Every time I sit down to write my mind goes blank. I actually had to look to see how long it has been since I posted and am not all that surprised to see damn near two months.
The week long ordeal of driving cross country was alternately fun and miserable. Four middle aged adults with vastly differing views on what a move/road trip entails.
The Penske truck had about 4 inches of play in the steering. Meaning those star wars canyons that the highway system sets up coast to coast every spring make driving no fun in a sports car, and misery in a truck. I alternately wanted to know how to invest in those Jersey Barriers, because there have to be a trillion of them on the sides of the roads - and how to find the motherfucker who invented them so I could hunt him down and kill him, , because there have to be a trillion of them on the sides of the roads.
Hosehead came up the night before we launched, and we made it to eastern Ohio before giving up. We were port and starboard driving, basically changing out at each fillup. It was the end/beginning of each day that became the lemon juice in the cut.
Setup. Hoser and I were driving the penske. His wife and his sister-in-law were driving his car. Sister-in-law was along to help drive, and wanted to stop at every Harley Davidson dealership to buy a Harley shirt.
They insisted we start at the same time every day. When I am on the road I crash for six hours, get up, shower, pack my shit and hit the road. By 6am.
So I find myself watching the news and drinking Econolodge coffee while the women take hours to get ready to go. If we are lucky we hit the highway right at rush hour.
I am a master of missing rush hours. I adjust my timing to never be going through a city at prime driving time.
Being tied to the schedule of two chicks who were not driving a Penske truck tested my patience. Let’s leave it there.
I feel bad because we passed within a hundred miles of a lot of my in-real-life and on-line friends. But I was not in control of the process. I was just along to help.
Five days later we were on the downhill slide on route 93 heading for the Arizona-Nevada border when the traffic stopped.
Two hours later the traffic started moving again. We passed a quarter mile of wreckage, an RV that had somehow hit the ubiquitous Jersey Barriers and unraveled
We dodged thunderstorms into the absurd metroplex that Las Vegas has become since I lived there 26 years ago.
Hoser hung up the truck on a bollard at his new apartment complex. He is moving into a retirement community. I take back everything I have said about the ignorance of youth. Apparently it comes back in spades in old age. Shriveled old people with white moss-like hair pulled in behind us and started honking. The gate security guy said “Yeah, that helps.”
I had gotten out of the truck and was trying to figure out how to get off the bollard. I just turned around in hulk-mode and said “Fuck you.”
They stopped honking. Not my best moment, but I don’t have to live there.
Four hours of humping Hoseheads shit from the parking lot, around the courtyard and up the stairs to his new teensie apartment. It was pretty miserable.
Then. We had to go shopping.
Las Vegas has turned into a cess-pool. You couldn’t walk across a parking lot without pan-handlers and scammers trying to get money from you.
Four shopping carts full of shit, back to the apartment. Parking lot to stairs, to parking lot to stairs to parking lot to stairs.
I noticed I couldn’t drink enough water. I was first there at 22, and I kinda remember being thirsty all the time.
Then the women, who hadn’t spent the last five hours of hauling in shit on top of twelve hours of driving decided we should go out to eat. At 10PM.
I finally put my foot down. I’m not going anywhere. Order a fucking pizza. I’m taking a shower and going to sleep.
Except.
I’m sleeping in the living room, and it is full of boxes. And the two showers in the apartment don’t have shower curtains.
Back to Wal*Mart.
I eat a single piece of pizza. Slide down the wall and start to nod off. Turns out they have an air mattress. I wake up six hours later being harassed by their terribly coddled cats.
Cat aside: I have a cat. I used to have two. I don’t particularly “love” cats, but I recognize they have a usefulness in providing entertainment and company. And they are a lot easier to deal with than dogs. So if that makes me a cat person, sobeit. Things that don’t happen in my apartment. Cats don’t walk on food preparation surfaces. Dulci know which horizontal surfaces she is allowed on, and none of them are in the kitchen. Nothing roils my stomach like watching someone reaching around their cats while making a sandwich. I want to scream “GO THROUGH THEIR LITTERBOX PROCESS IN YOUR MIND AND TELL ME YOU WANT THAT SANDWICH THAT BAD!” With curse words in that mental scream.
Cat people have everyone convinced they are clever, clean sentient beings. No they are nasty little pre-programmed robots who will chase lazer dots and will start eating you when you die before you are even cold.
/Cat aside
Of course now that we are in the apartment it becomes imperative to open every box and dump shit all over. And. We still have half a truck to unload.
So the next two days are miserable hot humping shit into the packed apartment and making runs to stores to buy more shit.
The trip home was bad enough, a 5 hour redeye, a 5 hour layover for a one hour flight from JFK to Portland. On the misery scale, Jet Blue is right in the middle. Their in-flight wi-fi doesn’t work for shit. But at least my knees weren’t pressed again the seat in front of me.
There was a baby - maybe one or so - in the seat in front of me on the last leg. We played peak-a-boo for most of the flight. Eighteen years or so from now she is going to break some hearts. I usually think of babies as sorta interchangeable, but she was adorable.
Once at the terminal in Portland, my home state made me proud by having five flights worth of luggage scattered across three conveyors in no order whatsoever.
My suitcase is blaze orange. You know why? No one else has a blaze orange suitcase. I can see that thing from two miles.
On the way out of long-term parking the parking attendant asks “So you are a shellback?”
At this point I have been up for 40 hours. Cognitive reasoning is at about 10%. I barely recognize I am wearing my shellback t-shirt.
On comes the mandatory chit chat - sailor or marine, which ship etc.
An hour later back in my apartment. My brain didn’t completely turn off for two days.
And somehow Summer has arrived.
My MBA will be conferred on Monday. My diploma shipped on the 12th.
Loading comments...