be brown. Western Nebraska, empty of farms, was full of bugs. The entire front of my car was coated in splatted insects, called down by vengeful Nebraska to attack me. The sun was setting. In my eyes. Refracting off every single patch of bug guts. I could see nothing: nothing but glare. The windshield wipers, even with the windex, only made things worse. I stopped off at the nearest exit, intending to use their gas station's squeegee. The next exit, it turned out, was two miles from the town it serviced. I shook up a can of Diet Pepsi, sprayed it on the windshield, and wiped off the fluid and the bugs with some paper towels, which I subsequently littered. The results were not good, but I could see a patch of road in front of me.
In a flat place, driving West, sunsets are awful. Nothing occluded it. Though we were climbing in elevation, there were no hills. There were no trees. The road never turned. The sun shone straight in the windshield. I could see nothing except the road revealed under the visor. I stopped at the first place possible.
This was Sidney. Sidney must have been at the crossroads of something, because the service area was packed. Florida, California, license plates from all over. A Wal-Mart was there. Gas was thirty cents more expensive than anywhere else in America. I had to fill up. There was nothing for another fifty miles, which I didn't have. I cleaned my windshield.
By the time I finished, the sun had set. Sunset in the scrubland of Western Nebraska was a total thing. I'm used to sunsets where, after the sun dips below the horizon, the sky remains illuminated for awhile. Maybe an hour or so. In Nebraska, there was total dark within like two minutes. Some little mesas were around, which I mistakenly called 'buttes'.
Less than an hour later, I left hateful Nebraska behind me. Wyoming was, well, dark. Hilly. I went up a big hill or a mountain; I couldn't tell which, in the dark. On the curvy, dark downslope, I got passed by like three trucks. I decided to sop soon. Cheyenne was near: "Cheyenne: Next 4 Exits". I'll stop off and go to sleep, I thought. First exit: oil refinery. I didn't want to sleep near that, so I skipped the next exit too. The last two exits never materialised. Maybe they were added to make Cheyenne sound important. Laramie was the next town of any size.
An hour later, I reached it. I started watching the signs for lodging. Finally, at the last exit (of which Laramie actually did have four), a sign for Super 8 with Free Wireless. Surprisingly, when I pulled in I actually booked a room. Then I checked my email, went to the bathroom (my second time for the whole trip), and went to sleep. I woke up eight hours later looking forward to a continental breakfast. After a shower and bathroom break, I ended up eating a piece of toast with jelly and drinking about six ounces of orange juice.
Wyoming is steppe. In Western Nebraska, cows and llamas grazed. Wyoming was bare. I stopped off to get gas and maybe buy a Double Crispy Sandwich. Despite the "Open" sign, though, the KFC was closed. Wyoming continued. It went on and on. No one went slower than 75. Most went over 80. On any given moment, there are more people driving through Wyoming, on route 80 alone, than there are residents of Wyoming. Whilst the terrain could have been the moon for the animal life it sported, the road was full to bursting.
Wyoming, though, was the land of weird signs. A sign of an Asian child in a cowboy hat, eating a hamburger patty sandwiched between two Cinnabons. Or maybe I was tired. Another sign was not a billboard at all. It was, in fact a schoolbus. "Adults" was painted on it, in letters ten feet high. Though intrigued, I dared not investigate. Another sign said "Vegan Option", though this later turned out to be "Weigh Station". More frequent, and much scarier, were the "Freeway Closed When Flashing" signs, typically followed by an "Interstate Closed When Flashing. Prepare to Exit" sign, followed by some railroad gates. I guessed they closed it for snow. I'm glad they didn't close it on me.
Wyoming continued. My only source of reassurance was my knowledge that, though it takes about six hours to drive though Wyoming, during the great Oregon Trail days of James K. Polk, the average trip time was between nine and twelve months. I climbed up some hills, and eventually was in Utah.
I should explain something I've been leaving out. In 2006, a massively pork-laden transportation bill passed the US Congress. This bills granted enough money to every state to buy enough orange-and-white traffic barrels to shut down one lane of each road within two miles of any city. There was not quite enough money, however, to afford workers to do anything to the roads. Presumably this was done as insurance so the states would continue to receive money the next year. "Look at the road," they would claim, "they're in terrible shape! Half shut down! More money is needed."
Utah was different in a single respect. Although the roads were still half shit down anywhere within artillery range of any settlement larger than two thousand persons, Utah actually had some people on one of its roads. They were, in fact, unlike any road workers I had ever seen before: they were working. Maybe they were in training or actually convicts or something. I never learned.
Utah was actually - and I use this word guardedly - picturesque. The road wound through cliffs, and when I made my turn onto I84, that road followed a stream down out of the mountains. It was very pretty. Some horses were there. They may have been wild. Eventually, there was Ogden. Ogden looks like Almaty: nestled in the mountains. Very pretty, if I hadn't at this point been shunted off the interstate onto another one because mine was under construction. This detour lasted quite awhile and was quite trafficky. Where I filled up for gas, country music was playing and army press gangs were prowling. I was glad to be back on my way. The road continued, mountains on one side and salt flats on the other. Ranches on dirt roads were occasionally visible. I shuddered. A cowboy showed up. I got to Idaho.
Eastern Idaho was terrifying. Dust devils swirled across the landscape. Signs warned "Dust Storm Area" or "High Winds Area" every few miles. There were not gates which closed the interstate in case of snowstorm, unlike in Wyoming, but I suspect this is likely because there were no exits. Every thirty miles or so would be a "Ranch Exit", with the frightening caveat "No Services". "If I break down here," I knew, "I shall surely die. My body will rot and my car rust down to its wheels before help can arrive." Eastern Idaho is empty. It is badlands; it is blighted. There were literally patched of blight here and there where the indigenous scrub was dead and the ground black. It was the poison of Idaho. At least the roads were not under construction, but I suspect that is primary because no one ever drove on them. I think I84 through Eastern Idaho is still the original gutta-percha-topped cobblestones personally laid down by Secretary of the Interior John Willock Noble and his debt-prisoner chain-gangs one thousand years ago during the semi-mythical hundred-year reign of President Benjamin Harrison II Philopater.
Look at all those hyphens! I feel like the Hegelian antithesis of James Joyce.
Once out of the desert, Idaho wasn't that bad. Here and there were farms. Everything was smooth sailing until Boise, which was half closed like everything else. It was Wyoming and Idaho where trucks' wakes and bow shots really started to bother me. Maybe I was just tired, or it was the cross winds, but it seemed the wakes would shimmy and shake my van more than before, and the bow shocks push me further onto the shoulder. I actually did see a person broken down in Western Idaho, steam pouring out of her Jeep. I hope her death was not unpleasant. Eventually I got to Oregon.
"My new home state," I thought. The speed limit was only 65. There were some mountains. Interestingly, Oregon had closed one half of each of its bridges. Maybe they thought it more efficient to close all the bridges, then fix them, then, presumably, open them up again, rather than work on them one at a time. Maybe I'll write the transportation secretary.
It got dark in the mountains. The curvy, unfamiliar mountains. I would be going downhill, and a sign would come up. A curvy arrow with an advisory limit of 50 MPH. I'd play it safe and slow down to 45. Several minutes and 720 degrees later, careening down the mountain at 65 or 70, the wheel clutched in my hands so hard they hurt, not breathing, I'd brake on the curve. "Fucking mountains!" I called into the dark. Why couldn't they have had a straightaway to brake on? What do people do when it rains? Eventually I got to Pendleton. It was about 210 miles from Portland, and I called my roommate, letting him know I'd be in Portland that night. State law mandated the attendant pump my gas. Confused, I tipped him.
Soon I should have stopped, but I wanted to get to Portland. I made a nearby truck my driving buddy. I'd follow him, about ten car lengths back, using him as a focal point and a preview of the road ahead. I was getting pretty sleepy, but pushed on. Eventually I began to notice a smell. At first I couldn't place it, though it teased the edges of my consciousness. Then it smelled like death. Then my grandparents' house. Then shoe leather, then pepper, then oxygen. I put it down to a brain tumor and resigned myself to death. Since then I've come to believe that it was mills along the Columbia River, or maybe the river itself, but I'm no doctor.
I had forgotten to read my directions. I would hold them up whenever I'd pass a light. Take exit what? Onto which? Toward where? Portland, finally. Things went smoothly, and when I saw the famous "Made in Oregon" sign peeking between the freeways, my spirits rose. I exited the freeway at about 12:30 local time, having been on the road almost exactly 60 hours.
My directions, though by this time I had read them, left something to be desired. After being lost for about half an hour and ending up on the wrong side of the river, I asked a security guard for help. He was cool and actually had me follow him to the bridge I was supposed to take, and then pointed at it out his window. I found the way. Even though I was clearly in a moving van, someone tailgated me. I found the right road and made the left turn. I saw a house that looked like the picture, though I couldn't see any numbers. All the lights were on. Someone came out and greeted me, arms in the air, shouting happily.
And here I am.
Driving cross-country, especially in a vehicle with bad gas mileage, is ungodly expensive. I estimate I will be in debt for nine generations to pay back the gas companies. Fortunately, I plan to die without issue, so technically it will be their loss.
Tips for driving across a continent of some size: Be male. The whole trip, I went to the bathroom three times, and two of these were in my motel room. Had I been a woman, needing to stop to pee every forty or fifty minutes, I would have turned back while still in Pennsylvania, burned all my possessions, and taken the plane. Have an audiobook. Propers go out to Danny for this one, which I surely would have forgotten. My audiobook was Peter Stearns's A Brief History of the World, by the Great Courses company. I highly recommend it, as it sustained me through the majority of Idaho, all of Utah, Wyoming, and even through all of hellish Nebraska. I would have gone mad with nothing but music the whole time. Speed liberally. The speed limit is 75 in Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, and Idaho. Sometimes the speed limit sign is covered with sheeting. This is for three reasons. Firstly, the roads are primarily flat and difficult to screw up on. Secondly, the states are not someplace a person would want to stick around in anyway. Lastly, at least in the case of Wyoming and Idaho, there are not enough people to provide basic services, so state patrol gets cut. In places like the desert of Eastern Idaho, there are no patrol cars. There are no services, no people. You can go 120, 150, 180 if you feel like it, but if you break down, take the easy way out and just drink your antifreeze. For the record, I only exceeded 90 a couple of times the whole trip, and never exceeded 95.So, that was an eventful three days.