Monday, April 30, 2007

I Been From Tuscon to Tucumcarie...

Coffee in a little white styrofoam cup, "Willin' " by Lowell T. George, covered by Steve Earle, on iTunes. No random choice that--drove through Tucumcarie yesterday and Dave emailed me the song to listen to this morning (he had just ripped the cd). Lyrics here for those unfamiliar with the appropriateness of the song, and a snippet of song on top of the "Songs iLike" part of the iLike sidebar on the right. My contribution to the iTunes library for the trip was "Amarillo By Morning" by George Strait. It wasn't morning, but it was Amarillo yesterday.

Gallup, New Mexico. It's been a journey. Didn't get out the door till 3:30 pm on Saturday. No typo there: PM. And still drove 500 miles. Took Dave helping load the van and utzing me out the door (in a loving, caring way, of course) to get out that early. Stayed in some motel in Arkansas (I think) with cardboard walls and avid tv viewers. Slept little. Woke terse.

The highlight of Day 1 was finding myself on a major highway not in the gps. It kept telling me to turn and I finally had to get off to buy a road atlas--only to find I HAD packed the road atlas as soon as I got back in the car. Oh well. Now Sophie and I can each look at one as I drive. In spite of the late start and going in circles for the dingy gps a couple of times, we did 500 miles.

Day 2. After little sleep, hit the road at 6:00 am. Drove over 1100 miles to Gallup. It was a pretty easy drive with only one half-hour patch of 10 mph due to road construction. Ate at Denny's and stayed at La Quinta. Didn't turn on the AC so the room got a bit warm, but slept pretty soundly. Sophie wondered if we would hear a train in the middle of the night as one of the main east-west US tracks parallels I-40 and is right in front of our motel and sure enough at 2:30 I woke to the whistle at 2:30. But that was okay; sitting bolt upright at 5:27 because I remembered I forgot to lock the car the night before was a bit more of a shock. Threw on clothes, ran down the elevator (an oxymoron--it was slow as dirt) and checked it. It's fine and now locked.

It's now 6:09 am and past time we were on the road. No time to re-read and edit. Post and run day.

Vegas here we come (you can guess tomorrow's song, now I just need to download it...)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good thing you stopped in Gallup; David could tell you that when he and I drove from Chicago to LA, we skipped it, only to find that there aren't any motel rooms from Gallup to deep in Arizona, by which time you might as well just keep driving to Vegas...