Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Hello from Truckee (isn't that a kids' word?)

Ziggy and I are sitting in the living room of his buddy's place in a place called Truckee. It's right off I-80, the interstate we turned right on about 1,700 miles ago. The ride out was constant. We drove straight through, leaving Toons at 11:30 a.m. after having a shorty with DB and arriving here in the late afternoon. It was the longest night on the road I can remember. When you're chasing the sunset you're also running away from the sunrise. And the earth rotates way faster than a vehicle with Mr. Whoopie's radar detector. So the sun set somewhere around 6 p.m. on the clock on our Toyota SUV. We hadn't reset the time when it finally came back up just before we reached Salt Lake City around 8:30 a.m. Chicago time (6:30 local).

Now, the "running-out-of-gas" incident...I awoke around 2 a.m. Chicago time as Ziggy was exiting the interstate somewhere in the middle of Wyoming, around 45 miles west of Laramie. He'd been looking for a gas station for some time...nothing. The exits advised to get off for petrol and we drove right by a dark station, never noticing the closed pumps until we came back through about 3 hours later. Ziggy had his new GPS doohickey. But technology was catching its own tail. His GPS said the next station was 20 miles away, in some place called Red Rock (cue "Blazing Saddles" music). The information indicator on his Toyota said we had 19.1 miles to go before we'd run out of fuel. It was a constant chase to the station, which we passed in the dark of night as we blinked and missed the closed-down town. 

We u-turned and went back, knowing Goober and Gomer weren't working but figuring if the inevitable happened we should at least be at a fillin' station and not on a corn-lined highway. Zig called AAA, we took a two-hour nap while we waited, and the guy filled us up with 15 gallons of petrol.

We spent today looking for a place for Terry to rent for the season. It's been slim pickings so far but we'll keep on the case. We stopped and did some shopping and I cooked up some tacos for dinner after Zig confessed he has only turned his stove at home on twice in 9 years. I'm tired now and headed to bed. More tomorrow.


2 comments:

Mills said...

At least you guys didn't get pissed at each other, split up... only to be re-united when one of you riding a moped, catches up to the other one.

Gizmo said...

Hey - can i have the movie rights to this trip?