On the Road

The dude and I hit the road

 "Time is the longest distance between two places.”
― Tennessee Williams

A couple of months ago, our son told me that when he was young, he couldn't wait to be an adult.

"I'm not so sure I should have been so anxious," he added.  He was, at the time, trying to make a difficult decision (losing his dog), and it wasn't very much fun. "It was a lot easier when you had to make decisions for me."  Duh.

I understand what he meant, though.  I'm sure we all, at some point or another, have felt the same thing.  Over the last week, we've had to do a few things that, truth be told, we would rather have not had to do.  We had a bit of an emergency in Ohio last week—nothing health-wise or affecting our family here—and Mike had to fly out immediately on Tuesday.  That would not have been a huge deal except that the holidays are barreling down on us, and we had plans to drive to Ohio and Virginia to see our brothers and our son later this *current* week.

"Did you pack my food?"

Yes, you read that correctly. We were planning to drive because we wanted to hit a few places and, more importantly (to me), we wanted to bring Riley.  Mike said that I should forget about driving and just take a plane later in the week.  I didn't think so.  I checked the weather reports, and since I-40 from Kingman to Oklahoma City seemed to be clear of bad weather, I felt I'd be fine.

After Mike left, I put on my big girl hat and spent the week changing all of the car rental and hotel reservations and taking care of more adult crap at home.  I packed the rental car Friday, got up early Saturday and taught my class at UNLV (with a four-legged special guest in attendance), and took off for Albuquerque immediately after class.

The visiting professor

Albuquerque is an eight-hour drive from Las Vegas, and since I left the university around 12:30, I figured I'd be there before 10 pm.  The weather was beautiful in Arizona, and the drive was relatively uneventful.  The thing that irritated me the most was the fact that I found gas to be so much cheaper once I crossed the state line.  Gas in Las Vegas hovers around $2.49 in our neighborhood, although I've seen it elsewhere in the valley in the $2.30s. In Kingman, AZ, I paid $1.99.

(Side note: I could go off on a diatribe about gas prices here, but I'll wait until I hit Oklahoma.)

Riles enjoys the AZ scenery with his elbows on the console.

By the time I hit Flagstaff (about 3-4 hours into the trip), I could tell the weather was getting colder.  There was snow along the side of the road, but it was still sunny.  We stopped in Winslow because I needed to fill up the tank again, and Riley needed to, well, let's just say this: We were standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, such a fine sight to see, when my dog, my Lord... Well, you can guess what he did on the signpost.

For most of the trip, Riles was a perfect little dude.  He played with a stuffed rhino my friend, Diane, gave him, and he either slept in the back or relaxed with his elbows on the center console (photo above) as he watched Arizona fly by.  I have to agree that the views are stunning, but I started getting pretty tired after we left Winslow.  In addition, it was getting dark and cold.  If I turned on the heater, my eyes got really droopy, so I decided to stay cold and stay awake.

I-40 in New Mexico at night

 For the most part, the trip was uneventful until I got about 60 minutes east of Gallup, NM. I noticed a few white dots floating in front of the windshield.  I didn't panic because there were just a few flakes, there was no accumulation, and the weather.com forecast had said no snow.

Liar. Liar. Pants on fire.  By the time I was 10 miles west of Albuquerque (about 120 miles east of Gallup), snow swirled all around us. It was a snow storm, and there was accumulation. 

Let me be clear about this.  I hate snow. We moved to Las Vegas because I hate snow.  Worse, I hate driving in snow.  Worse than that, I hate driving in snow when it's dark. And, worse than all of those, I hate driving in snow when it's dark and I'm someplace with which I'm not quite familiar... like Albuquerque.  It took me over 30 minutes to drive 10 miles because traffic had slowed so much.  

By the time we got to the hotel and checked in, we were cold, tired, and a bit disgusted to know that the snow was going to continue all night.

"You're going to get one-to-three-inches," Mike told me when I called to tell him we made it.

Part of me wanted to crawl in that hotel bed, pull the covers over my head, and call in sick for the drive on Sunday.  Instead, I set my alarm for 7:00 am, crawled in that hotel bed, pulled the covers over my head, and said a bunch of swear words.

That is what adults do, isn't it?

Tomorrow: Farther on down the road....