36 days later. The LONG version.

[valis2]

First, some stats.

• Number of miles: For the trip itself, approximately six thousand. Since mid-March, when I picked up the company vehicle: eleven thousand.


• Number of hotel rooms stayed in: 22.


• Number of gas stations visited: 50 or so.


• Highest price paid for a gallon of gas: $3.50 per gallon, in between LA and San Diego.


• Lowest price paid for a gallon of gas: $2.60 per gallon, in IN, I believe.


• Number of LJers met: Five. subrosax, julian_black, hill_, blumsmile, and barda. And I talked to gillieweed on the phone for the first time.


• Number of shows: 19.


• Number of hours spent driving: About 90, since mid-April.


• Number of people who asked, "So you just drive around the country all year round doing this?": Impossible to count.


• Number of lemurs sighted: This was almost zero, but then, at the very last show, somebody put the movie Dinosaur in the VCR, and there are lemurs in it, so the answer is several.


• Worst hotel: Some sort of economy trucker hotel in Omaha, NE. Ironically enough, there was a big track meet locally which was clogging up all of the hotels, and so the hallways were filled with grimy men, and teenaged girls wearing glittery shorts.


• Best hotel: A fantastic place in Santa Fe, NM, which was so wonderful, charming, and quirky, as well as economical. There were trees and plants and stained glass light fixtures and Mucha prints and a portrait of Francis Drake in my room, and the breakfast area was absolutely lovely, with airy skylights, a fireplace, plants growing up the walls, granola, two kinds of yogurt, cranberry juice, orange juice, freshly baked blueberry muffins, and more atmosphere than a hundred Days Inns. It was from the thirties or forties, and the doors all had original hardware, and it was amazingly sweet and charming.


• Number of stores that bought me lunch: Three, and they were all in the Midwest (IL/IN to be specific). Interesting, no?


Some other points of interest.

• I think my favorite meal was lunch with subrosax at this amazing Italian place. We had a fabulous meal. In fact, we had a really great time. All sorts of fun things happened.
  *We were approached by an Arabic guy who wanted a cigarette. He had on a dress shirt and slacks. He was holding the ends of his tie in his hands and the main portion straddled his head, and when she said no, he wandered off, still tugging listlessly at the ends.
  *We saw one of Snoop Dogg's houses. It was rather impressive, especially the pit bull-decorated gate and the Doggfather banner over the garage in back.
  *We found a fantastic book in a used bookstore: Junior G Men's Own Mystery Stories, which proved to be one of the most hilarious things I've ever seen. We laughed and laughed.
  *We had a lovely root beer freeze at Pop's. Pop was quite energetic, and was smoking ribs out on the sidewalk. A group of elderly people sat down to eat there, and kept going on about "Where are my ribs?", and then when we ate at the Italian place something quite similar occurred, and we snorted. A lot.
  *There was a sushi restaurant shaped like a boat.
  *The town she lives in has a nasty Route 66 infestation. Worse than nargles. Every shop and restaurant has a sign in the window about being on Route 66. The best part of our Route 66 tour was being on the phone with gillieweed as we were stopped at a Sobrierty Checkpoint. We were rather boringly sober at the moment, so it was quite amusing.


• hill_ really likes cats. And naughty drawings. I'd be hard-pressed to decide which she likes better, really. What a lovely sweetheart, she took me out to eat and everything! She was so interesting to talk to about fanart vs. fanfiction, I really was fascinated. She is so amazingly talented it should be illegal.


• And then there's that julian_black. We had such a great talk about Snape, his motivations, how nasty he is or wants to be, and it was really awesome. Plus, strawberry lemonade. She rocks, and I had this feeling like we've known each other forever. Plus, she's a fellow bookstore aficionado. We went to Powell's, but I had to leave before I spent money.


• One of the most disappointing meals was in Omaha, NE. I went to a "CA cuisine" style place. I hadn't really budgeted for a such a meal, but I decided to just go for it. I ordered two things, and this is exactly how they were described on the menu: hummus with flour chips and grilled salmon with mango chutney. The hummus was flavored heavily with lime. It was awful. I mean, lime and garlic are okay, but lime, garlic, and hummus? Blech. And the grilled salmon was served on a bed of dilled rice, which they conveniently forgot to mention in the description. I'm not a dill fan, and it was gross. And the mango chutney was really pico de gallo with a bit of mango syrup. I was going to order the crème brûlée but I didn't, because I was afraid it would be radish-flavored.


• There were no hotel rooms in WY. I had planned on leaving UT, driving an hour or two, and staying at Green River, WY. To make a long story short, I stopped in Green River (after first stopping at the town before it and finding no room) and was beaten to the last room available at one hotel by a clueless couple. I nearly went to that hotel first, but stopped somewhere else first, which was a mistake, because I ended up driving until 2:30 am instead. At 2:30 I stopped in Laramie and took the first place available, which was a smoking room, unfortunately. Then I couldn't get into the room. The one-armed clerk gave me a new keycard and finally went and tried it himself. I think that the room had a resident already, and he had forgotten about them. Anyway, he put me in a reserved room which was nonsmoking, thank goodness. I got to sleep at 3 and then the LOUDEST HOUSEKEEPING WOMAN IN THE ENTIRE KNOWN UNIVERSE scared the hell out of me at 8 by knocking on the door as if there was a fire currently IN HER SHORTS and shouting "HOUSEKEEPING!!" I could not get back to sleep because she did it to every room in the wing.


• I ate a lot of Mexican food. It was yummy. Economical, fast, and tasty. There was one place I went which was more of a "chain" instead of a little Mexican place, and it was awful. Everywhere else was terrific.


• I tried leaving voice posts, but either a) I would get a busy signal for all four numbers, or b) it would ring once (or not at all) and the phone company would come on with a recorded message about how the party I was dialing was not answering and then hang up on me. And somehow I forgot to put atdt1991's number in my phone! I'm so mad! I couldn't even call him to drive him crazy about it. Wah.


• In NM some guy tried the "My car needs a microprocessing chip and my wife is pregnant and I just need some money to stay at a hotel because my credit card isn't working" scam on me.


• I broke a tooth while eating a sundried tomato. It was rather tough, and while I was swinging my lower jaw back and forth trying to chew it, two of my teeth knocked together, and one lost the fight.


• One hotel I stopped at had a secret room behind the hotel desk. While I was returning to my vehicle for something I noticed that the blinds were drawn a little, and as I walked past I looked in, and it was exactly like peering into my grandmother's living room. There was a TV, plants, wall to wall knickknacks, needlepoint, and Garfield crap. It was like a secret portal into some sort of Universal Grandmother Room.


• I highly recomment getting into Portland, OR, at twilight, because it is breathtaking. The river, the bridges, everything is lit with beautiful lights, it's so lovely and amazing. By day it's your typical industrial city, though, and not quite so nice.


• I did a lot of driving at night. One of the most amazing sights was OR/WA and the mountains and the moon and bridges and water. Absolutely gorgeous.


• UT/NE: Desolate.


• In Colorado I visited hill_, and we went walking through the Pearl Street mall, which I've been to a few times before. I'm always struck by the differences between the guys who hang out there and the guys who hang out in, say, MI. I swear, I could have jumped on at least half of the male specimens I saw there. They had long hair, they were soulful looking, they dressed in such a natural manner...yum. Clearly I live in the wrong place.


• At one hotel in WA I was in the elevator bringing down money for a laundry machine when this short body-builder guy and another big fat guy got in the elevator. The short guy (with blue eyes) said something about hoping that the washing machine was free, and I said it was almost free, I was finishing up the wash and about to put it in the dryer. The body-builder guy then said something about how the big fat guy was his trainer, and I couldn't tell if it was a joke or not. The body-builder guy was either shy or a homicidal maniac or both and said not one word during the entire conversation. Later while I was waiting for the spin cycle to finish, the body-builder guy was there waiting with me, and he kept asking me all sorts of questions. I just always forget that people in other parts of the country actually talk to each other, because I was expecting him either to be a homicidal maniac, or involved with Amway, and I realize now that he was just trying to have a conversation.


• My sister's Tigger traveled with me, and I couldn't take a lot of photos, but I did take some. When I develop them I'll post them. (I brought the film camera with me, not the digital.)


• While I was sitting at my friends' place in Portland, making phone calls (to julian_black, as a matter of fact), their dog went nuts. I went to the door to discover that a guy was there. "Is that your car out front?" he said, referring to my friends' ten-year-old car.
  "No. It's my friends' car, and they're not here right now."
  "I have the same car, and I want to buy it. Can you call them?"
  "I don't think they have their cell phone on."
  "Can you try?"
  "Uh..." (Keep in mind I have julian on the phone, who is no doubt questioning my sanity at that moment, and I'm restraining a psycho killer dog, who is still barking and going nuts this entire time.)
  "Can you just call them and find out?"
  "Well, I suppose."
  So I call and try to get ahold of them. No luck. By the time I go back out he's gone, with no note left on the car or anything. I'm still trying to figure out if it was a scam.


• Saw a truck for a company called "Supplier to Successful Food Stores". So the companies they sell to have to pass a test? Heh.


• The back of one truck said "Get Rich or Die Tryin'". I was surprised to find a 50 Cent fan hauling a flatbed trailer. Plus I must mention that driving a semi does not immediately come to mind as one manner of getting rich.


• The back of another truck said "No Snivelling". Must be Sirius Black's truck.


• Speaking of Sirius, I LOVE IT. IT ROCKS. It kept me awake and alive. Plus my MP3 player ROCKS UTTERLY.


• Weirdest moment? I was in the bathroom at a trucker gas station. I hear music, and, as I enter the stall, I think, hey, this isn't the music that was playing in the store. I listen for a moment and realize that it's from the Phantom of the Opera. It's very loud. As I sit there, I hear a flush, and then a moment later the stall door swinging open, and then the music turns off.
  Apparently she needed theme music while in the restroom.


• While visiting barda, we walked around a public garden. I heard a rustling and realized that there was a guy lying in the bushes. He was shirtless (with luxuriant chest hair), and he rolled over on his side, exposing the fact that his jeans were falling off.


• When I was leaving, several people said, "You'll have so much fun!" and "You'll see so much of the country!" to which the answers are "Not unless you think 'fun' is driving six hours and then picking up several sixty pound boxes and setting up a show, dealing with crazy people, and then repacking it all in, driving four hours, and doing it again" and "I did almost all of the driving AT NIGHT, therefore, I saw almost nothing".


• At points I couldn't remember which city I was in, or which store I was at. It was really a grueling trip. I'm so happy to be home!

Comments

[atdt1991.livejournal.com]

Awww, I MISS ya! Let's hang out.

[valis2.livejournal.com]

I missed you too! About a week into the trip I was getting sleepy, and then I thought, I'll call you, and I went into my phone, and I was SO upset that your number wasn't there! There were so many points where I wanted to call, too. :(

[rickfan37.livejournal.com]

And we're glad you're back! Yay! :-)))

But the Universal Grandmother Room freaks me out a little. Reminds me of the room behind reception in the remake of Psycho. Still, you're safe and home again, so ho hum.
;-P

[valis2.livejournal.com]

It was so crazy! There were afghans on the couch and chairs and everything. I was totally cracking up.

I'm so glad to be back!!

[mariannelee.livejournal.com]

I missed you! I really did! So much to talk about. I'm glad you survived. Would you do it again?

"the hallways were filled with teenaged girls wearing glittery shorts and grimy men" -- In the hallways?!?!?!? Oh, wait, you meant...

[valis2.livejournal.com]

I don't know. I'm still kind of thinking it over. Honestly, I do better locally, and then I don't have to be away...

Hee! I'm still a little out of it...I'll go fix that. ;)

[cactus-wren.livejournal.com]

You always have the craziest stories from your trips, lol.

[valis2.livejournal.com]

And I forgot the one about visiting barda and finding a half-nekkid man in a garden. I'll add that now...

[gillieweed.livejournal.com]

So you're back? Really honestly back? YAYAYAYAYAAAYYYY!!!!!!!!

[valis2.livejournal.com]

Yes! I'm home! Wheee! :)

[todayiamadaisy]

Welcome back!

[valis2.livejournal.com]

Aw, thanks! :) *throws confetti*

[zakkati.livejournal.com]

Six thousand mile of entertaining fun! What an exciting life you lead, young lady.

Er...are there any pictures of the hawt long-haired young men or the nekkid bush-man? *crosses fingers*

:D

[valis2.livejournal.com]

Aw, no. Tigger didn't want to pose with them, unfortunately. He's rather demanding!

I was thinking that maybe nekkid bush-man had gotten totally wasted the night before and his buddies had dropped him off in the public gardens to sleep him off, but I have no proof of this.