The Excellent Adventure

If there is ever a time to restart my blog, today is the day. Mostly because we (Matt and I) survived yesterday. Wow, what a day. I love an adventure, that is what I signed up for when Matt annoucned he was moving to Chicago. I got my wish. Wandering the country brings me joy. I love seeing all the different towns and cities. We get so used to staying inside our 10 mile radius, it is fun to see how other people live. I can see myself being an RV owner trying to hit all 50 states. I have also decided that I would like a really nice camera and be a male photo nazi. Taking cool photos of our adventures. Any whoo......

Day one of Shawn & Matts Excellent Adventure:

Stardate: April 1, 2010
5:30am Awake with the hope that we could drive to Omaha, NE today. Shower, breakfast, final packing preperations. Look out the window, 5 inches of new snow. Moving on a powder day. Crap.

7:00am Attach Matt's car to the back of the Moving truck using tow-dolly, steal some PowerBars and fruit, scrape the 6 inches of snow off the truck and load up. For photos you can see Melissa's description.

7:26: Depart. Here we go.

8:30ish: Top out at the top of Parley's Canyon. Realize this is going to be slow and steady wins the race. Taunt those passing us that we are still going to beat them to Chicago. It seems that they don't give the trucks with the big engines to those who check it out at a counter. Averages sustained speed going up hill, 30mph.

9:00: Pass Echo Lake. Ice is melting but lake is full. Hooray! Boating around the corner.

9:00 to 2:30: In case you were wondering, Wyoming is all up hill, the wind blows, hard. And it doesn't seem that they do great with snow removal off the road. Not judging, just saying. 5.5 hours of really crappy road conditions. I have not seen "car-bergs" as large as were on our car/truck ever. I was feeling like we were making great progress given the conditions. When we pull over for gas at 2:30 I am playing the "how close can I call the time that we will pull in Cheyene, given our speed and distance". I love that game. And Jonas says he'll never use math. My prediction 4:30. Which is not great given the initial time line, but given conditions, it will get us half way across Nebraska for a reasonable stopping point. At least that is what I thought then.

3:15 arrive in Laramie, Wyoming, Matt is driving I was sleeping. Come to a stop on the freeway with many of our best freeway friends. I-80 is closed. Expletive. OK, time frame is now getting serioulsy pushed back. I have to say it is really cool traveling with laptops and internet access. It is amazing the stuff you can find out. Kudos to Al Gore for inventing it. Waiting......

4:15 still waiting..... in Laramie. On the freeway. Realize that the road is closed due to a pretty bad truck accident. Also realize that we were pretty close to the front of the line going into the canyon. I start to think that, I was impressed to pull over and get gas the last time. Didn't really need to, but decided it would be a good time to stretch and relax. I don't know what would have happened but have a distinct feeling that we were guided to stop when we did.

5:00 getting hungry. Not making it to Cheyene by 4:30. Other trucks are turning around, descision made lets get food, re-assess and see what we can do.

5:30 stop at McDonalds. Closed. Power outage. Lights still on. Interesting. Decide that Laramie has serious power grid issues. Remember when the Utes played there in 2004? Only half the stadium lights worked. Well, same with the restaurants. Decided against gastric distress and chose not eat an the Inidan, Chinese or other questionable eating establishments. Now hungry, but we decide to head down Rt 287 to Fort Collins, CO. I-80 still closed. It will add 65 miles to the trip. But moving is better than sitting, especially in Laramie. No offense, Laramie.

5:45 depart for Fort Collins and realize that we have made the correct descision. All of the Fed Ex trucks are re-routing the same way. When I say all I mean, like over 100. New carreer path. Wolrd President of FedEx logistics. I couldn't believe how many trucks there were. I bet they have a wicked-awesome "War-room" routing and re-routing stuff. That would be cool. New theme of the trip, if we see FedEx trucks, we know we are heading in the right direction.

6:00 7:30 Hey guess what? There are blowy (that is a cute word for the description I would rather use, but my kids might read this) winds and black-ice and snow packed roads and remember the 100 FedEx trucks plus all the other traffic on a 2 lane road. Plus it was uphill. Part of the conversations was, "Wow, I am glad our kids aren't with us strapped into carseats, etc." As we get to the summit, trucks are lined up tail to nose, there are several that have slid off the road and we look up we see a few go off. As we get to that section of road the truck in front of us slides and slows, we slide and again, I am telling you that there is no reason we should have stayed on that road. Matt's awesome driving in a 24 foot moving truck, pulling a car and the hand of God reaching down and holding us on that road were the only thing that kept all of Matt's worldly possessions from ending up in the ditch. Then we hit the Colorado border, wind stops, road dry traffic disapates. No joke. Could not believe it. As we get to the base of the canyon, Road up the canyon is closed. Another crash, we can imagine especially after what we just drove through. Drive off the mountain into Ft. Collins. Arive about 8:30-9p.

9:00p - Still quite hungry, but the dog is being good. So we decide to push back to Cheyene 40 miles away. I tell you, I had serious reservations about traveling with Boomer in the cab. She is a great dog. Just cuddles up between us, occasionaly looks up and out the window. She does shed and occasionally licks your ears. But I can handle that compared to the alternative. We wind our way through Ft Collins and onto I-25 heading north. It's dark and Matt makes a jerky turn onto the freeway entrance. No harm. No foul. Averages out the massive save in the canyon.

9:10-9:45 Smooth sailing to Wyoming border, listening to a good spy novel on the iPod. Hit the border, honestly, massive cross-winds, blowing snow black-ice. Welcome to W-Y-O. I say Matt "Let's go to Wendy's, hungry." He grunts back in his best man talk.

9:45 - You thought the story was good so far? This is where it's at..... We pull into the Wendy's parking lot, I am a little groggy, Matt gets out first, immediately comes back to the cab "Shawn, we have a problem." I respond "OK, what's up" Matt, "The car is gone." Me, "What?!!!" Matt, "The car is gone! What are we going to do" Being the keen thinker that I am I immediately think, April Fools. I jump out of the cab, nope, not April Fools. The car really is gone. Tow dolly there, car gone. I think to myself "Hmmmm. That is awesome." I have to hand it to Matt, again, he was pretty calm and collected. Matt calls 911, "I need to report an missing vehicle, we are driving a 24 foot rental truck and the red Oldsmobile Bravada, loaded to the brim is no longer on our tow-dolly" 911 "When was the last time you saw it?" Matt, "I don't know exactly." (Sidenote: It is very difficult to see the car behind the truck, you get an occasional glimse when you turn a corner or sometimes you can see it in the shadow, but there is no good way to "Keep your eye on it.") Matt, "I 'think' I saw it when we turned onto I-25 in Colorado". Wyoming 911 response "You should call Colorado then" Nice.

10:15 I say, "Hey Matt, It's going to be a long night, let's get some food" Wendy's here we come.

10:25 To say that you run all the different scenarios in your head is an understatement. How exactly does a car come off a tow dolly without two, grown, responsible men not noticing it? Really, no one noticing it. Because it is not like when we called 911 they said "you mean, you are the one responsible for causing the cataclismic crash and then just drove away." Our response would have been "Well, Matt really didn't want any of his kitchen stuff any way" I have to admit I thougth to myself "Oh crap, all my best comfort clothes are gone, Utah Sweatshirt, scrubs, khakis, favorite LOTOJA t-shirt and my running shoes and GPS" We have got to find this car! But anyway, we thought no report of an accident involving a red Bravada was a good thing at this point. We pile in, drive back down I-25 looking for an Oldsmobile on the side of the road. Did I mention that the key was in it?

10:45 No Bravada. We've gone all the way back to the base of the canyon. Matt "thinks" he saw it on the turns in Ft Collins but is unsure. We decide to drive back toward Cheyene. If you are keeping track at home, we are pushing an extra 2oo miles of driving at this point. When we came back to Ft Collins we really couldn't see much it was quite dark. So we think driving on the same side of the road will increase our odds of locaing the car.

11:00 So I am driving as we turn back onto I-25, there in the median, perched in neutral, undamaged and awaiting our return is the car. Holy (insert your favorite term here). I could not belive it. The median was a concrete island with a small embankment. The front two wheels rolled over the apex of the embankment while the back two did not, slowing and stabilizing the car. Had the cars back two wheels gone over, it, being in neutral would have rolled across the freeway access and down a 30-50 foot embankment, most likely to it's death. Think Thelma and Louise. But instead of two fun loving women, all of Matt's kitchen and all of my Dad's guitars. We were also glad Boomer wasn't in the back like origianlly planned. I don't think Anne or Quincy would ever talk to us again. At this point I am on the freeway entrance, I slow, Matt jumps out I drive up to the next freeway exit to circle around to pick up our cargo. As I do so I see cop lights shining on Matt. How sweet is that.

11:15 After convincing the cops that he is not a drunk guy wandering the freeway interchanges of Ft Collins the kind officer helps Matt jump the car, the battery is dead and the officer transports our luggage, which was in the drivers seat of the car. Literally no other place in the car to put it. It is that full. Matt dives the car where I am awaiting. The officer says "Anything else I can do for you two" I think to myself "You mean other than not arresting us and putting us in jail for unvoluntary criminal endangerment and failure to secure your load?" "No I think we are good, Thanks, Officer Friendly."

Sometime after 11:15, getting blurry. The car is loaded and secure we break into various Church Hymns (Shawn style, top of your lungs interchanging tunes and lyrics. There was some 'Spirit of God' a little 'How Firm a Foundation') and offered thanks and praise, and, we did a little dance in the Sinclair parking lot. I turn to Matt as I sit in the drivers seat (Looking back, he may have been in a little bit of shock for the previous 3 hours, you know, when we were looking for his car that came off the tow-dolly unnoticed.) "Now where?" Response "Nebraska". I couldn't agree more. Sometimes it is just about the principle.

1:00 Cheyene. WYO border, snow, ice, wind, repeat. I poop out about 15 miles from Kimball, NE, Matt takes over driving. I remember seeing the Nebraska State line smiling and thinkng. "Whew" Pull into the Super8, we get a room and sleep. Lights out at 2:15.

Day 2: Stardate: April 2, 2010.

6:00am Awake, look out window, Sunny and a 30 mph tail wind. Amen. I love Nebraska. Next stop - Naperville. Check out the photo of Matt's car sitting in the median on Facebook.

More photos to come. Gotta wait so I don't get car sick. Now that is what I call a blog post.

Signing off, Shawn, Matt, Boomer from milepost 202 in Nebraska