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. 

Spinning our wheels

Progress isn't something with which we're well-acquainted. That's why, instead of being here, we're in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Yeah, I don't know where it is, either. But the hotel's reasonable. The Super 8 is definitely better than this place. So is staying in the car.

Some things we learned today:

1. Check your tire pressure often, especially when driving in very cold weather. Healthy tire pressure means better gas mileage and much less wear on your tires. Be safe.

2. Just pay the tolls on I-90. Don't try to drive around the interstate, because then it will take over four hours to get from Rockford to downtown Chicago. It's only 70 miles, folks. Just fork over the quarters.

3. Don't be in too big a hurry. If you bust your butt to get where you're going, you just might miss one of the coolest dinosaur skeletons in the world, and at a museum having a free day, no less! I'd post pictures, but I left the camera in the car, and its about six degrees below zero right now. I'm going to stay in the room where the hotel is paying for the heater to blow at full tilt.

4. Truck stops are sad places.

5. We've now lost three hours of our lives on this trip. Time zones are weird.

It's bedtime, and I've got to just admit that we'll already in Virginia by the time I get y'all caught up on how much work it was to get out of Oregon.

The Travel Channel is playing a Best Burgers special. Having cable will make me fat.

Anyone have any suggestions for places to stop or see between Indianapolis and Virginia Beach? Please let us know! We're probably going to backtrack tomorrow to Purdue just so we can check out the city and campus. I know, it's crazy and maybe even a waste of gas, but I'm not sure we really want this trip to end. It's a very gratifying thing to be able to spend 23 1/2 hours a day in extremely close proximity to someone and love them every bit as much as ever before. More, even. I keep a lot of definitions of love on a list in my head, and some way or another this trip will go on it in a prominent place.

Cheers to y'all.

A couple of highlights from yesterday's drive. 

A jolly green giant.

A 60-ton bull's head sculpture. Apparently the world's largest. It's near Pipestone, MN, but I haven't been able to find any pictures. 

And we got cheese.

Onward to Michigan!

Motel 6. And 6. And another 6.

Well, I hereby withdraw any past recommendation for the Motel 6 chain, is any exists. It's not that we got mugged or they stole my credit card number, at least not yet. It just wasn't worth paying for. 

See, we pick up those traveler's coupon magazines at McDonald's and rest stop information centers. They're super handy for saving ten or twenty bucks per night on hotel rooms. So we popped in at the Illinois welcome center after passing through Minnesota and Wisconsin. "$29.99," it said, with free internet access and continental breakfast! Whoo hoo! 

Except the key card didn't work. No biggie, we just exchanged it. 

And then my laptop couldn't connect to the internet. Turns out there's a computer terminal stashed away in the lobby which is their free access. Hmm. Oh well, could be worse. 

It was late already, so into bed we went. Hey, wait a minute, that's not a bottom fitted sheet. There's a top sheet tucked under the mattress, which of course came completely off over the course of the night. 

And the pillows were worse than useless. I'd rather rest my head on a garbage bag full of ping pong balls. With spikes. 

At least there'd be breakfast in the morning, right? Wrong! No continental breakfast. No explanation, either. But there was at least coffee. Thank goodness. So we went out to have a delicious and hearty fast-food breakfast. Yum yum. 

We came back to the hotel with the intent of taking a shower. There were two towels, thankfully, but unfortunately pulling them off the towel rack sent the rack tumbling to the floor. Piece of junk, anyway. 

Oh, and there was no shampoo/conditioner. 

So that's pretty rough, right? Then add the fact that the temperature didn't get above 0 until, well, we're still working on that, actually. 

On the plus side, apparently all the McDonald's around here are ridiculously upscale. I don't get it. Widescreen LCD televisions, upholstered furniture, exquisite light fixtures, all kinds of touches to go with the cherry wood accents. Weird. 

We're about to leave to visit Jane. We'll head southeast to Chicago to have some deep dish pizza, and then its on to Kalamazoo for some of these. If there's time we'll drive through the Purdue campus in West Lafayette, Indiana, and probably spend the night somewhere in Ohio. Or thereabouts. 

We're running out of money, but that's what we're used to, so its no big surprise. I hope to be able to catch y'all up when we get to our hotel tonight, but no promises. In the meantime we've got to go. Jane's waiting. 

A very brief montage

East... a bit

Well, after fifteen minutes of frustrating attempts to upload some photos for y'all, I'm convinced there's some kind of firewall-ish problem with the hotel's wireless router. Or something. I'm sure it's quite technical. 

Anna's sleeping and I just realized that passing into Central time makes it after midnight instead of what I was thinking. Travel throws you that way. Too bad the Thunderbird Lodge (you stay at interesting places when you're on a budget) doesn't offer this service. I guess that's too much to ask for less than forty dollars a night. 

Mythbusters is on. You should be watching. 

We're in Mitchell, South Dakota tonight. Tomorrow morning we'll tour the world's only corn palace. Check it out. From there we'll try to actually make some progress, because we're starting to run out of days. Cheers, y'all. Sorry the pictures aren't working. I'll try them again in the morning. 

Fievel Takes a Quick Trip West

It's really unfortunate that this is the best picture I can find. Really unfortunate. Don't bother doing a Youtube search, either. I can't begin to tell you how much you're missing. We're in a Super 8 in Rapid City, South Dakota, three hours removed from a 300-ish mile trip down from Dickinson, ND, and we're taking full advantage of cable. We've never had anything but bunny ears in our 21 months together, so having more than four channels is a real treat. Food Network is running a bunch of their challenge shows, where they pit a handful of bakers against each other to make themed cakes or chocolate sculptures, etc. I could take it or leave it. But now they're making extreme cakes. Any time there are power tools involved in cake-making, you know good things are going to happen. So that picture I linked to above, well, that monkey is like the demonic older brother of this guy, which apparently is popular among second-graders. Except the one in the first picture is six feet tall. And its head spins. And smoke comes out of its ears. And there are fireworks involved so powerful that the production staff couldn't let them be lit indoors for fear of audience safety. Sweet. Back to the story.

Friday night we were in Great Falls, Montana, visiting with Anna's brother Tom and his expectant wife, Kirsten. And though Mr. Tony Roma caught up to me at about four in the morning, it was a great visit with one of the groomsmen from our wedding. Oh, and if you're looking to move to Great Falls (and why shouldn't you be?), they've got a wonderful little house for sale for $97k. Anna and I both said that if we had any reason whatsoever to live there we'd love the place. Maybe in a few years.

This morning we started off in Dickinson at Anna's aunt and uncle's place. The plan was to head south to Mount Rushmore, see the sights, then drive through Wall and hopefully make it to Mitchell. You know, because that's where the corn palace is. Obviously. We figured it would be a brilliant plan to drive through as much of the Dakotas as possible during mid-February. It's seventeen degrees, after all. Balmy. Which means that, according to this chart, it felt like about nine below with the winds we had.

But let's get back to our drama. When we left off last time (before I realized that internet access is not as ubiquitous in rural North Dakota as it is in Portland, where everyone and their brother is spitting wireless signals out their ears), Mike had wrecked his truck, I'd helped him patch it up with a crowbar, and Anna barely escaped having to walk six miles through the wind and rain to work. Monday morning it was tough to get up, and we easily finished off our 12-cup coffee pot inside of an hour. Mike paced the apartment waiting for the insurance company to call back and let him know what the plan was. Then he paced some more. And there was more waiting. Et cetera and so forth, you get the idea. Aside from a bit more packing, we didn't do much besides eat assorted frozen foodstuffs and wonder how Drew Carey ended up on the Price is Right. We finally heard from the insurance folks and learned the pickup was being towed to a body shop in The Dalles for repairs. 

Let's speed through the next couple of days. Tuesday morning we rented a pickup from U-Haul so we could drive out to The Dalles, pick up the trailer, and at least get started on packing it while we waited for Mike's Dodge to get fixed. (We had to be out of our apartment by Thursday, remember.) Just as we were hooking up to the trailer, the body shop called to say the parts were in and they might as well fix the truck that day. Might as well. So Mike MacGyvered together an upper brake line and we convoyed the trailer back to town. (I'll bet you didn't know The Fonz was executive producer for that show, did you?) A word of advice: don't rent a U-Haul truck unless you absolutely, positively must. Yes, it's handy, but dang do they nail you on the mileage. Egad.

Wednesday we frantically began packing the trailer with boxes and appliances, but not before all three of us crammed into the U-Haul pickup and drove twenty miles north, where our scooter was waiting to be picked up. She sure looked good, with the small exception of the mysteriously misplaced round emblem on the instrument cluster. Of course nobody at the shop had any idea what happened to it, and surely it must have been missing when we brought it in. Uh-uh. That was mildly upsetting. But it does mean we can try to find one of these to replace it. Anyway, there was a lot of packing that day, which left us all sweaty and tired, but fortunately the Life Groups (a sort of his & hers Bible studies) we'd been going to for the last few months were gracious and wonderful enough to have one last hurrah. And, as is the custom among men, the guys' group shared our bonding time eating.

Thursday's D-Day. We're supposed to be leaving the apartment. The day dredges onward, us finding things we forgot we had stashed away, Mike trying to keep the weight even in the trailer, everybody grumpy and freaking out because of the deadline. We broke down and called our delightful and life-saving friend Kristen mid-morning to help us out. She showed up and we basically gave her a freakin' huge box and told her to cram everything she could into it, sorting be darned. But time ran short for her and her two-year-old daughter, and they had to leave in early afternoon. Somehow, despite the best efforts of four intelligent, hard-working adults and one tiny helper, it felt like we hadn't even made a dent. By three o'clock we realized nobody was going to bite on the entertainment center we'd listed on Craigslist. At four it dawned on us that we also had to clean the apartment after we'd emptied it, and at 4:01 we wanted to cry because we certainly weren't going to be done by the time the office closed at 6. Not a chance. 

This is where the cliff hangs tonight, because it's past midnight and we've got a lot of driving to do because, as you do, should, or will know, we never make it as far as we plan. So we didn't quite make it to Mitchell today. Heck, we didn't even make it to Wall. Mount Rushmore awaits in the morning, and then we're hitting the road, because I'm getting anxious for some of this.

Fievel Plays Country, Part 2

Update: We're leaving the Hansen household today, and the blog will be brought up to date as soon as possible. We needed some time off, and you'll see why.]

Due to potential non-happiness, the Hank/Reba saga will remain undisclosed. Suffice it to say that Mike was postponed a day because he cares about his friends. 

Anyway, Mike finally left home on Friday, but couldn't make it all the way out to us, so he stayed with a cousin in Spokane, where he also picked up his brand spankin' new fourteen-foot Saturday morning he set out for the greater Portland area, cruising along on reasonable roads, connecting with Interstate 84 and ran parallel to the cool Columbia River. 

The Dalles comes from French for "flagstone," but I don't get it either. I do know it was the endpoint of the land segment of the Oregon Trail. [Childhood memory warning. Remember playing Oregon Trail on the good ol' Apple IIe in elementary school? When you get to The Dalles you can choose to raft down the river--watch out for those rocks!--or continue on land to your destination. Just remember, if you choose to take the water, make sure you've done all your hunting and trading, because once you hit the river there's no more chance to pick up a spare wagon tongue for extra points at the end. Now that I think about it, we're sort of traveling the Oregon Trail in reverse. Except, you know, we're going through the Dakotas. And we have no oxen. And I'm pretty sure local government agencies will frown upon me shooting squirrels for food. Check out this shirt. Trust me.]

So Mike hit The Dalles at mid-afternoon. Unfortunately, he also hit some ice. A dramatic scene unfolded, probably in slow motion and from four camera angles. The short version is that the Dodge and the trailer ended up facing the wrong way, with some nasty bumps. And though duct tape and a crowbar are usually enough for a resourceful guy from Montana to get a truck moving again, insurance agents prefer to be informed of such accidents before moving along. 

Mike called us shortly after the accident, and we jumped in Fievel (that's the name Anna's given to our car, in case you haven't figured it out yet. And yes, the first one was better. Did you know that two more films starring that little Jewish mouse were released direct to video? Sad, isn't it? But at least it wasn't as overdone as this monstrosity. I was sort of hoping the writers would stay on strike just so awful things like that wouldn't happen. And maybe so I could get in on a few gigs as a scab. Ah well.

I just realized I forgot to close that parenthetical. Try and keep up.) and headed up I-205 to fetch him from the confines of a no-doubt very posh Shilo Inn. Unfortunately about eight miles outside of Portland on I-84 we learned that ODOT had closed the interstate, so we were forced to turn back and wait through the night. Sunday morning I took the car and some tools (yes, I actually took duct tape and a crowbar, as well as a new brake line) and put on my work boots to help repair the Dodge as best we could. Six hours and a quarter pounder with cheese meal later we'd managed to pull the bumper out of the radiator and install the brake line. Sadly, the $50 line we replaced was not the issue; rather, we needed to replace the upper line, the metal one coming down from the master cylinder. No problem, figured The Men, we'll just go down to Napa and pick up the part. 

Napa didn't have it. Why? Well, it seems that most brake lines have the same fitting on each end. Makes sense, right? Apparently not to the geniuses at Daimler-Chrysler (though at the time of the pickup's manufacture Daimler AG hadn't yet merged with Chrysler, so I ought to leave the Germans out of it), who put differently sized fittings on each end. So we gave up for the day, since darkness was falling and it was a three-hour trip between The Dalles and Portland because of road conditions. Being Sunday, of course, there was little in the way of resources available anyway. The insurance company would tow the truck to a local body shop on Monday, and the trailer would stay parked on the side of the interstate. 

You'd think that would be enough trouble for one day, but no. Anna works Sunday afternoons, and normally if I had the car as I did that day she would just ride our scooter to work. However, some dingbat decided it would be a good idea to hit our scooter with his/her car, knocking it to the ground and cracking plastics and breaking off a mirror, and then simply drive off. So the scooter had been in the shop for over a week. Now, we'd told the motorcycle shop to order the appropriate parts as soon as our insurance company okayed our claim. Three days later the primary mechanic called us asking if we wanted to order the parts or not. This made us put on our not-happy face. This is the Tuesday before Mike was supposed to leave, by the way, meaning it probably wasn't going to get fixed in time for Mike to take it with him, and we sure as heck weren't going to drive it 500 miles to Montana in winter at 53 mph. No way no how. So we called them every day that week to tell them we were about to move and had to have it done by Friday, just absolutely had to have it by Friday. So Thursday they call and say okay, fine, it'll be done in the morning. We were awfully embarrassed when we called them Friday after Mike's crash to tell them that we actually didn't need it that day. Oy.

Anyway, the point of that tangent is that we didn't have the scooter for Anna to ride to work. No problem, she figured, she'd just take the bus and get to work a little early. But the bus route past our apartment doesn't run on Sundays, naturally, throwing yet another monkey wrench into our plans. She ended up calling her store and an extremely kind and gracious young man who works there named Tim left work, picked up Anna, drove back to work and finished his shift. What a guy. He also spins flaming balls on strings. Sweet. 

Is that all that happened on Sunday? Probably not, but it's too stressful to remember more. Just know that we were already two full days behind schedule, and our adventures in Portland weren't over yet. 

Fievel Plays Country, Part 1

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Which is why it's unfortunate we don't have any of the crash. Nobody's dead, mind you, in fact nobody was even hurt, unless you count the emotional scarring of having all our best-laid plans thrown to the wind. Here's how things were supposed to work:

• Thursday, Jan. 24th. Anna's dad, Mike, leaves Montana, trailer in tow, to come load up most of our belongings and take them to storage in MT. 
• Friday/25th. Mike arrives in Portland, we load all our boxes (which we've already packaged, sorted, and neatly labeled) into the trailer.
• Sat/26th. Mike heads out for Montana. We celebrate by eating bread and cheese on the floor. 
• Sun/27th. Anna and Marcus go to church, have lunch with friends, start our teary-eyed goodbyes and such. 
• Mon/28th. Go to post office and arrange for mail forwarding. Call power company to cancel billing. Other assorted odds and ends. 
• Tues/29th. Start cleaning apartment. Goof off. 
• Wed/30th. Farewell party with life groups. More goofing off. Cleaning of apartment is complete. 
• Thurs/31st. Turn in keys to apartment, hang out with Alex, hit the road for Seattle to stay at brother Dave's. (Dave is on a cruise but mailed us his apartment keys so we could stay until he got back on Friday.)
• Fri/1st. Play Dave's video games, pick up Dave from airport at 11:30 pm. 

That pretty much covers how the first part of the trip was supposed to go. Not too complex, right? Lots of downtime, plenty of time to take care of errands and see our friends before moving. How did things actually go? Well, the problems start with Hank and Reba. It's important to note that they're not even close to being on our original plan. 

To be continued...