The Christmas Trip. Pt 2.

After spending Christmas Eve in Kenosha, WI with my folks, and crossing the border into northern Illinois for Christmas Day with Erin's family in Woodstock, we began to make our way home on Saturday around noon. What was a 28 hour trip from Tucson, turned into a 32 hour exhausto-fest on the way back. All this because of a snow-storm which would haunt us all the way into Texas.

The storm was in full force in Illinois, and we crawled along country rouds from Woodstock all the way to I-39. Things didn't get much better on the hiway. As a matter on what was perhaps a 200 yard stretch of road south of Bloomington we counted 21 cars in the ditch. All a single accident no doubt.

Things picked up southwest of Springfield, IL when the snow became lighter and wetter. By the time we reached St. Louis the snow stopped and the roads were pretty clean. It was also night, which is a shame, because the drive down I-44 through Missouri looks to be really pretty (we think- both times we drove through at night). By about 10 PM we reached Oklahoma and things began to get ugly.

It looks like Oklahoma got hit hard with a snowstorm either earlier that day, or a day prior. While places like Illinois are ready for that sort of thing, it looked like Oklahoma was not. Its ok, I get it, Oklahoma is a poor state and Jim Drives-With-Plow-On-Pickup of the Creek Nation might have been sleeping off a Christmas turkey and the 16 pints of Yukon Jack he binged, but whole stretches of road were unplowed, and those which were plowed had mounds of ice built up in patches running parallel to the white lines in the middle. Hey ODOT, you need to depress the plow ALL the way down to the road for it to work.

So we slowed to a crawl again. The frustration, combined with exhaustion made us miss a turn near Tulsa, and we ended up on some creapy Tulsa bipass road which was even more ice covered. This cost us even more time. Sleeping/driving in 2 hour shifts worked on the way up to Wisconsin, but it wasn't really cutting it now. I don't know about Erin, but I couldn't sleep much because

a) the dog kept crawling all over me
b) each time I began to drift off, we hit another ice patch and I thought we would crash and die

But eventually we made our way into the cultural abyss of Texas, and the sun began to rise. I was driving along through Carson county when suddenly I saw police lights behind me. A stocky fellow in a cowboy hat pulled me over for going 74 in a 70MPH zone because apparently "In Texas, 70 means 70, son". He was kind enough to let me off with a written warning, so more power to him.

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful, but it seemed to go on for ever. New Mexico especially takes a long time to get through. And is it just me, or does that state look like a third world nation at times? And do hardware stores in Albuquerque carry any exterior paint other than brown?

We finally dragged our exhausted selves into Tucson around 7:30PM. With the hour time difference, the trip took 32 hours, including rest stops. I guess it was better than being stuck at an airport waiting for the snow to pass, and for some terrorist asshole's asshole to be disarmed, but dammit I'm never doing this again.

Stay tuned for a review of "The Sepulchre" the audiobook we listend to during the trip. I'm still not sure if I hated it or not.