Moving On

Much like Brett Favre's retirement, our east coast adventure has come to a quick (though somewhat less messy) end, and we're reversing course to head out west for graduate school and wheat fields. Because the sheer awesomeness of two Corder family adventures detailed on the same blog would probably overwhelm the blogger.com servers, we've started a new blog specifically for our move out west. Check it out. Also, this is made of Legos. 

Goodbye-o

Ohio was nasty, weatherwise. Freezing rain, sleet, all kinds of good stuff. This is an actual picture of our car when we crossed the state line into West Virginia. 

Harvey strikes again

Where do you find a six foot tall white rabbit? Why, in Wall, South Dakota of course!

A veritable visual smorgasbord

And someone needs to shave...

Six heads are better than two

Ah-ha! It appears that I can upload pictures directly to Blogger now, so tonight's entry will be entirely comprised of photos. Just know that we are safe in Washington, DC at the Svanidzes' apartment (which has some sweet awesome lamps, by the way). It feels great to be back in someone's home instead of a hotel, even if it does mean our journey is coming to a close tomorrow. Don't worry; I've got such a backlog (backblog?) of stories to tell that I should be updating this for quite some time to come.

Capitolist Intentions

It's almost warm enough to sit in the room without a parka on. Almost. The heater's been running at full blast for almost ten hours now, supposedly. Except that it's really old school. The left half of the grill is putting out really hot air, but the fan isn't blowing. On the right side the air is freezing but the fan's strong enough to top off a bad hairpiece. 

So what's a resourceful young couple to do? Well, if you'd grown up in Montana you'd know that you take the extra comforter (because the hotel was deluged with weary travelers and totally out of one-bed rooms) and wrap it around the side of the heater in a way that redirected the power of the fan on the right through the hot air on the left. That's why I married her, after all. My contribution was to take the in-room blow drier and point it at my feet. 

Now that we've reached our .08 limit (that's caffeine, not alcohol), it's time to hit the road. We ran into a bit of bad weather yesterday halfway across Indiana. Freezing rain sucks, because not only is it really freakin' cold outside, but even with the defrost on at full bore the window froze, ice creeping in from the edges. One of the wipers got caught on a chunk of ice and flipped over so the blade wasn't on the window anymore; fortunately it was the passenger side. So that's the first order of business today-- new wiper blades. And the heaviest-duty defrosting window washing fluid I can get my hands on. 

Dayton, Ohio isn't much of a tourist trap. They failed that one. 

Sorry for the lack of links and pictures. This hotel's wireless access is spotty at best. We'll be at Greg & Heather's tonight so expect a big update this evening. Cheerio!

Thursday's Agenda

We slept in again. Go figure. We woke up at eight o'clock here, which is only five o'clock out there on the west coast, but it was still later than planned, and now we have yet another day or driving in the dark ahead of us. Not that there's a ton of scenery along the interstates bordering the great lakes, but it's still nice to have daylight to spare. 

We're getting free doughnuts today. Sweetwater's Doughnut Mill in Kalamazoo has an e-mail newsletter that, when you sign up for it, includes a coupon for a free half-dozen doughnuts. The only problem is that we forgot to print the coupon before leaving home, so I'm going to pull up the e-mail on my laptop and take it into the store with me, hoping they'll honor the coupon anyway. It's worth a shot. 

West Lafayette is stop number two today, if all works out. And update will follow tonight, and hopefully I'll remember to bring in the camera.