Hit the border by the morning, let Texas fill my soul...

Location: Austin, Texas, USA

Last night was a VERY long night of nothingness.   We drove all the way across California, Arizona and New Mexico before the sun came up and there was NOT a lot going on.  However, as I am speeding along at approximately 95 mph on the beautiful Interstate 10 and blissfully singing along to a mellow tune on my Sirius, I am suddenly BLASTED by a series of blinding flashing of light.  Speed cameras.

I'm telling you, those things are NOT safe.  I screamed... Jeff thought we were being abducted by alients (thought crossed my mind as well) and John was convinced we were being shot or missiled.  No matter what was actually going on, the three of us sprial into a panic of death and it takes about 5 minutes before my heart stopped pounding.  I literally almost ran us off the road.  Disaster.

After the near death experience, we basically lull back into our daze until the sun started to come up just outside of Las Cruces, New Mexico.  It was a beautiful sunrise, and we pulled over in a small town just in time to watch it come over the Organ Mountains.  And in true mobile worker fashion, as soon as the sun came up, Jeff and my radar went off.  Realizing my e-mail hadn't sent to Greg the night before, I scrambled to find wifi in Messina (which is an adorable little historic adobe town just outside of Las Cruces).  We ended up bootlegging from some guys house while sitting in our car in the driveway.  Not creepy at all. But we got the job done and it was off to Texas.

El Paso/Juarez was beautiful in a sort of urban destruction, political invasion kind of way.  I was so amazed to see that while driving down I-10 for a stretch, we were literally the closest thing to Mexico besides a fence and a river.  And even more astonishing than that was the incredible contrast between the US and Mexico that was just as clear as a line in the sand.  Even the air was being discriminated against.  You could see a physical cloud of nasty hovering over Juarez while El Paso looked relatively fresh.  We didn't spend much time, just a quick drive-through and continued on for the long haul through West Texas.  About 30 minutes outside El Paso, I get pulled over.  The cop (who was very cute, btw) asks me for my information, tells me I was going over the speed limit and when I ask how much faster, he just winks and says "faster."  That's never a good sign!! But I escape with a warning encouraged with a little flirting and we continue on our trek. 

West Texas was... West Texas.  The same thing for about 10 hours.  It really wasn't too bad.  There was a lot to look at.  Lots of fields, oil rigs, strange rocks, small towns and strange people on the road.  It was actually quite entertaining.  The only thing i was disappointed about was that I spent a good 20 minutes looking for the darn football stadium when we were in Odessa and nothing.  Couldn't find it.  After passing about a million more oil rigs and a million more wind turbines, we arrive at DFW airport to drop John off. 

After parting ways and wishing him luck on his attempt to get to Chicago, we turn southbound 35 and head on down the road (sorry, I couldn't help it). It was amazing how quickly this drive went by.  Pulling up and seeing the Austin City Lights was just like I remembered it and I am so excited to be here.  As soon as we got into town, we headed straight to John's to pick him up and grab a bite a Kerby Lane (queso, pancakes and beer - gotta love this place) before making another pit stop at Little Woodrow's (just ONE more beer) and heading back over to John's to pass out.

I'm actually not that tired, although I'm sure as soon as my head hits the pillow, i will be out.  Tomorrow will be fun, I'm excited to see the new digs at the Austin office and to get some actual solid work time in before things REALLY get crazy!

XOXO

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Eat. Shower. Canada.

Location: Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

Oh no… my plans have changed a lot. No, that is not a mistake, I am in Salt Lake City, Utah. How I got here though, is somewhat of a blur.

Dan mailed me around 6 to ask if I wanted to grab dinner at King’s Head with him and a couple buddies from the hostel. I hadn’t eaten so of course I agreed and headed that way. By the time I got there, they had already eaten and were ready for beer, which was even more to my taste, so we left King’s Head and walked over to the Promenade to Barney’s Beanery (yup – my #2 spot to take surfers… I know, I’m boring). At this point, it was Dan (the Aussie), Mark (a guy in Dan’s room from Scotland who is in his 18th or so month of traveling after quitting his job and just leaving town) and Max (a German vegetarian who doesn’t drink – yes that does exist). The pool tables were occupied when we got there, so we headed for the shuffleboard – which none of them had played before. After losing miserably at shuffleboard (partnered with Dan – I’ll blame it on him) and then playing probably the worst game of pool I have ever played (again… Dan appears to be bad luck), we dropped off Max back at the hostel and I drove us over to Main Street to Finn McCool’s. So much for asleep by 9…

There was a great band playing at Finn’s. It was a cute little punky looking girl accompanied by a guitarist and a drummer/bongo-er who covered some really unique songs not usually sung by a girl or in an acoustic setting (love her style… oh wait, ya that’s what I like to do too). We had a couple beers (Corona for some reason) and started chatting about next steps. Dan was scheduled to leave at around 7:30 AM for Calgary out of LAX and we schemed about how he was going to get to the airport, and Mark decided he couldn’t take LA for much longer and needed to get to San Fran. Both boys were headed out in the morning.

Next thing I know, my hand is laying on top of Dan’s and Mark’s on the bar and someone is saying “alright, let’s make a pact… we’re actually going to do this… k?” Oh wait… that was me saying that. We pact and then throw our hands in the air in celebration before ordering another beer and contemplating the decision we just made.

After determining that Dan would have to catch the earliest bus possible to the airport and if he missed it he would be late for his flight and Mark casually asking if I would drive him to San Fran instead of having to take the wretched greyhound, It was suggested that Dan skip his flight and Mark and I drive him up to Panorama, Canada instead. Huh? How did that happen… “Do you have any friends that may want to come along as well?” Mark asked… actually… I thought… I do. I joke to Dan and show him the incredibly simple text message I’ve drafted… I guarantee this guy’s response will just be… Yes. So I texted Brian:

12:30 AM (Abbey): Hey, roadtrip to Canada tm? I’ll pick you up at 11… you in?
12:35 AM (Brian): Uhh… ok, sounds good. Seriously good timing.

So we swung by the hostel, grabbed their packs and headed back to the APT. We set our alarms for 7 and passed out. When I woke up at 7, I remember kind of wondering why I was getting up so early on a Thursday (generally a work from home day for me) and then realized that there were two men sleeping in my house. Oh wow… what am I doing? But I can’t back out now, Dan already missed his flight. Shower it is and pack. Once the boys woke up, I tasked them to pack as much of the heavy furniture as they could into my car. While they worked on that, I made a couple calls, got myself ready for the long trip ahead and packed up some weekend clothes.

We got on the road by about 8:45 and headed down to Long Beach. I dropped them and the furniture off at the new place in Belmont Heights and then we made a stop at the Port of Long Beach and Valero to do a little work and fill up the tank with some cheap gas. We still had to run back to SM to pick up the packs that we hadn’t loaded to cram as much furniture as we could into the car and so we decided to do a quick drive through Compton (I warned that it wasn’t going to be as exciting as what they were expecting, but we went anyway). “Alright guys,” I asked, “what’s the plan?”

Eat. Shower. Canada.

Simple enough. So we stopped on our first of many Macker’s trips (YES! Haven’t been around Aussie’s in too long… loving the déjà vu fast food abbreviations) and took quick showers back at the APT in SM. Naturally, it took us about 2 hours to get out of LA once we finally got on the road – traffic is something you can count on when you’re heading towards Vegas via the 15. And that’s just where we were headed.

We arrived in Vegas just before sunset and took a quick drive down the strip. Brian and I (who between the two of us average a trip to the Sin city every other week) point out the big sights, spit out some facts and then I drop the boys all off at the Bellagio to run in and play a quick game of Blackjack. We had a quiet (HA) dinner at the Hoffbrauhouse after this, which is a great off-strip German restaurant with somewhat reasonable prices and great beer. They also had a live band in Lederhosen with an accordion (love it!) and lots of drinking songs and “Prost!”-ing. Turns out our waitress is from central Arkansas and went to U of A so we had a nice long chat about life in the Ozarks and that was that. We were on the road again.

I was sad that we were going to be going through Zion in the dark because I really want to see this part of the world. Just when we crossed the Nevada/Arizona state line though, we realized the area was still going to be pretty amazing. We found ourselves driving down a road with huge walls jutting on either side of us. We pulled over to see what going on and found ourselves deep in a gorge. The perfect clear sky straight above with thousands of stars (can you find the Southern Cross… HA! I’m smarter than you think Mr. Kytic). We were dangerously parked right around a corner and Tay Tay bravely guarded us from massive semi’s rounding the corner just barely under tipping. We did a lot of yelling to hear our echoing voices and I think Mark attempted to take a couple pictures, but the beauty of this place was not in what you could see, which was minimal, but rather on how it felt. When there were no cars driving by, it was completely silent and the tranquility and emptiness of the moment was unrivaled. So much so, that my scardycat-ness set in quick and I felt this overwhelming need to get back in the car and lock the doors… *shiver*

On we went, stopping at the Utah border to take our 3rd state line picture. Utah was mostly dark so not a lot happened. The boys slept on and off for the next couple hours and we passed by quite a few Mormon temples and not much else. The sun started to rise as we passed downtown Salt Lake City and so we found a place on the lake where we could sit on the beach and watch the sun come up. The lake was beautiful and we did confirm that it is wide enough that you cannot see to the other side (just like the great lakes!). We sat on the edge and observed nature do it’s thing. I may have tasted the salt water to see how salty it is (not at all) and we stopped to get some more fuel (for Tay and ourselves).

According to our GPS, we have 27 hours left, but we only had 23 to start with so that can’t be right. The trusty iPhone says 14 hours… so we’ll go with that.

Long Beach, CA --> Salt Lake City, UT
Miles travelled: 789
Time travelled: 22 hours

XOXO

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