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sunshine jen: On the Innerstate
Recently Brother Billy and I did an ocean to ocean road trip across these fair United States. Here are just a few random observations.
Brother Billy can drive better than Dean Moriarity. He can drive and drive and drive.
Heading east, we encountered a blizzard in Wyoming. Yes, there was snow in the Rockies on Memorial Day weekend. I had to layer three sweatshirts when we stopped for gas. Then we got back in the car and drove all night. We had to outrun the blizzard.
Nebraska is a very wide state.
There was a lot of road kill in Iowa.
You cannot smoke at the rest stops in Iowa.
There were a lot of orange cones in Illinois.
Indiana has a lot of speed traps.
At a rest stop on the Indiana Turnpike, I asked the girl at Starbucks for a cup of hot water. She put it on the counter and said, that will be two dollars. . .just kidding. . .heeheehee.
At another rest stop on the Indiana Turnpike, Brother Billy bought a cheeseburger at McDonalds. The patty was dark brown/almost black and was only slightly bigger than a Girl Scout cookie. Brother Billy got his money back, but he had no appetite for the next four hundred miles.
Cleveland, OH has a very distinct odor.
We almost destroyed the GPS in Springfield, Mass. It gave us a shortcut right through the wreckage of a tornado. We had to stop and ask a human person for directions.
We almost hit a chicken on an unpaved road in Rhode Island, but we didn’t.
There are still stacked stone walls all over Rhode Island.
The Atlantic is a different ocean from the Pacific.
We had to stop because of bad traffic in the Bronx. We got donuts.
You can not pump your own gas at the Vince Lombardi rest area in New Jersey.
After missing an exit on the New Jersey turnpike, we did a scenic tour around Newark Airport. There were a lot of planes.
Pittsburgh has a lot of hills, trees, and rivers.
Humidity definitely makes things hotter.
I started hallucinating in Iowa. I saw a 10 foot tall man in a green and purple suit in the middle of freeway. I figured out pretty quick that he was not really there.
Everyone I know watches TV shows. Everyone has their shows, but their shows are not my shows. Still, I did enjoy an episode of Game of Thrones and several hours of Modern Family.
Lots of people own dogs.
There are a lot of heavy people in this country, and I’m not talking metaphorically.
All that driving. You just keep moving and moving until your existence becomes moving. You’re still yourself. You don’t lose yourself in the driving or in the landscape or in the hundred satellite radio channels. You are still yourself only you are moving instead of standing still.
People look at you differently when you’re moving. It’s like you’re carrying their dreams of moving, but you can’t carry other people’s dreams. You can only carry your own---and some snacks.
We didn’t eat all our snacks. We did buy new snacks on the way.
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