Where we've been

Yeah, I know, I haven't written in ages, but I've been busy. Suzanne and I went off on an adventure with the wabbits. 2,290 miles from here to Kansas City and back. We went out to see her parents, and also a sidetrip down to Springfield to visit my aunt, my father's youngest sister, who I hadn't seen in person since 1979. Yeah. Twenty-eight years, or well over half my life ago.

We started out late last week, setting out at night. Gina was helpful by running outside five minutes before we were due to leave. Finally, after Suzanne (who let her out despite my constant warnings about not letting cats out) couldn't persuade her to come back in, I said scruit, she can figure out that we're not at her beck and call. And we left.

We drove up as far as the west side of Columbus, Ohio, then stopped at a hotel. We sneaked the rabbits in the back door, let them out, and they went bananas after six hours in the back of the station wagon. Running all over the place, sniffing things, chasing each other around, and trying to eat the cord for the air conditioner. Eventually, they calmed down and a couple of them hopped onto the bed with us. We got up moderately early, went over and got a replacement headlamp bulb at Meijer's Thrifty Acres (I hadn't been in one since I'd left Michigan 25 years ago), had something to eat, and set off.

We actually made very good time across Indiana and Illinois, but as we approached St. Louis, dumbasses from the Illinois Department of Transportation had closed down all but one lane of I-70/I-55... this during Friday afternoon rush hour! And, after the traffic sites had all said that the barriers wouldn't be in place during rush hour. Maybe IDOT decided rush hour ended at 4 or something, because at 5:15 we ran into the backup, and it then took up two full hours to move about four and a half miles.

We finally made it over the river into Missouri, and headed west on I-70 after calling Suzanne's parents to let them know we'd be quite a bit later than we'd thought. They were fine with it.

One thing I'll mention... Missouri has these bizarre sinks in the bathrooms of their rest areas on the major highways. You've probably experienced the self-flushing toilets, right? Well, these things are automatic sinks. You stick your hands under them, they splop a little soap on them and then hit you with warm water for ten seconds, then the hand dryer turns on. Of course, it works about as well as any hand dryer ever does, so you end up wiping your hands on your pants.

The thing that's screwed up about this is, a lot of people when they travel want to wash their face or maybe brush their teeth, and I know there were times when I was traveling I washed my hair in the sinks in the bathrooms. All those things are either impractical or impossible with these things. Oh, well. Give them points for innovation and savings on paper towels, I guess.

We got to Kansas City just as the tank of fuel went low, so I threw the five gallons in my jug of diesel in there, and we got to her parents' house around 11. The rabbits hopped around the pantry and we had some cake and ice cream, since we'd had dinner at a truckstop in Illinois and were still feeling rather large.

Saturday was a date worth celebrating... I have been divorced for four entire years, though it seems both much longer and much shorter a time than that.

Over the weekend, we finished off a scrapbook Suzanne had been working on for her parents' 50th anniversary, scanning a bunch of ancient photographs and then printing out the completed 12x12 pages with the monster Epson printer we bought a few months ago. We also went to Gates' barbecue as usual, wandered around town on Saturday to hear some music and check out some interesting places in the Westport section of the city. Saturday night we went back to the Majestic Steakhouse at 10th and Broadway to hear the absurdly-talented Bram Wijnands again. He's a crazy Dutchman who plays all sorts of 1930s and 1940s jazz in the period style. His drummer was Tommy Russkin, whose trio we had heard earlier that day at Jardine's on Main Street. Between sets he came and sat down with us, probably because Suzanne was all dolled up in this low-cut lacy black dress with a long accordion-pleated skirt I'd gotten her for her birthday. I figure if it'd just been me, he wouldn't have bothered!

We bought his new CD, and went out after the last set to find that it had rained just enough to produce nice dusty blobs on the formerly-shiny Volkswagen. We went home and fooled around, and woke up on Sunday to go and do more stuff. Really, Sunday was spent working on the scrapbook printout, and looking around her parents' house, which, as I've previously described, is a rather spectacular mansion built in the years before the First World War and which her parents are restoring. The wabbits had a good time hopping around the front yard on their harnesses, and we took the TDI over to get it washed. We also stopped at an amazing meat market, McGonigle's, where we picked up some frozen ostrich patties.

Yeah.

Suzanne's mother made a pork roast for dinner, and we stayed up talking a long time afterward. Suzanne actually went to bed after a while, and I stayed up till after midnight talking to her parents. I think they've adjusted to the idea that Suzanne is getting married... her father has also adjusted to the idea of her going back into private law -- he wasn't all that happy that she went to seminary or that she was a government lawyer for years before that -- and they seem quite supportive of everything that's going on.

One important thing her parents did was to give her a ring... a large gold ring with a large square diamond and some rubies on the side. It had been her father's wedding ring, and his father's before that, but he apparently hasn't worn it in a long time because it no longer fits, and they decided Suzanne should have it, to either wear as a pendant or have remade into a wedding ring. I was quite amazed at that... I mean, some years ago my father gave me my late mother's wedding band, but obviously it had been sitting in a drawer since 1968 and it wasn't something I was going to use again. This seemed quite momentous and Suzanne was extremely happy about it. Rubies are her birthstone, but they make terrible primary stones in a wedding band because they're dark red, if you ask me.

Monday we got up amazingly early and packed everything up, forgetting to pack a bag of my beef jerky as well as a bag of buckwheat pancake mix we picked up at a truckstop diner in Accident, Maryland (near Keyser's Ridge, and home of the famous Accident Garage). I hope her mom thinks of something interesting to do with them... I'll make another package of jerky and we can always get buckwheat pancake mix. We loaded up the wabbits, and set off for Springfield.

At Belton, Missouri, we filled up the TDI on $2.80/gallon diesel... 1,112 miles on 26.1 gallons for a respectable 42.6 miles per gallon. Not bad, considering we'd been driving 70-75mph with the air conditioning on almost the entire way. Can your beer do this?

The drive down to Springfield was easy and fast, and my aunt's place was pretty easy to find. She lives barely 500 outside the Springfield city limits in a community of manufactured homes that seems to be mostly retired people. I have to say, she looks a lot different than she did in 1979, but then, so do it. All she had to do was say hello and she sounded exactly like her, though... years of living in Florida in the 1960s and more than 20 years of living in Arkansas and Missouri haven't taken the edge off her Chicago accents.

We had lunch and talked about all sorts of stuff, mostly old family stuff and where-are-people-now, and I told her how my father and stepmother are doing. She's alone now, except for her son who lives a few miles away, her second husband having died a few years ago. She lives in a nice little house and doesn't do a whole lot. We actually spent about three hours there, and while it would have been nice to be more, we had to get going, and we finally took off from Springfield about 3:30 in the afternoon.

I-44 in Missouri goes through some interesting land, and follows the old path of US 66, which was decommissioned some years ago. All over the place you can see reminders (and in some cases, abandoned pavement) of US 66, and there are plenty of gift shops and tourist traps along the route. I stopped off and got a T-shirt and a refrigerator magnet commemorating 66, and then we got through St. Louis easily. In Illinois, the sun finally disappeared, and we had dinner at a truckstop in Indiana. While we'd considered doing the Ironman thing and drive all the way through to home overnight, I realized there was still no way I'd make it to work on time on Tuesday, so we stopped outside Dayton, Ohio and took up residence at a Motel 6. The rabbits once again went nuts running all over the room, and we went to sleep, though they rabbits hopped on and off the bad throughout the night.

It rained overnight, and when we woke up and got out of there it was still raining. We went over and had lunch at a Steak'n Shake nearby, then got going. Somewhere in eastern Ohio we topped up the diesel for $2.79 a gallon, and then finished off the run last night, pulling into home around 8:30pm.

Two thousand, two hundred ninety miles. And we didn't drive each other completely nuts. Suzanne actually drove a 250-mile stretch of the trip out in Indiana and Illinois, and then again a shorter stretch between Indianapolis and wherever we stayed near Dayton. She's not a natural for driving a five-speed, but she didn't destroy it or anything, so we'll have to do that again. It's a skill she really has to learn around this house.

So, we're back, minus one scrapbook but plus one ancient motorized ice-cream maker which we intend to put to use. While we were away there was a power failure, so the air conditioners were off and the computers had mostly reset themselves. The plants were quite dry in spite of the rain we had, and I think my most promising Norway spruce isn't going to make it. But at least now we're back and we can pay attention to them.

The next project is the baby megawabbit, who is coming in less than two weeks. I, for one, welcome our new Flemish overlords.