2010.06.16 2873 Miles Later
I think I was trying to assauge my feelings of my lost youth when I agreed to help my buddy drive across the US. Recalling all the times I spent driving through the night for the sake of adventure and ardor, I felt like this would be a reminding taste of the wanderlust I used to indulge. The excuse I used to explain myself to most people was that I was merely trying to live up to the ideal of being the kind of cool guy others could count on for going above and beyond. I might cling to that more now; now that I realize more fully what I was really doing. That realization came slowly, mile-by-mile and hour-by-hour, all the way to Georgia.
The first leg, we started shortly after 22:00 on Friday night - because we wanted to get a head start, and to take advantage of the lighter traffic of the night. We got to Idaho, and found a place to sleep away the rest of the morning. That really set the tone for the trip: drive until the wee hours just before dawn, find some random motel and sleep until checkout local time, then resume.
We were in a class-7 truck, about 13 tons, pulling a trailer with the minivan on it. The combination was somewhat underpowered, forcing us down to 30 mph on some hills, and making the 70 mph downhills a bit hair-raising. On the freeway we travelled comfortably enough, especially since were were taking turns doing 4-hour driving stints. Off the freeway, the configuration handled like a pig wrapped in a cow pulling a sack of potatoes. Twice we had to back up due to being too tired, and both times were trials, but oddly satisfying once accomplished. The cab was packed with two full-size adult males, our accumulated gear, one small dog (the cat was in a cage in the minivan), and the detritus of our 50 hours of camping on a vinyl bench.
The second stop was the middle of Wyoming, somewhere, after trespassing the corner of Utah. Wherever it was, it was cold and at high altitude. Apparently it had just snowed the day before. I found it pleasant in a low-oxygen sort of way, but my travelling companions liked it less well. The stars were amazing.
The third stop was just after Kansas City in Missouri after just touching Iowa and plowing through southern Nebraska. I had sort of expected Nebraska to be the most boring part of the trip due to the extreme flatness and the lack of anything there map-wise. Turns out, though, that thunderstorms big enough to generate tornado warnings are actually pretty exciting. Even in a big truck.
Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky slipped by without much notice. No, that's not quite true - the arch in St Louis was pretty cool to see. In Tennessee the fireflies were out as we drove, which I found out are exta-spectacular when they splatter on the windshield leaving brightly-glowing guts. We paused in Nashville around midnight to visit the Nashville Mafia (who gifted us with coffee, moon pies, and Mellow Yellow), and we stopped just before Chattanooga. While we were discussing with the desk clerk about where to park our cow-wrapped potato-sack-dragging pig truck, I noticed an odd bird buzzing around one of the exterior lights. It took my road-addled brain a few moments to realize that it was actually a gigantic moth, with wings each nearly the size of my hand. Luckily, it did not carry away the dog.
The last leg was pretty much all Georgia, and just a short 7-hour drive, including a slow spell crawling through 9 lanes of traffic all going the same way through Atlanta. It grew hot and swampy, and since the air conditioning in the truck wasn't working I was happy for the few cooling thunderstorms we drove through. I have to admit, Georgia is quite pretty. My buddy was reunited with his wife and two kids, who had flown the trip while we were driving.
So, here I am, relaxing in a hotel lobby, waiting for a ride to the airport and to fly home. Reflecting back, I realize that I was trying to re-live being young and stupid. While I'm not young anymore, I am still stupid. But I hope it's at least an interesting, worthy sort of stupid.