A furry welcome

Dash Doodle comforts Rachel upon her arrival in Soquel.

Leg 4: Planes, (no trains), but automobiles (Rachel’s version)

The scene: Monday evening, Rawlins, WY. Exhausted, defeated, tired, lost. A sad motel room in a town that one resident describes as “100 miles from Laramie, 100 miles from Rock Springs, and 2 miles from hell.” Two young people mourning the loss of a beloved truck and wondering how they’re going to ever make it home.

As a bridesmaid in a wedding in San Francisco starting Thursday afternoon, there was little time for me to mope. I needed to figure out how I was going to get from Rawlins, WY to San Francisco, CA, in the next 24 hours without easy access to a car. Not an easy task.

Attempted Route 1: Take a Greyhound to Laramie, get a cab from the Laramie airport, and fly from Laramie to SF. Only issue was – how would I get from the Laramie Greyhound depot to the Laramie airport, in a town with no public transit system and no reliable taxi service?

Attempted Route 2: Greyhound from Rawlins to Santa Cruz. Vetoed due to taking over 30 hours and requiring over 4 bus transfers.

Attempted Route 3: Greyhound from Rawlins to Denver, cab from Denver bus depot to Denver airport, fly from Denver to SFO. Seemed perfect until I tried to buy the bus ticket… and discovered that the Greyhound website wouldn’t let me buy a bus ticked online for any Rawlins routes.

Attempted Route 4: Rent a U-Haul in Rawlins, drive the U-Haul to Laramie, drop me off at the airport in Laramie, at which point I fly back to SF. Vetoed due to a lack of trucks at the Rawlins U-Haul.

Actual Route: Rent a Chevy Malibu in Rawlins, drive to the Laramie “airport”, at which point I boarded a plane to Denver, and then another plane to San Francisco, getting me home before midnight on Tuesday, July 30. Fortunately, my day job as a management consultant means I have a ton of airline points and didn’t have to pay the outrageous sum for a last minute one way flight out of nowhere.

The Laramie airport – two rooms, two flights a day, and a staff that’s 100% younger than I am. But it has the quickest security line I’ve ever experienced?

Tiny plane!

Vitamins and minerals and fiber, oh my!

I have never been so calm in the face of a flight delay (over an hour out of Denver), or so happy to be on a 30-seater turbo-prob in nauseating turbulence… or so satisfied with a Jamba Juice from the Denver airport. Finally, home.

The saddest trailer in the world

The loneliest trailer in Rawlins, WY

Leg 3: Sadness, Failure and Woe

A week late, and many dollars short, we pick up where we left off in documenting our adventures.

We left Columbus, OH, with a few more boxes and a clean shower from our friend Shelly, excited and ready to bang through the Midwest and Rockies so that we could get to California in time for our friends’ wedding and for Santiago’s coworkers last day. We discovered that Indiana roads are terrible, that Iowa is surprisingly beautiful, and we confirmed our suspicion that Nebraska is… the… longest… state… ever.

All of Nebraska pretty much looks like this.

Early Sunday evening, we crossed into Wyoming. Success! We had conquered the plains, and we were entering the majestic Rockies! We had even arranged to pick up a Ford Radio conversion key at exit 104 so that we could control our tunes (and save ourselves from emergent top-40-induced insanity).

The Rockies are so beautiful.

We made it past Buford, WY – the top of the summit – with no issues, and were beginning our descent when suddenly, without warning, the truck lost all power. Try as we might, we couldn’t get the engine to engage, and the truck started running incredibly rough. Sensing that something was not right, we pulled off the road to a gas station in Rawlins, WY. At first we thought it might be a fuel issue, so we topped off the diesel tank and added lubricant… but… the truck still was desperately unhappy. We tried driving up and down the street for about a mile, and with no improvement, we hunkered down in Rawlins for the night.

The next morning, we got a referral to the only mechanic in town, a Ford dealership about a mile from where we broke down. We limped the F350 to the dealer, detached the Airstream, and waited anxiously for 7 hours (during which time we saw more episodes of American Pickers than we ever. needed. to. see. ever.) for the mechanic to take a look at our poor, wounded car.

About three hours before the dealership closed, the mechanics started looking at the truck. When we didn’t get a quick response we knew it wasn’t good. By the end of the day, we didn’t have the official diagnosis, but we knew that at the very least we needed to get a new Injector Drive Module (IDM), and that we had burned through 8 quarts of oil in the minutes before the car crapped out.

Disheartened, we headed back to a Travelodge to regather our thoughts and make some hard decisions. After finally accessing the internet for the first time in over 24 hours (Rawlins has no data access!), we confirmed our suspicion that the engine had probably blown. Not an uncommon problem for diesels under load in the Rockies… but sad news for us nonetheless. Given that engine repairs were going to run us into the 5 figures, we determined that it was time to say goodbye to our beloved truck, and time to determine how the hell we were going to get out of the middle of nowhere and home to California.

A hard post

We were doing stellar through Iowa and Nebraska, and finally made it to Wyoming. Just outside Rawlins, WY, the truck suddenly lost power and we knew something was wrong. The truck started running super rough: we knew we were going nowhere fast.

Fortunately, Rawlins has a Ford dealership with diesel mechanics, so hopefully we can get our beast fixed up this week and get her, Santiago, and our belongings home soon (Rachel is heading back to SF tomorrow to prepare for bridesmaid-ing).

We’re both doing fine (though a little sad) and have limited internet access. We’ll update you all soon – hopefully with good new!

The Iowa 80

America’s largest truck stop!

A few from behind

White Lightening, as seen by Cwality.

So, there’s this song…

On top 40 radio (we don’t have an auxiliary outlet or a CD drive in the truck, sigh):

• Rachel: Wow, so I’ve never heard this song before.
• Santiago: Me neither?
• Rachel: It seems to be about this guy? Whose staying up all night? Do you know why?
• Santiago: Well, we’re staying up all night to drive. But it sounds like he’s staying up to get lucky.

Read the above dialog in dripping sarcasm.

Leg 2: Hello, midwest

• Hours driven: 18
• Distance traveled: 742 miles
• Miles to go: ~2,400 miles (give or take)
• The road we’ve taken: Leg 2

Our first leg took us from Providence, RI to Columbus, OH, to pick up our friends Shelley and Bergy. Shelley is also moving to San Francisco this weekend (yay!) and Bergy flew out to help her with the move.

We had a pretty smooth ride once we got of I-95 in White Plains, NY. We did a LOT of driving through Pennsylvania at night, seeing the occasional barn and silo as we climbed the hills of Amish country. We’re also getting pretty good mileage (considering we’re a 10,000 lb truck pulling ~6,000 lbs of weight) – seems to hover around 13.5 mpg.

After a few hours rest in a rest top in Smithton, PA, we crossed the border (briefly) into West Virginia, and then it started raining again as we drove into Columbus. We don’t know what the universe is telling us, but now that we’re all packed up and ready to go, it’s all clear skies and sun.

A few fun vignettes from leg 1:

• We saw this awesome truck on I-95 in Connecticut. The end? The end of what?

The End? Of the road?

 

• This bright pink ambulance in New Haven advertises breast cancer awareness.
•  A van advertising USSupernet. Is this the USS Upernet? Or US Supernet? You decide…
• We’ve seen the moving company “Two Men and a Truck” a few times. Their website, www.twomenandatruck.com, elicits thoughts of inclusion of those across the gender spectrum.
• We also passed through Rachel’s first home, Morristown, NJ, as we moved westward! It was fun to see what life could have been like if Rachel’s parents hadn’t moved west to California!

George Washington’s headquarters in the Revolutionary War… and Rachel’s birthplace.

We’re back on the road toward Indianapolis. Powered by Red Bull, peanut butter and bananas, we’ll see how far we get today, keeping in mind our motto of “There is no plan”

Perfect Road Trip Views, Road Trip Music

Looking at this, kicking it to some CCR.