On the Road

Well, just for the novelty, I’m blogging from the road. It’s 9:00 a.m., Mountain Standard Time, on Thanksgiving, and Dave and I are in Illinois, nearly to Chicago. We started driving in Boulder at about 5:30 p.m. last night, and, save a brief mistake that took us out of our way, we’ve been heading to Jennifer and Lee’s since then. We’re actually in Central time at the moment, and we’ll switch to Eastern time when we get to Michigan. I was really tired around 7:30 p.m. last night, but Dave said I’d get used to driving relentlessly in the dark, and he was right. He drove until about 11:30, when we stopped for gas and dinner: the sandwiches we made from fixings in the cooler (turkey and roast beef with cheese and condiments, on burrito shells). I took over driving until 1:30 a.m., at which point I was clutching the steering wheel and staring fixedly ahead. Dave had been sleeping soundly while I listened to a book on CD, The Wal-Mart Effect. I pulled into a rest station and we switched drivers. I slept like a rock until 3:30 a.m., when he pulled into a rest stop. For some reason, I was wide awake once I’d gone to the bathroom. This rest stop in the middle of Iowa was clean and new, and, best of all, had a coffee machine! I remember those from my childhood, although I don’t remember from where. Maybe the DMV or somewhere else “grown up.” I bought a truly dreadful English toffee fakuccino for $.85. It was just as fun as always to watch the cup drop and then the door open. The whole thing was much cleaner than I remembered from decades ago. I wondered briefly if our kids would ever see a coffee machine. We got back into the car and I drove until 6:30 a.m. or so—through my favorite time to drive, sunrise. And it was just gorgeous! First I realized that I could see dark clouds where before there had only been dark. Then the sky progressively lightened into a pale gray and then into sunset—first pinks and blues and then deeper and deeper pinks, verging on orange. Every few moments it was totally changed, although I could never see the transition. I woke Dave up several times to look. Finally, the sunset flamed out with a massive ball of deep, glowing orange sun, like an electric tangerine hovering at the horizon.

We switched drivers again, got coffee, and I’ve been napping. Dave’s iPod ran out of battery, so we’re letting my shuffle choose songs for us. (Happily, the rented Dodge Avenger has an auxiliary connection for the iPods and cruise control, although everything else is less than stellar.) The traffic is thickening—we’re near Chicago—but the drive has been uneventful so far, with no weather and a few pleasant moments, like the sunset and crossing the Mississippi. I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving dinner, seeing Jennifer and Lee, and playing with the baby!