The Vacation is Burning! (The Road to IL)

August 1, 2007. So, we slept in a few hours later than we'd planned, but we were up and moving by 9:30am - I mean it was our first day of vacation, right? We took care of our last minute business, packed the car and went to pick up Animae, our friends' dog, in Brooklyn at 11:30am. A mere 3 HOURS LATER we actually cleared the Lincoln Tunnel on the Jersey side. Another hour later we'd woven our way through the Jersey traffic and were finally on the open road at 3:30pm. About 4 hours later than we'd planned. We'd hoped to get around 700 miles into our nearly 1000 mile trip the first day, but it was becoming apparent that that wasn't likely to happen. Somewhere in the middle of PA, I became obsessed with getting as far as we could that night. I guess I felt the success of the entirety of our vacation depended on our progress that first day. Meanwhile, Animae, a Boston Terrier, starting making these amazing high-pitched squealing noises in the seat behind me. The dog was literally having multiple mini-breakdowns/freak-outs. Understandably so: she got removed from her house by some guy she only peripherally knows, and then shoved into a car with another dog who actively disliked her (bad Daisy!), and a woman she'd only met once before (me). Neither of her mommies were anywhere to be seen... You can see how that might upset a dog.

At around 5pm, we were listening to our XM radio and news of the Minneapolis I-35 bridge collapse hit the airwaves. Pretty maudlin stuff to be listening to on a cross country road trip... Made us VERY aware of every bridge we crossed. Finally, we stopped at a hotel outside of Columbus, Ohio at around 12:30am. We'd been in the car for 13 hours and we'd only managed to travel a little over 500 miles. We paid like $100 for a crappy Red Roof Inn motel room which had an air conditioner set to "meat locker," one less pillow on the bed than it should have, and we discovered we'd forgotten to pack our toothpaste. The only thing on tv was more of the bridge collapse. Animae started full on freaking out and whining and squeaking like she'd swallowed an actual squeak toy. Neither dog wanted to eat their food, but they both wanted to eat the other's food. All of us were hungry, cold, and sullen. Ryan was mad at me for pushing us on an extra hour and a half and making him miss "Rescue Me" which he'd planned on being his reward for a hard, long day of driving in insane traffic...

We spent the night shivering under a thin little blanket while Animae kept running over us on the bed incessantly. Ryan kept getting up to put her back in her bed and discovered that Daisy had taken over Animae's bed as a show of her alpha doginess. Neither of us got very good sleep and at 8:30am we were back up again and pushing on to IL. We stopped to get coffee and ended up throwing out 4 cups of coffee from two different places - apparently iced coffee in Ohio translates to: a sugary milk suckee with a splash of coffee. GROSS. Ryan and I got into a fight over throwing away an empty cup in a trash can in the parking lot of a Tim Horton's - uh, what? We got onto the road and didn't speak to each other for two hours (a first for us under any circumstances).

Around noon, the I-70 turned into a parking lot about 35 miles outside of Indianapolis, and more tragically, just one mile, ONE MILE!, from an exit with a Starbuck's. I decided to check the atlas for a possible alternative route and Ryan ventured to cut the silence by asking if there was another way. We used a police highway turnaround and drove back 18 miles to the previous exit that connected to a parallel smaller highway - great idea! That apparently every 18-wheeler in the vicinity also had... 2 hours later we'd crawled through about 5 little Indiana towns, each with a population of about 500, with our trucker convoy. Finally we found a Starbuck's and got a decent cup of joe and walked the dogs. It was hot and humid and turning to late afternoon. Again, on day two, we were extremely behind our projected travel time. But the coffee tasted good and the dogs started socializing. Ryan and I realized that this was our vacation, we were together, we had no obligations outside of caring for the cute puppers frolicking in the grass, and we were traveling to spend time with many of the people we love the most...

We got back on the road and decided to head to my parents. We called Eddie, who we'd planned on seeing that afternoon, and told him we'd see him the next day because the roads were conspiring against us. It took almost 5 hours to get from Columbus to Indianapolis (175 miles) and only 3 1/2 hours to get from Indianapolis to my parent's house (230 miles). It's always great to go home to mom. Especially when you have a Midwestern mom. They take momming seriously. Ryan always says my mom reminds him of Mrs. Poole from "The Hogan Family" (aka Grace, the Secretary from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"). I guess she sort of does. All I know, is as soon as we got there, I finally felt like our vacation had truly begun, and peace and relaxation followed.

For one night at least.