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.