Day One-hundred-and-ninety-nine: How many to go?

It's a good thing I have a different outlook on life right now. I was cleaning up the sink in the kitchen getting ready to do the dishes I couldn't cram in the dishwasher and I needed more dish soap. I opened the under-sink doors and saw the flood. Most of it was caught by the lazy susan until I just had to confirm where it was coming from before I cleaned it up. The new flood from the garbage disposal overflowed the lazy susan. Now I have all my under-sink stuff spread over the sink and counter top. (The wet things in the sink and the mostly dry things on the counter top.)

Oh well, the only reason I was working in the kitchen was to wash my rice cooker's insides, Panasonic SR-LE10, so I could try it out today. I can wait until tomorrow. After all, I made enough Pueblo Corn Pie yesterday to last a couple more meals.

After today, no more speech to fret over, for a while. I've decided that I will wing it with just the barest hints of notes, more to impose order than remind me what to say. I'm planning on organizing it somewhat like I learned to write a newspaper article way back in high school, the most important things first and then increasing detail. When the timer signals the end of my time is near, I will simply transition to my closing. The bulk of the speech will be reverse psychology so I can surprise them with my plans to do it again but the next time on my motorcycle. Once again, you can read the appropriate earlier entries in this blog to read most of what I will say.

Well contrary to my above paragraph I ended up writing the whole thing out and I'm glad I did. While it was commented on that I my page turning was noticeable I won the best speech. My burst of industriousness may have been strongly influenced by my double soy latte this afternoon. But, it came at a price. I essentially missed dinner and now I'm debating with myself whether to eat anything at all. Certainly I'm not going to have the baked potato I had planned to have. What I will do is fill the rest of this entry with my written speech, much of which didn't make it into my oral speech due to time. Well, who would have thought that time is still a factor in my Life after Layoff.

The speech: (I claim poetic license for any claim in which the reader may disagree with any of the wording below.)

Thank you Toastmaster Gelini. My fellow Toastmasters and honored guest:

I am a type-A personality, which many of you may know is all about deadlines and destinations. Typically if none are given to me, I impose them on myself.

Imagine what it was like for me for the first time in my life to have both the means and time to do something counter to my type. Of course, there would be trade-offs: by traveling by road instead of flying I would be spending less time with my and my wife’s families. What tipped the scales in favor of my driving, in winter, across country, was my experience at a local Whole Foods Market and the encouragement of my youngest daughter, including her loaning me her zero degree rated sleeping bag. At the local Whole Foods I noticed for the umpteenth time that they allowed customers to post material on their bulletin board and I finally really noticed it because I now had something to post, a Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund flyer.
Tonight I’ll be telling you a little about my cross-country road trip adventure in the hope that it’s both entertaining and encourages you to set out on your own adventures.

First let me tell you what it is not. For one person it is definitely not less expensive than flying, even with a rental car thrown in for the length of time I was visiting. It was the hotel expense that put it over the top. The gas and food, most often junk food eaten while on the road, by themselves would have been cheaper. What can I say, I like showers. Then, throw in the casinos… After my modest losses at the first two casinos, I stopped throwing them in.

My preparation consisted of arranging for all my bills to be paid, except one; cancelling my paper, phone, and cable; collecting a lot of cash and then using my credit card—a lot; packing the day I left getting two and one half miles away only to return to collect a pair of jeans I intended to pack but were still in the clothes dryer; buying a set of chains for my Prius, which I learned later that some states have outlawed, including my destination states; and buying car chargers and adapters for my cell phone and iPods.

There is some wonderful scenery in Nevada, Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico. It took me four days and nights to see it, including a three-hour stop and walk in Zion National Park. After the Reno Whole Foods didn’t have any customer posting provisions and I was substantially less enamored with the whole casino thing, I pressed on to Las Vegas anyway. I’ve come to the conclusion that there are nothing but back roads between Reno and Las Vegas. My Prius Navigation System took me on one 13-mile stretch of pure washboard road the other side of Virginia City where my top speed was 13 miles per hour. Of course, the trip to Las Vegas took the whole day.

Even at that low speed, my best mileage was to occur later. The 500 miles from when I filled up in Farmington, New Mexico, to my fill up in Amarillo, Texas, was a phenomenal 57.6 miles per gallon. On my return trip I let the Prius average the whole trip together. The combination of high speeds into the wind and up hill made my mileage an average of 41 miles per gallon with a low at Colorado of 39 miles per gallon. After I passed the continental divide it was more down hill than up.

But my lowest speed was on my first trip into West Virginia to my parents’ place. It was lightly snowing the whole way from Columbus, where I’d been briefly visiting with my wife’s family. As I topped a crest of a smallish hill a pickup passed with their hazard lights flashing. I took that as a sign and slowed down to three miles per hour. Very soon I was glad I did as I was able to stop and not hit the truck stopped in front of me whose driver was helping get another car out of the ditch. At least it was the ditch side of the road and not the sheer drop off of the other side.

I spent over a month visiting and playing with mostly family. I played pool with my father, on his table, and at first only won when he lost. He had one shot where he sunk three of his balls. He claimed the championship by virtue of winning the last game we played. We played a lot of cards: cribbage, set back, gin, shiny pants gin, cut throat and mystery partner euchre. We embarrassed ourselves on my oldest sister’s, still younger than me, Wii Fit. And in a tradition that at least goes back over fifty years to my mother’s initiation into the Westbrook family, New Year’s Day we initiated my children’s spouses.

I think I ate at every vegan restaurant in Columbus. There aren’t that many. I also tried to eat vegan at an Applebee’s. I just didn’t think to ask that they not put cheese and bacon on their house salad. I should have been warned as my very first night on the road in Reno the person at the front desk didn’t even know what the word vegan meant.

I was struck by the combination of highway signs in Missouri. On the one hand there were the church related signs and quite often in close proximity were the adult super store and casino signs.

It was nice to be able to reach out and touch people by phone. It helped make a few of the hours pass more quickly. Of course, there were long stretches on my somewhat spur of the moment selected route that there was no cell phone reception. In those times I listened to all nine of the CDs that my daughters had bought for me: Garrison Keeler and Car Talk. I also listened to literally all of the music on my mostly audio book full iPod. I did not, however, listen to any of the audio books.
Before I even started for home I had decided to take the more direct route, even if that meant driving through or having to hold up for some snow. The wind was something I didn’t plan on. Thank goodness there wasn’t snow. I would have been blown off the road. Instead, I was pulling tumbleweed sticks from the front of my car when I got back to Pacifica.

The worst driving occurred on the western slope of the Rockies, just after the Continental Divide. There I was wishing I had stayed in Georgetown as I was traveling down the expressway trying to stay in the less snow covered tracks and thanking my lucky stars that I was behind an RV with a trailer that also wanted to go slow. When I got down to the bottom and pulled off at Silverthorne, I was reminded by the fully snow covered town roads and the long line at the registration desk that it was ski season and a Friday to boot. So much for winging it and just stopping when I wanted to. But all my fears were unjustified. They had a room and it was a much better room than my previous night in a Topeka fleabag motel.

The next day on clear expressway roads during a period of cell phone reception, my father talked me into driving across Utah and Nevada on the “loneliest road in America,” US 50. It was great. There were long stretches through large valleys that I could see no other car on the road. Driving it on an early Sunday morning with less than a full tank of gas and no bars on my cell phone was a little worrisome but I made it to Reno much to early to stop at a casino hotel. (I hadn’t brought enough money to risk for that long without a substantial winning streak.) So, I pressed on.

I made it back to my house in Pacifica 44 days and three hours from the time I left. After 6,922 miles on the road, I was glad to be back to my home.

Would I do it again? Yes! I’m already planning on driving back to West Virginia in June to ride with my parents to Alaska. This next time I’m going to do it on my motorcycle. The road adventures continue.