T-Day Travels (Part I)

Ever since we got married (and even before), Nancy and I have been switching off on holidays with our respective families. This year, it was time to spend Thanksgiving in Colorado with my family. Since Nancy now works for a major airline, we figured we could fly. However, her employer doesn't fly from Salt Lake to Denver, except with JFK Airport in New York as a layover. And flying another airline, even with the discounted rates we'd get, would still be at least as expensive as driving—especially with as prices now well below $2.00/gallon. So we decided to drive. This is the story.

Thursday, November 27th
Nancy and I both had to work on Wednesday night, but we had great hopes for leaving fairly early on Thanksgiving morning for Colorado. The weather was looking cooperative, and all we really had to do on Thursday morning before leaving was to finish our packing and straighten up the house. I envisioned us being on the road by 8:30 or 9:00 that morning. 10:00 at the very latest.

Yeah, right.

Straightening up the house took quite a bit longer than anticipated. For my part, I had a sink full of dishes to wash and garbage to take out. And I'd barely done any packing at all. I'd intended to do some or all of those things Wednesday night after work, but I was just too tired at the time. (More on that in another post.) So even thought I awoke at 7:30, I was nowhere near ready to go by 9:00, or even 10:00.

When I finally had finished doing dishes and taking out the trash and packing, there was still one more task to take care of. For several weeks, part of the plastic skid plate on Nancy's car has been hanging down. And scraping. It made a delightful noise that attracted attention everywhere we went. So we figured it would be best to get that fixed before jaunting off across the Wyoming plains. Lacking ramps or an effective jack, we drove the car up onto the curb and I slid under it in the gutter. (There's an image for you!) With the help of a pair of needle-nosed pliers and a nylon zip tie, I got the loose piece secured for travel. Yeah, it was a pretty whiskey tango^a solution, but it worked. We'll have to get the entire skid plate replaced some time, but for now we have better things to spend $200 on.

Nancy did her thing while I was finishing up all of my stuff, and at last we got the car loaded and began our journey. It was just after noon when we pulled out.

I figured we'd stop at the neighborhood fast food joint for a little lunch to go. We were second in line at the drive through, behind a blue Subaru that seemed to be taking a long time to order. We came to find out that he wasn't ordering at all; he was talking to the speaker and waiting for a response. Alas, nobody answered because they had closed at 11:00. He (and we) figured that out after about five minutes when somebody came out of the back door of the restaurant and told us all that they were closed. Fair enough. We could eat somewhere else.

I missed the turnoff to eastbound I-80 and ended up on southbound I-215 east instead. I got off at the 3300 South exit, which was just a block or so away from several fast food places. We learned, in turn, that none of them was open either. So we got back on the freeway and headed for Park City to try our luck.

We had similar results there. The fast food places were all closed, including the one with the big sign in front of the restaurant saying "WE'RE OPEN!!"^b We did manage to find a grocery store with a deli section that was open. But they had basically no selection in their hot case. We asked if the guy at the counter could make any of the numerous items we weren't seeing available, and he said no. Feeling a little frustrated (and hungry) by this time, I pointed out the sign above the counter and asked, "So when the sign says 'If you don't see it, we'll make it!', that's not really accurate, then?" He gave me a stupid bewildered look like I'd asked him something in Swahili but didn't really say anything. Whatever. We left, deciding to take our chances at Evanston. We figured the truck stops at least had to be open. Until then, we had snacks that Nancy had packed. Dove chocolates, cashews, Twix bars, licorice, that sort of thing.

We pulled into the Flying J in Evanston and were pleased (and relieved) to find that they were open and had plenty of food available. They had a Thanksgiving buffet available, but we opted against it for reasons of time and money. Instead, we had a chicken cordon bleu sandwich, a Big Dog (a large sausage wrapped in bread dough and baked), some potato wedges, an order of hot wings (for Nancy, not me) and a couple of sodas. Now nourished in body and spirit, we got back on I-80 and headed east.

The rest of the trip was delightfully uneventful. We discovered that there's a new wind farm about 20 miles east of Evanston, with something like a hundred windmills there generating electricity. Realistically, you could put windmills pretty much anywhere along I-80 in southern Wyoming. The wind blows all the time along that stretch—or at least every time I've ever been there. Anyway, we pulled into my parents' driveway around 8:30 that evening, relieved as always to have arrived safely.

Friday, November 28th
The main event on Friday was a day with my nieces, Mikayla and Jordan. They came over late Friday morning and stayed until around 5:30. I was on my laptop when they arrived, so I spent a little time showing them NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day website and talking about the stars and science and such tings, mostly with Mikayla (who just started high school).^c Then we started with the games. We played two games of Ticket To Ride, one of my/our favorite games. For the first game I spent a lot of time helping Jordan, who turned 9 on December 2nd. That first game was all the tutoring she needed, though. In the second game, she was on top of it. She proved herself quite capable, and maybe even a little ruthless. She's a bright girl. So is her sister.

We got pizza delivered sometime around 3:00, which seemed a little weird to me. First, the fact that we have a pizza chain like Domino's in the little town where I grew up is a little surreal. And the fact that they would deliver to my parents' house, which is well outside the recognized city limits just blows my mind. J-Town has changed so much since I lived there. I barely recognize it sometimes.

We wrapped up the evening with a rousing game of Scattergories, after which we had to take the girls to meet Jeremy, their adopted dad. They don't think of him as their adopted dad, of course, they think of him as their dad. And they should. He's good for them and great for Debbie, their mother and my former sister-in-law. I guess it's still a little strange for me, knowing that my brother A, the girls' father, is no longer a part of their lives. Maybe he will be again one day in the future. Probably later rather than sooner.

That's a good place to stop for now. We'll pick up the narrative with Saturday and the family's trip to Colorado Springs to visit my brother.


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^a "Whiskey Tango" is the phonetic pronunciation for the letters W and T, respectfully. W.T. stands for 'white trash'.
"Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" stands for something else entirely.

^b In retrospect, I think the sign probably had more to do with the road construction in the area than with the fact that it was Thanksgiving Day. But it was very frustrating at the time.

^c Wait, I'm old enough to have a niece in high school? That can't be right.