Go BACK to the eastbound page

On the road again ... (sorry Willie)

The westbound section of the trip officially began in Manchester, New Hampshire, not really in Union.  After arriving at the pond on August 15th, I spent the next ten days swimming (every day at least once - I try not to let Seven Tree Pond go to waste) visiting with family, bombing around in general and having a vacation.  I also read three or four books in the period and helped mom and dad with a few little projects around the house.

You saw the house on the previous page (if you go to the New England Gallery on this site, you can see it again) - and here's mom and dad:


Mom & Dad at the Homestead


And here's me as I was making final preparations to depart on 25 August:

Yes, I've just washed the Jeep...

My first stop after leaving Union was to see my friend Mike Leonard and his mom and dad, Fran and Hal Fairfield in Boothbay, Maine.
Here's what you see when you pull up to Fran and Hal's place:


Why does the place have this name, you ask?  Is it only because of how liquor is consumed in the house? ;-)
Mostly, I think, it's because the house is located literally "on" the rocks next to Boothbay Harbor.
Here's the view from the Fairfield's front porch:


And, once again, vacation photo-album style, is me on the aforementioned deck, in front of the aforementioned view:

Gee, I can't seem to find any photo image software that can take off 75 lbs....

After boothbay, the trip took me to Hingham, Massachusetts to visit my Aunt and my Grandparents.  Then on back up to Manchester, New Hampshire to visit with some old friends.

Then, on Tuesday, August 28th, it was time once again to head west.

WESTBOUND
DAY 1 - 28 August 2001 - Manchester, NH to Dallas Pike, West Virginia
STATS:  813 miles; 14h 55m; avg. speed 54.2 mph; Depart Manchester 0440 EDT; Arrive Dallas Pike 1955 EDT

The Day 1 route
This was a day to pay close attention to the weather.  I didn't mention weather in the eastbound trip (other than cold) because I really didn't encounter any rain or serious weather.  Important considerations when you're driving a vehicle with no real weather protection.  Weather protection - remember that phrase, we'll come back to it later...  But in general, on the trip east, I managed to stay behind most of the weather as it was moving west to east across the continent.  Once, I was stopped for the night as a cold front went through, so it rained a bit while I slept, but it was clear the next morning, if a bit chilly.

The drive out of NH was a routine Tuesday morning and I managed to make it south into Massachusetts before 80% of the weekday morning commuter rush, which is why I left so early in the first place.  Before I left the hotel, I had been looking at The Weather Channel on TV and had been taking note of a cold front that was moving through Wisconsin at that hour and was heading in the general direction of where I was going to be driving.  Cold fronts mean rain.  Cold fronts in August in the northeast frequently mean heavy rain, thunder, lightning, hail, etc.  The saying that the motorcycle cruisers use is pretty much the same when you're driving a Jeep with no doors and nothing but canvas over your head - "The only good view of a thunderstorm is in your rearview mirror."

So, As I rolled in to Cannan, New York at about 7:30 AM, I was paying more attention to the clouds that were forming ahead of me.  I took a half hour in Cannan for breakfast and $25.00 worth of gas and rolled on into the Allegheny Mountains.  This part of the trip, having brought you west on the Mass Pike through Stockbridge and into NY state, is traveled on I-90 to Albany, then I-88 to Binghamton, then on to I-80 westbound.  If you read the eastbound page, you know that I'm a child of the US interstate highway system.  I don't travel it all the time, but when I want to get someplace, it's just the thing.

So as I roll on out of Albany, this is the view heading south toward Binghamton:


Clouds don't look ominous or anything.  Looks like a nice, summer day.

I stopped for lunch in Harford, Pennsylvania.  30 minutes to stop, have a BLT and watch The Weather Channel on the TV in the restaurant.  That cold front was now in Western Pennsylvania.

I would be getting wet today.

After fueling up in Harford, I continued on until about 3:00 in the afternoon when I started seeing the sky do this:

I've had to make some adjustments on this picture to get it light enough to see anything - those clouds toward the right side of the shot really are that dark - and darker, really.

At this point, I'm just outside Williamsport, PA.  As I see the giant black thunderheads boiling up in the northwestern sky, I'm passing right by a Travel America truck stop.  I could get off the highway and get the Jeep under cover for the duration of the storm.  I would have done just that, had I been thinking more clearly.

Instead, I passed that TA Travel Stop and continued on I-80.  This is what's known on the road as a "lame, dumbass move."  Roughly 2 minutes after passing that darned truck stop, I was VERY sorry that I had.

Remember how my vehicle is configured - no doors, no cover, really.  I had rain gear packed in my backpack in the back of the rig.  The rain didn't begin as a sprinkle.  It didn't begin as a drizzle, it didn't begin as a moderate shower.  It really didn't even stop at downpour...  What I drove myself into was a classic - a summer thunder-buster to beat all.  The rain came down not in sheets, but literally in waves.  I must have looked quite the sight on that road that afternoon.  A guy in an open vehicle going like hell down the highway with the windshield wipers going the fastest they'd go and looking out around the windshield frame to see - because the wipers couldn't get the water off fast enough.

Now, you have to understand what normally happens when you drive in the rain in this vehicle.  See, I live in Portland, Oregon.  I drive in the rain a lot.  I drive in the rain while I have my vehicle configured for summer - doors off and all.  That's why I carry rain gear for me and for the Jeep.  I don't have a problem driving in rain showers.  Heck, even the occasional downpour is no big deal.  What happens is that 95% of the rain blows by and gets the rear deck duster all wet, not the cab area.  Sure, you get a little mist and splash on the extreme outside of your shoulder and the back of your left leg, but it's not usually all that serious.

Today it was different, however.  The rain was coming down so hard that it didn't have any time to roll off the rear deck duster.  It didn't just "mist" into the cab area.  Most of the reason the windshield wipers weren't working very well was that most of the water was on the INSIDE of the windshield!

Anyway, I was getting very wet, but luckily spotted an exit sign indicating that I could get off the freeway in a mile.  I did that and pulled up into the first parking lot I could find, onto the downwind side of a Cumberland Farms convenience store.  I jumped out and quickly tossed my Rain-Gear cover over the Jeep.  Cool thing, this cover - it's saved my hide a number of times when I didn't have enough sense to come in out of the rain.

This next picture was really, really dark.  I scanned this from the negative and even then I had to apply some HEAVY processing to it to get it to come up.  The day had turned to twilight under these thunder clouds, so I'm doing the best I can with this shot:

You can see the Rain-Gear cover in this picture.  If you'd like more info about it, see the folks over at Jeepcovers.com

So, while the sky was opening up and dropping everything except frogs ( Magnolia is one of my favorite movies...) I stepped into this conveniently located convenience store and had a nice hot cup of coffee and a banana and wondered how long I'd be here waiting for the rain to die off enough to get back on the road.

As the storm intensified, hail began to fall and I hoped it wouldn't get too large - hail and canvas tops don't mix real well.  I saw people come and go doing normal convenience store stuff - they bought fuel, they bought soda pop, they picked up newspapers.  

I eventually went back out and sat in the vehicle with my coffee and listened to the radio.  The weather report said that the scattered showers would probably stick around for most of the afternoon and that it would be getting colder.  I thought about my travel options and considered stopping in Williamsport for the night.  But it was only a little after 3:00 in the afternoon.  It seemed such a waste to burn that much daylight - besides, since I was traveling west, I would be heading out of the influence of this front and getting farther behind it all the time.  All I had to do was wait out this squall line that was going through and I'd be fine.

Sure enough, the rain let up sufficiently by about 3:45 that I could head out again.  I stuffed the Rain-Gear cover into its sack and headed back out on to I-80 again.  I had no intention of continuing on I-80 through Cleveland and Chicago, so I jogged on to I-76 north of Pittsburgh and then joined up with I-79 in Pittsburgh.  The final road switch for the day came just south of Pittsburgh as I joined up with I-70 west and headed off toward Columbus, Ohio.

It was just outside Pittsburgh, however, that I got my next lesson in weather behavior.  Coming west from Williamsport, I had driven out behind the cold front and away from the rain.  Indeed, the rest of the afternoon had been very nice.  It got sunny again and wasn't so warm.  As I headed out through western Pennsylvania, I figured that I'd done OK.  But when weather fronts form up, they don't usually line up in a dead-even east-west direction.  Most of the time, they stretch farther east the farther north you go along them.  If I had continued along I-80 (which I didn't want to do) then I would have stayed behind the front and been dry all the rest of the day.  But, I had turned south.  I was driving right back into the front that I had experienced in Williamsport - and it wasn't any prettier in Pittsburgh...

Somehow, I managed to skirt the worst of the rain and it wasn't a whole lot different than driving in Portland during a summer shower.  Sure, I got a little wet, but I had stopped and dug out a raincoat a few miles back, so I continued on in the Tuesday afternoon commuter traffic coming out of Pittsburgh.

The day ended when I finally got tired enough to stop.  I was in Dallas Pike, West Virginia, just east of Wheeling - up in that almost impossibly thin little sliver of West Virginia that lies at the very northwestern corner of the state and snuggles up in there between Pennsylvania and Ohio.  Had I driven another 30 miles that night, I would have barely noticed that I had passed through West Virginia.

I pulled in to a Holiday Inn Express in Dallas Pike at five minutes to eight in the evening.  The rain was starting up again, so I covered the Jeep for the night and went inside to dry out a bit.

WESTBOUND
DAY 2 - 29 August 2001 - Dallas Pike, West Virginia to Des Moines, Iowa
STATS:  771 miles; 13h 35m; avg. speed 56.7 mph; Depart Dallas Pike 0450 EDT; Arrive Des Moines 1815 CDT

The Day 2 route

This was essentially my "avoid I-80 and Chicago" day.  I had skirted south yesterday and was now on I-70 west which would take me through Zanesville, Columbus and Dayton, Ohio and on through Indianapolis over to I-74 for the ride through Urbana, Normal and Peoria, Illinois.  And no, I didn't play in Peoria...  Then I join up with I-80 again at Moline and on in to Davenport, Iowa.

I had decided early on in this leg of the trip that I was going to make an effort to avoid going through the very large, very crowded cities of the east and midwest.  Chicago, while a terrific town, was just not my cup of tea for this trip.  Besides Chicago, staying on 80 north of Pittsburgh ends up taking you through Cleveland and Toledo as well - I just wasn't up for the summer traffic.  So this day began at a not unreasonable hour when I checked out of the Holiday Inn in Dallas Pike and hit the road with a fresh cup of Texaco coffee and the sun just peeking up over the horizon.

The day dawned a little chilly and in the pre-dawn half hour or so that I was on the road before the sun made its full appearance, I had to wear coat, gloves and hat.  But by the time I had made Zanesville at about twenty minutes to seven that morning, it had warmed up enough that I could shed the hat and gloves and switch to a lighter jacket.  I made Columbus at just about commuter hour, but I guess I was going in the lighter direction, because I ran in to no major delays.  Rolling through Indiana and on in to Illinois, I was basically lost in my music, the road and my thoughts about nothing in particular.  This was one of those days that I really kind of look forward to on the road - where nothing is demanded of me other than to keep the vehicle on the pavement and relatively close to the speed limit - put gas in every 300 miles or so and keep moving.  These are the days that I solve all the worlds problems in my head.  Miles and miles and miles go by with hardly any notice and it's not uncommon for me to fill up the gas tank only to be amazed when I have to fill it up again in just a few minutes - not realizing that 4 or 5 hours have passed in actual time.

As I passed in to Iowa, it was about four in the afternoon central time.  I started making some plans about where to stop for the night.  I know a couple of people in Des Moines, so at one of my gasoline stops around 4:30 PM, I called my friend Mike who works for the parent company of my TV station, Meredith Corporation , in Des Moines.  The plan was this - if  Mike had time to have dinner out someplace that evening, I'd go ahead and stop in Des Moines for the night.  If Mike wasn't available, I'd press on toward Omaha and stop somewhere near there.

Mike was in his office and had no plans for dinner.  I agreed to meet him at the Meredith building around 6:00 PM and pressed on toward Des Moines.

'Twas on the road to Des Moines that my mirror fell off....  Well, almost.  My right side mirror suddenly started flopping around in the breeze about 80 miles east of Des Moines.  I pulled off the highway to see what was up and found that the binding nut, preload spring, washer, bushing and all that holds the mirror arm to the mirror mount had fallen out and were now sitting in the middle of Iowa someplace.  I put the mirror under the passenger's seat and pressed on.

With traffic and all, I didn't make it to meet my friend Mike until about 6:30, but we found a nice little steak and beer place and had a good dinner and a nice visit.  Somewhere along in the conversation, he eluded to a phone call that he had gotten from one of my engineers back in Portland a week or so back, but he wouldn't tell me what it was about because I was on vacation.  I was happy to remain ignorant, frankly.  My crew at the station is top-notch and I know that they can handle pretty much anything without me for a while, so I wasn't worried.

What Mike wasn't telling me was that the phone call pertained to some questions one of my guys had after an incident at the station where an unfortunate client had suffered a massive coronary in the building.  The staff had attempted to resuscitate the man and the local rescue had gotten there very quickly, but the poor fellow had basically expired before he hit the floor, so there was nothing that could have been done.  I guess the call had been to ask some questions about safety procedures and such that the company recommended.  All was found to be in compliance and this was chalked up to being an unfortunate and unavoidable circumstance.  I was glad Mike hadn't said anything.  But, I found out about it roughly 34 seconds after walking through the door the first day back at work after the trip...

In Des Moines, I treated myself to a really nice stay.  I checked in to the Embassy Suites right on the river downtown.  I settled in for a couple of hours of reading and went to sleep.

WESTBOUND
DAY 3 - 30 August 2001 - Des Moines, Iowa to Rapid City, South Dakota
STATS:  610 miles; 10h 10m; avg. speed 57.5 mph; Depart Des Moines 0950 EDT; Arrive Rapid City 1900 MDT

The Day 3 route

Day three started in a search for the parts to repair the right hand side mirror.  It simply became easier to buy a whole new mirror assembly.  There also happened to be a full service Jeep dealership right next to the hotel, so it made things very easy.  Then it came time to find a wrench...

OK, so you'd think that I might have a wrench in the Jeep, right?  Normally, yes.  The back of the rig normally has a full socket set, a set of Torx drivers, screwdrivers, the tow straps, snatch block, anchors, etc etc etc etc. for playing off-road.  This was not an off-road vacation, for the most part.  I had no intentions on this particular vacation of doing any serious trail driving, so I had removed most of the stuff I normally carry to pack up my backpack, etc. for the ride.

I could have kept at least the socket wrench kit in there I guess, but remember that when I departed Oregon back on the 11th of August, I was in a state of overstressed, over tired, over worked, over over.

The only time you need the Torx drivers is when you want to disassemble stuff that's not normally disassembled unless you break something.

For some odd reason, I still had the tow strap, snatch block, hooks, chain, winch remote, first aid kit and a crescent wrench in the back.  All that and no socket set.

You need a 17 mm socket to install the mirror assembly.

I didn't have a 17 mm socket.  I didn't have a 3/4" socket.  I had that crescent wrench, but you can't squish a crescent wrench up into the 19 mm hole in the bottom of the mirror mount that the 17 mm nut goes up into to mount the mirror.

I really needed that 17 mm socket...

I wasn't going to try to borrow one from the Jeep service department.  I had pride to preserve after all...  They're from Iowa.  They're used to being self sufficient on the corn farm.  I couldn't go and look like some darned out-of-towner from Oregon that couldn't even carry the most basic tools, could I?

I had that crescent wrench...

So, I needed to find a set of tools.  Hey, there's a Lowe's in Des Moines!  I could stop there and pick up a little socket set and be done.

Now, find the Lowe's.

I learned something that morning about Des Moines.  The city fathers of Des Moines have a sense of humor.   The city fathers of Des Moines laid out a great street grid.  Really, it's very logical.  Streets run numerically from low to high and alphabetically from A to Z.  Like a lot of gridded cities, the streets also lay out in a fashion where there are "north" streets and "south" streets.  In other words, there's a North 60th Street and a South 60th Street.  No problem, providing you know where the center dividing street is located (frequently called "Center" street or "Division" street or something similar)  This is where the City Fathers of Des Moines had their fun.  Somewhere back in the history of road signs in the city, apparently someone decided to make sure out-of-town tourists would become lost trying to find Lowe's in 2001.  There's a North 60th Street and a South 60th Street, right?  Guess what the street signs have printed on them?  "60th Street"  "Main Street"  "33rd Avenue" and so forth.  You simply have to know what part of town you're in to know whether this is NORTH 60th or SOUTH 60th.  Otherwise, you're about 120 blocks from where you need to be...

So, armed with directions to the store from the nice lady at the front desk of the hotel, I struck out on I-235 through the middle of Des Moines to find the exit for "60th Street" where I would find the Lowe's and a socket set and be able to install my new mirror.  I saw an exit marked "58th Street" and got off, finding 60th Street right where it should have been, two blocks away.  I drove to the address that should have been a really big retail store and found ... a cemetery.

OK, I must be on the wrong street.  Yup, it's 60th.  Yup, this is the correct range of numbers.  Nope, the folks in this particular location won't be able to help me with a socket set - not without, as Matt Damon says in "Good Will Hunting" - "... smelling salts and a wicked heater..."

I called the Lowe's and got better directions.  They told me to follow directions that basically put me right where I was.  I told the lady on the phone this.

Suddenly a dawn of light.  "Oh, you're on NORTH 60th Street.  We're on SOUTH 60th Street."  Now the directions made sense.

Back on I-235.  Get off at 60th Street (no "South" printed here either) and bang, right there, 1000 yards from the freeway - a great, big, giant Lowe's home center...

The socket set cost $64.95.  It's better than the one I used to have in the Jeep, so it's still in there today.  The mirror installation took roughly 1 minute and 28 seconds.  I was back on the road west after nearly two hours of learning the Des Moines geography.  And that was the start of day three...

For the rest of the day, I simply cruised.  I cruised through places like Adair, Iowa - near which, this picture was taken:

I cruised through Omaha.  I cruised through Sioux Falls and Presho, SD.  I cruised through Mitchell and just south of Pierre.  The day ended in Rapid City, South Dakota at one of the best Motel 6's I've ever stayed at - right in the middle of Black Hills country.

So I'm in Rapid City and in the Black Hills.  You're going to ask if I stopped by Mt. Rushmore, aren't you?

Been there, done that.  In case you don't know what Mt. Rushmore looks like, here's a picture:

... and here's one of the tacky trinkets you can buy there ...  

The first time I cruised through South Dakota back a few years ago, I stopped by Mt. Rushmore just to say I'd seen it. I think I spent fifteen minutes in the parking lot.  I've seen it.  I've never been one for major tourist traps.

However, at the start of day four, I did go to this place:
 
 

I tried real hard to get there before dawn, and I almost made it to take a sunrise shot.  I spent a couple of hours hiking the trails around the monument and had a nice time.
The music from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" stopped playing in my head about noon....

So, anyway...
WESTBOUND
DAY 4 - 31 August 2001 - Rapid City, South Dakota to Missoula, Montana
STATS:  749 miles; 13h 55m; avg. speed 53.8 mph; Depart Rapid City 0505 MDT; Arrive Missoula 1900 MDT


The Day 4 Route

After the stop at Devil's Tower and a really great breakfast nearby in the little town of Hulett (by the way good townspeople of Hulett, I was not some weirdo stalker oddball person wandering in to your diner at 0930 - despite the staring and whispering that went on when I walked through the door...) I struck out for Big Sky Country.  No pictures today, real quick rest stops.  I was starting to get the "I wanna get home" disease.

I got to Butte, Montana before I ran into another summer thundershower.  Good time for a dinner break, considering that it was about 5:00 PM when I got there.  A stop for gas, and a run into a supermarket for a sandwich and some other goodies and the storm had passed far enough to the east to not cause any more problems and I continued on.

Pulling in to Missoula, I forgot that this was the Friday of Labor Day weekend and that Missoula being a big college town, I would run smack into the freshman arrival crowds.  There was no trouble finding a hotel room at a nice Holiday Inn, but the number of weepy parents moping around was a major downer.  Since Saturday would be my last day on the road, I went out and grabbed a coke and got in to bed to read at about 8:00 PM.  I had been reading my way through Gene Kranz's book "Failure Is Not An Option" during the trip.  I got in a couple of hours of book time Friday evening and went to sleep.

By the way, if you've never driven in or through Montana - it's a REALLY big state...

WESTBOUND
DAY 5 - 1 September 2001 - Missoula, Montana to Portland, Oregon
STATS:  542 miles; 10h 25m; avg. speed 52 mph; Depart Missoula 0415 MDT; Arrive Portlamd 1340 PDT

The Day 5 route

The final day on the road.  Back home today and back to work on Tuesday.  Thus the departure from Missoula at 4:15 in the morning.  I wanted to take advantage of the extra hour that I'd gain by crossing back into the Pacific time zone going into Idaho - I wanted to roll in to Portland with some of the day left.  I just struck out - I planned to stop for breakfast in Spokane.

Heading west out of Missoula on I-90, I started seeing something disconcerting - I started seeing wrecks along the road.  At no fewer than three separate places in the hills heading toward Idaho, emergency vehicles were on scene pulling cars out of the ditch and putting people and bodies in to ambulances.  It should have been a sign to me.  It should have SCREAMED at me.  Did it?  No.  Here I was traveling at four in the morning on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend - one of the worst weekends for traffic accidents and fatalities on the calendar.  Something about those three wrecks should have warned me about what was coming, but it didn't.  What came was kind of hard to predict anyway - aren't the things that end your life usually unpredictable anyway?

I've gotten past the wrecks in Montana and have crossed in to Idaho and the Pacific time zone.  So the time was about 0410 PDT.  I was passing a semi on a winding bit of I-90 that curves downhill toward Coeur d'Alene.  I was only about 15 miles from the Montana border.  I was doing about 70 MPH.  I was on the last day of my trip.  I had made it all the way across Canada to Maine.  I had made it all the way back across the states and through three time zones.  I was only about 9 hours from being home.  I had managed to avoid thunderstorms, traffic accidents, major road work - even French Canadian traffic signs.

Then it happened.

The shape rose up into my headlight beams so quickly that I barely had a quarter of a second to recognize what it was.  Just as I hit it, the shape and the size of it finally registered.  If the metal rim of the full sized semi-truck spare tire hadn't been painted white, I probably wouldn't have seen it at all until I smacked it.

So imagine the following - I'm in the left lane passing a large semi.  It's only a two lane section of interstate.  To my left is a continuous Jersey Barrier that will push me right back into my lane if I hit it.  Then, right in front of me, sitting quietly in the middle of my lane is a spare tire and rim.  It looked like it had fallen off of the bottom of a semi-trailer.  It was some trucker's spare tire.  It was maybe 40 inches in diameter, a good 8 or 10 inches thick and probably weighed around 350 pounds or more.  I saw it just in time to jam on the brakes so that I only hit it doing about 60 or so.  The main impact (I figured out from later inspection) was mostly to the right front spring seat and U-bolts of my axle.  That impact drove the right side of the Jeep up into the air - I was up on my left tires for a bit doing a pretty fair imitation of a Joey Chitwood Thrill Team stunt.  Then BANG, the exhaust system and rear of the Jeep hit the tire and wheel and the left side of the vehicle was up in the air - now I was up on the right wheels.  By now the semi that I had been passing was beyond me by a bit, so when I bounced over in to the right lane after hitting the ground, I at least had some highway to play with.  It took me a good 1/4 mile or so to fully get control of the Jeep again.  All the while, I'm seeing flashes of myself bleeding and broken and having to be scraped off the highway by the Idaho State Patrol.

Don't ask me how I managed to end up back on all fours and still pointing westbound in the right lane.  Don't ask me how I found a spot to pull over and stop.  Don't ask me how long all of this took to happen.  Don't ask me how the Jeep managed to survive without a huge gash ripped in the fuel tank or oil pan.  Don't ask me how I managed to get away without losing anything at all out of or off of the vehicle.  I don't believe in a higher being, God or whatever - but that morning, I sure wondered for a bit.

I spent about twenty minutes on the side of Interstate 90 in Idaho that morning with a flashlight crawling around under the Jeep.  All I could see was a sheared off U-bolt end (below the nut) on my front axle, a ding in the exhaust header pipe that goes into the converter and some scuffs and scratches on the transfer case skid plate, fuel tank skid plate, oil pan protection plate, etc.  In other words, I was completely roadworthy.  I credit no further damage to the fact that I have 10" of ground clearance at the lowest point of the vehicle.  I can't even imaging what a mini-van that hit that thing would have looked like.

So, after letting my hands stop shaking for a bit, I continued west and got off the highway at the next exit to use a phone (the area was out of cellphone range) so I could report the road hazard that nearly killed me.  Boy, did I get an education in dedication and commitment of the weekend crew at the ISP that morning.  I call 911 from a payphone and I get the ISP emergency operator.  I tell the guy exact mile marker, what the hazard was and so forth.  I also tell him that I hit the thing, but that I'm OK and so is my vehicle.  Then he asks me "So, did you get it off the road" - meaning the tire.  I was dumbstruck.  I SLOWLY explained to the nice young man once again that this was a full-sized semi-truck spare tire AND WHEEL - fully mounted, weighing maybe 350 pounds.  Sitting in the middle of I-90 in the pitch dark where the speed limit was 75 and the top of the blind hill was only about 1/4 mile east of the spot where the tire sat.  Did he REALLY want me to risk my life to remove the GOD DAMNED THING???

"Um, I guess you're right - we'll send someone out" he said.  I hung up and just shook my head.  Time to get the heck out of Idaho.

I decided to stop in Coeur d'Alene for breakfast.  Spokane was only another 15 miles down the road, but the tire incident had shaken me and I needed to warm up and have some pancakes or something.  I saw an IHOP next to I-90 in Coeur d'Alene and the Jeep just automatically went that way.

45 minutes to read the paper, have some eggs, toast, coffee and juice and to further inspect the underside of the Jeep in daylight and I was on the way again.  I did stop in Spokane for gas.

Morrow, Oregon at 10:25 AM would mark the last gas stop for the trip.  It also introduced me once again, after three weeks away from it, to the idiosyncratic practice in Oregon of not letting you pump your own gas (the only other state to do this is New Jersey - a fact that I remind my Oregon friends of repeatedly.)

I had noticed a westerly breeze as I cam across Eastern Washington from Spokane.  But of course, until you get in to the Columbia Basin and The Gorge again, you forget just how strong those westerlies can be.  At some points along I-84 that morning, I had the accelerator to the floor and was running in third gear just to maintain something close to 50 MPH in the far right lane in Labor Day weekend traffic.

I rolled in to my garage at 1:40 PM under a bright blue summer sky.  By about 2:30, I was asleep in a lawn chair in the shade in the back yard.  I unpacked on Sunday.

So, here's the overall WESTBOUND STATS:
Total mileage:  3537
Trip time: 4d 12h 00m
Actual driving time: 63h 00m
Longest day: 14 hours, 55 minutes
Shortest day: 10 hours, 25 minutes - the last day
Average speed: 56.14 mph
Gasoline consumed: 266.45 gallons
Gasoline total cost: $446.30 USD
Average cost per gallon: $1.675 USD
Miles per gallon averaged: 13.27 mpg

OVERALL TRIP STATS (east and west road-trips only)
Total mileage:  6814
Trip time: 8d 17h 25m
Actual driving time: 124h 50m
Longest day: 19 hours
Shortest day: 5 hours, 40 minutes
Average speed: 54.58 mph
Gasoline consumed: 474.28 gallons
Gasoline total cost: $811.79 USD
Average cost per gallon: $1.712 USD
Miles per gallon averaged: 14.36 mpg

TOTAL TRIP STATS (includes all local travel in New England for two weeks)
Total mileage:  7386
Total days: 22
Total mirrors lost: 1
Total HUGE spare tires hit in road: 1
Total pairs of shorts soiled because of above: 1
Total bugs scraped off Jeep: 1000's
Total cups of Texaco coffee consumed: Too many to count
Total International border crossings: 2
Total number of times I want to go back to Montreal: -1
Total number of times I want to go back to Thunder Bay, Alberta, Winnipeg, and a few other places in Canada: MANY!
Total time it's taken me to finish up this trip log on the website: 6 months +
Total number of days I got to go swimming in 7 Tree Pond, Union, Maine: Every day I was there...

What I learned on this trip:

This is one of those trips that I had been thinking about taking for a long time.  When I first moved to Oregon, I wanted to drive west.  The job, unfortunately, needed me quicker and I had to fly and have my vehicle put in the moving van.  I've made other long distance drives, but I had never actually gone from coast to coast.  I guess I still haven't really - since I didn't actually start or end at the Pacific ocean.  I got to the Atlantic plenty of times while I was back east, but Portland's a bit inland here in Oregon.  So maybe next time, I'll start out in Astoria or something.

Yes, there will be a next time.  Next time will probably be on a bike though.  That would be this bike:
 
See the Bikestuff pages for more.

And next time, I'll take more pictures - that's one of the things I learned on this trip.  I've never been one to document every single part of a trip like so many people you see with 18 cameras strapped around their necks, but having a few around to show to friends ain't a bad thing.  I've also learned to relax for goodness sake.  I take these road trips to relax, sure, but it wouldn't hurt to start out that way.  I look back at the preparations that I made to start this trip and I laugh at them now.  How more anal and stupid could I have gotten.

But I also learned that unexpected things, both good and bad, can happen.  Eastbound, I never would have seen the most spectacular Aurora of my life if I hadn't been pushing to get to Thunder Bay, Ontario at some ungodly hour in the middle of the night.  Westbound, I may not have hit that damned spare tire and caused what ended up being about $750 worth of damage to the Jeep if I had slept in a little longer that morning.

I guess mostly what I learned on this trip was reinforced ten days after I got home when four jetliners were hijacked and crashed and our world changed faster than due to any other modern catastrophe - at least in my generation's lifetime.  It's partly why I've had so much contact with so many old friends in the last few months.  We all were shown on that horrible day that life is indeed very, very short - there's no point in wasting the days.  Some day, sooner or later, we'll all be dust.  Seems to me that you better have some fun and do some good before that happens.

Peace.
4/21/2002