3000 Miles and Change
So I am East Coast again. YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY! Law! It is good to know where all the roads go again. So yeah, the Drive. *snicker* If I had an inkling to be a stand up comedian this trip gave me an entire show.
So firstly - Loading the Car. This was amusing in a physically impossible, slightly aggravating kind of way. After the movers managed to fit the stuff I was leaving into a 10x10 storage unit (which they didn't think would work, HAH!) I looked at the stuff that I was planning to bring with me. The stuff that I figured I would use at least once in the next 10 months. It was alot. Almost all of my clothing, all of my shoes, books, videos, DVDs, my sewing machine (gotta have it along with my fabric cause I just might want to sew one day before Nero or something), and a guinea pig cage and a cat carrier with 2 cats. Then I looked at the car. Yeah. For the uninformed reader I drove a 2001 Mitsubishi Eclipse GT. Not really the type of vehicle with which you attempt large tasks like, oh, MOVING, in. But I didn't have a choice. Then I looked back at my stuff. Back at the car. and a little voice in my head just started laughing hysterically. But somehow (I like to atribute it to a tear in space-time that formed in the back left corner of the trunk) it all fit. Barely.
The drive itself was...long. Yes, that's the best way to describe it. Anyone who says "I'd love to drive across the country" I want to slap and say "No, you really don't". If you want to do it in a vacationy sort of way taking a couple days per stop then MAYBE I could understand. But trying to hit a date or do it on a $400 budget is not a fun way to do it. I've done it both ways. Urgh. It's kinda cool for the first two days but after that you can feel your spine merging with the leather. This drive I did alone which I think is weird sort of test/torment to see if you can actually stand yourself for that long in a car. I had been doing the same thing in the apartment for the last month and change and I have my cats yes (and we had several involved conversations about the trip and why they had to like being stuck in a box for five days, though I let them out in the motel rooms - coming up soon) but the car was absolutely full of stuff - under the seats, under the dash, on the back deck, the trunk was completely solid - you get the idea. There was just enough room for me to sit, drive and shift. But it was me and the radio and the sky, to wax poetic. Which was awesome really. I kept thinking I should take pictures but they'd just come back as another landscape shot, it's something you gotta see. I still can't believe how big the sky is in texas. Just flat plains for miles and miles crowned by a brilliant blue sky. I had fantastic weather for driving I will say that. The first day it was unbelieveably hot through arizona. The cats were panting and I didn't want to stop because hot air moving was slightly preferrable to hot air not moving. Thank god the sun went down.
New Mexico was interesting. The second day, after you go through Albequerque - yeah that looks right - the FM radio dial is fiction. So I switch to AM cause dad said you could pick up talk radio shows from all over. He neglected to tell me that the AM dial has been enslaved by the extreme right. All I could get was conservative talk shows or sports; just goes to show how much I hate sports radio. So I'm listening to conservatives like Michael Savage (he's a gem all right) talk about Rush's remark and drug habit and Arnold's mysogyny and Nazi sympathising. I couldn't even get righteously indignant (which is why I was listening mainly) just because I was thinking "Can we please try and act like we're all older than FIVE please?!" so that was a bust. And I'm tired of typing so I will continue the saga of the cross country trip in my next post.
So firstly - Loading the Car. This was amusing in a physically impossible, slightly aggravating kind of way. After the movers managed to fit the stuff I was leaving into a 10x10 storage unit (which they didn't think would work, HAH!) I looked at the stuff that I was planning to bring with me. The stuff that I figured I would use at least once in the next 10 months. It was alot. Almost all of my clothing, all of my shoes, books, videos, DVDs, my sewing machine (gotta have it along with my fabric cause I just might want to sew one day before Nero or something), and a guinea pig cage and a cat carrier with 2 cats. Then I looked at the car. Yeah. For the uninformed reader I drove a 2001 Mitsubishi Eclipse GT. Not really the type of vehicle with which you attempt large tasks like, oh, MOVING, in. But I didn't have a choice. Then I looked back at my stuff. Back at the car. and a little voice in my head just started laughing hysterically. But somehow (I like to atribute it to a tear in space-time that formed in the back left corner of the trunk) it all fit. Barely.
The drive itself was...long. Yes, that's the best way to describe it. Anyone who says "I'd love to drive across the country" I want to slap and say "No, you really don't". If you want to do it in a vacationy sort of way taking a couple days per stop then MAYBE I could understand. But trying to hit a date or do it on a $400 budget is not a fun way to do it. I've done it both ways. Urgh. It's kinda cool for the first two days but after that you can feel your spine merging with the leather. This drive I did alone which I think is weird sort of test/torment to see if you can actually stand yourself for that long in a car. I had been doing the same thing in the apartment for the last month and change and I have my cats yes (and we had several involved conversations about the trip and why they had to like being stuck in a box for five days, though I let them out in the motel rooms - coming up soon) but the car was absolutely full of stuff - under the seats, under the dash, on the back deck, the trunk was completely solid - you get the idea. There was just enough room for me to sit, drive and shift. But it was me and the radio and the sky, to wax poetic. Which was awesome really. I kept thinking I should take pictures but they'd just come back as another landscape shot, it's something you gotta see. I still can't believe how big the sky is in texas. Just flat plains for miles and miles crowned by a brilliant blue sky. I had fantastic weather for driving I will say that. The first day it was unbelieveably hot through arizona. The cats were panting and I didn't want to stop because hot air moving was slightly preferrable to hot air not moving. Thank god the sun went down.
New Mexico was interesting. The second day, after you go through Albequerque - yeah that looks right - the FM radio dial is fiction. So I switch to AM cause dad said you could pick up talk radio shows from all over. He neglected to tell me that the AM dial has been enslaved by the extreme right. All I could get was conservative talk shows or sports; just goes to show how much I hate sports radio. So I'm listening to conservatives like Michael Savage (he's a gem all right) talk about Rush's remark and drug habit and Arnold's mysogyny and Nazi sympathising. I couldn't even get righteously indignant (which is why I was listening mainly) just because I was thinking "Can we please try and act like we're all older than FIVE please?!" so that was a bust. And I'm tired of typing so I will continue the saga of the cross country trip in my next post.