Road Trip Week

September 15th-19th, 2008. We made the long treck from Reno to Denver on Monday and Tuesday, then we drove from Denver to Iowa on Friday.

Here are the highlights of our week in transit:

We stayed in Rock Springs, Wyoming Monday night. We saw a woman walk into the Bennigans/Applebees we were dining at and demand to know what happened to her job application. Yet, as if that wasn’t wacky enough, it was 11pm. If THAT isn’t wacky enough for you, she looked like a meth addict. And if *THAT* isn’t wacky enough for your tastes, she came in with her teenage son who already worked at Bennibees so he could ‘vouch’ for her.

Yikes.

Tuesday I enjoyed a meet-and-greet from a Wyoming state patrolmen. 87 in a 75. $100. At least he was nice. We then hung out at Alex and Matt’s house, and we had a lot of fun playing with the dog, talking about the meaning of words that end in “cide” – such as homicide, pesticide, etc. – and smoking some fine cigars. Good times.

Wednesday we saw my parents for a couple of hours and ran a bunch of errands. I paid a $12 bank fee because I pulled cash out of my savings account. Explain that one to me like I’m a three-year-old.

Thursday Sara and I re-arranged our storage space. When I packed the space (with the help of the movers), I wasn’t thinking about which boxes should be stacked where. I left a box full of important documents (that I’ll need come January for taxes) in the very back of the space. I was dreading this task, but it wasn’t actually that bad.

Friday Sara and I drove from Denver to Ankeny, Iowa. My highlight of the day was listening to call-in radio “swap shops.” It’s like Craigslist but it’s all done via telephone. A person calls in, says they have something they want to sell or want to buy, says their phone number, then hangs up. The host of the show (a.k.a. the radio personality), repeats what the caller said and their phone number. Then the process starts all over again.

This is a great example of one of the many things I had absolutely no idea existed. Never in my life did I imagine that people could call the local radio station and say what they had for sale on live radio. This concept would never work in a big city – idiots and perverts would ruin it in 10 minutes. Small-town America really is amazing when you stop and think about it.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Sara made friends with a truck-load of piglets at a rest-stop in Iowa. We followed them for quite a while, and Sara later confessed that she wondered what it would have been like if the truck lost control and spilled piglets all over. Wouldn’t it be fun? Maybe she could even play with one. “Piggies!” she would exclaim.