Vibrating

Editorial note: these have been written while traveling, but not posted until home and using our own wi-fi. So this, like all, is a few days later than the events described. We are indeed home, safe, and in various stages of exhaustion. I will post daily until what has been written is posted, and in the order life happened.

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There is a state of… of what? Being? Exhaustion? Abuse? However one wants to name it, it is a state where it feels like every single cell of the body is vibrating. It’s something less than a tingle, nothing painful, but one cannot take their attention away from it. It is demanding. It screams, “Stop! Quit pushing! As quickly as you can, under the circumstances, get some sleep. Not a catnap, but hours of it, and not soon, but NOW!”

We hit the road, in the dark and rain, just before 6AM. While the car had been packed except for those very last minute items like those in the fridge, the previous night before the rain hit, I still woke up around 2AM. And again around 3:45. Hmmm, typical me the night before traveling. Could there possibly be something on TV to draw the mind enough to get another hour’s sleep? The short answer of course is NO. We have satellite feed so we can record what we want while we’re doing whatever else, then watch later and skip commercials. At 4AM the only things on are commercials! Hour long ones! Even PBS, with 4 channels available in MN near the metro, falls victim to the “nobody watches good stuff this early so we might as well sell something” mindset.

Oh well, there was a kitchen full of dirty dishes. I might as well be useful, right? Feed the dog, pack up her food and dishes, get dressed, fold blankets, and stay fairly quiet so Steve and Paul could sleep a bit longer. It was Saturday so I’d asked Paul the night before if it was OK to wake him “something before 6 AM” to say goodbye. He’d said yes but he didn’t mean this early. Anyway, he got up for a quick hug before we finally left and presumably went right back to sleep for a few more hours. He had plans, something about picking apples later that weekend, so he must have needed some more sleep before starting.

We had about a half hour of full dark till reaching the low priced gas station in which to cuss out the drivers with their high beam headlights, complain about the glare off the wet road making it hard in places to find lane stripes, wish we weren’t missing the great fall colors in the total blackness, and congratulate myself on having the foresight to install brand new wiper blades the week before. Arizona is where rubber goes to die, and where retired people go so they never have to drive those three days a year when it rains, so the old wipers were well over a year old. This past summer in Minnesota we also went nowhere in the rain, so the replacement was kind of a betting-on-Murphy’s-law thing: since we’ll be on the road for 5 days, no choice, it’s sure to rain, right? It did of course, mostly lightly, for about 3/4 of the first day’s 700 mile trek.

Now I had planned on the first day being the worst. I was thinking about 650 miles to our motel, already reserved like they were for each night. But just as we were coming up on a  freeway junction, we looked at each other and asked why not take that road this time? We knew it connected to another one which took us to a city we were going through anyway. It would be like taking the other two sides of a square instead of the two sides we always did. So why not?

Turn made, just like that. Off we went.

Now we know why we take the other boring route. Our “square” had bulges and this route had  an extra 50 miles or so in it. Still, it was new scenery, including passing one lake full of over 20 white egrets… and one sandhill crane. Steve had made a bet with himself that once we left our summer home that we’d not see another “sand crane” as he puts it, till we came up next year. We both were delighted he'd been wrong.

Steve had more fun on this trip than usual. As a passenger, he has unrestricted movement - aside from his seat belt - and can wave at truckers as we pass them. In his case it’s a special wave that invites them to blow their horn in reply. Some trips he gets one or two of those, others none. This time he tied his record of 3, then broke it with 4, then 5, and finally 6! Eighty years old, and he gets as tickled as a kid getting the response from truckers on the road! I’m going to have to get him to show me that wave sometime when I’m not driving!

Ri-i-i-ight! Me not driving those long distances?

The one bad part of the trip was after supper. We were in the town our motel was, but decided to grab food from an Arby’s before checking in. The sun was nearly setting, and heading to our motel meant pulling into traffic at a stoplight while heading west. There finally was not a cloud in the sky to block the sun, and in order to see the traffic light I would need to stare straight into that blinding orb. Even my sunglasses were no help. I asked Steve to watch the light and tell me when it turned green since he had other choices of lights to look at, and I could watch lower, seeing oncoming traffic and road lanes. Theory was less awkward than reality but we made the turn safely and got to the motel.

An hour later we were both trying our best to sleep, early as it was. I’d neglected to bring in extra ibuprofen so I could accommodate my needs to their mattress and excuse for pillows. (When on earth will I learn to just pack my own pillow from home?????) I had to ransack the next couple of night’s pre-prepared set-ups to get what I needed for the possibility of sleep. It didn’t help the vibrating, but it made it possible for my shoulders to stop screaming with every little arm movement. The vibrating is mostly gone now that I've slept a bit, nearly 6AM as I finish writing this, waiting for Steve to be ready. In retrospect, maybe it was mostly a reaction to being in a vibrating car all those hours. We’ll be back on the road in a bit, once Steve is finished charging his back’s implanted pain interrupter. We have the time. It's a much shorter next leg of our journey.

I tend to plan these stops for places we've been that we like, not for equal distances between. I figure in expenses too, and there are few motels I'm willing to pay an extra hundred a night for just because they have what may or may not be a decent breakfast instead of a carb-a-thon. Give me eggs, yogurt, sausages or bacon, and skip the cereal, pancakes, sweet rolls, waffles, toast....  Maybe I'll just pick up a sandwich down the road.

Mom also had firm ideas about motels and what she'd pay to stay. Food? Never! There were always home made sandwiches, of which her favorite, liverworst, used to give me nightmares for years. I could always taste them when I got sick enough to run a fever. It was my personal yardstick for how sick I was. Her idea of a beverage - because she said MOUNTAIN WATER TASTED FUNNY - was Tang, but only mixed half strength because, I guess, mountain water didn't taste quite funny enough. Guess who never bought Tang afterwards in my life!

I don't remember Mom driving much when we were kids. She could, of course, but her comfort speed on the highway was 45 mph, despite signs saying 60. So my Dad would do the driving on family trips. With a typical day on a long trip being about 600 miles, we'd never get anywhere if Mom drove. There was always a particular goal in mind, like visiting Grandma in California, so no stopping to see scenery. You just caught it as the car went by or you didn't catch it at all. One rare exception I remember was a visit to Carlsbad Caverns. Those were pretty cool, but the other thing I remember about the place was the motel. No, not the building itself. The fact that motels advertised their prices on a sign outside meant Mom made Daddy drive around until she saw a sign $5 cheaper than any of the others. I think they paid $10 for a night for the four of us. As far as the room, all Mom did the whole time we were there was complain about the place. I don't know why. I never noticed anything. We kids were probably too busy complaining about liverworst and diluted Tang.