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2007
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June
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- Purchases
- Views from a plane
- Two unrelated things
- It has been awhile.
- Cursive video
- College World Series
- Woman Sets Space Flight Record
- Fireworks! (And The Faint!)
- Feliz Cumpleanos a Erica
- Look at the size of my ring
- Me and Albee
- Stone Astrologers
- Today's Activity: Car Wash!
- Friday Night Lights
- Are they conflict free, Chan?
- Slowdown Opening
- Road Trip Part 2
- More Slowdown
- Road Trip: Los Angeles to Omaha
- Summer Fiction and Films
- Welcome to...
- Slowdown opening
- Oh Marianne
- Guess what?
- Falling behind
- Pistons 2 Refs 4
- Congratulations Jamie and Erin!
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June
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4 comments:
This brings back a lot of memories. in the jeep with no a/c in august, delirious and rocking out to yyys, stopping at places like a gas station with a built-in dominoes pizza which was eaten on plastic chairs next to a mini fridge with a hand-written, taped-on sign reading, "live night critters", trying to make a road trip video diary. ah the simultaneous joy and misery of road trips, usually feeling one while on the brink of the other. ah the rare feeling of celebration in finding the elusive starbucks green logo after dreaming of a cold, caffeinated, ultra sweet drink for hours on end. ah the fun of staying in places like ogallala, nebraska, st. george, utah, rifle, colorado. ah the false excitement of crossing state lines and having it feel like major progres when it still just means endless hours of more driving. love it. wish i had been with you guys. i'm up for the next one, as long as it's mice-free. so relieved the protege held up. what a trooper.
Wow, Laura, you saw a lot more in those pictures than I did (you're so good at bringing the memories back in!). Linds and CB--it does look like a fun trip.
Linds--I'm loving this new commitment to the blog. It has been the perfect way for me to procrastinate during finals.
Yes, lots of road trip memories. No worms on this trip. But there was a mouse...details to come (I have decided) in a post soon.
Erica, I'm glad you're keeping up and thank you for commending my discipline...that is an especially high compliment coming from you who is more than on top of things...a million things. You can thank my lack of a job and Omaha for my commitment. Now I must translate this commitment to my other writing...
Good luck with finals! How many years of finals is this for you? 10? 15?
Well I will never forget our road trip from LA to Omaha, Lindsay, all of it…your great company and the beauty flying by us and the feeling of freedom and hope and promise that lay ahead…the stowaway mouse and the low tires and the 20-minute tire change in some hot AZ-NM border town, the best part of this experience being my looking for Lindsay after taking that call from the ACR and finding her in a random tiny room just off the little store just off the garage, sitting in a 70s-style metallic orange-seat chair watching the Price is Right on a 13” ancient television…it was amazing and awesome…and by the way the Protégé drove incredibly smoothly after the tire change and there was nothing wrong with the transmission ever…and then I’ll never forget pulling into Gallup NM and into this pristine and perfect brand new Starbucks and looking forward to a delicious tea and noticing just how beautiful it suddenly all was with the soft golden light of dusk descending and the mountains all around us and the deep green forest trees everywhere (such a nice contrast to the desert) and a refreshing cool wind blowing through, and I felt so refreshed…which was a good thing because we had what 5 or 6 hours to go to Albuquerque…and then it only got better…with Linds driving and we put in the Linds/cb road trip CDs that Kate made…and the songs started coming…Helen Reddy…the Cars Let the Good Times Roll…it was amazing and awesome...I love how in life it is the most simple things, usually when they are unexpected or a surprise that brings up a happy memory, that just completely fill you up at that moment and you just feel so happy…Thank You Kate! … and Linds you captured it with your amazing side-view mirror photo of the sunset taken while you were driving…it was a really neat time and moment…and we did finally make it to Albuquerque…tires just fine, transmission just fine, we were just fine…
And then in the morning we continued on (disoriented by the minor time change we forgot about but determined nonetheless to get our early start!) and headed N toward CO so excited for the beautiful NM mountains around us in Taos and Los Alamos (where I was thinking of Oppenheimer and the atomic bomb project) such that I guess I went into autopilot mode and despite my extremely self-conscious efforts all during the first day of our drive to keep at 10 miles no more above the speed limit which we thought was a safe speed…but with the Protégé humming along I guess suddenly there I was going 90 mph and suddenly there he was behind me…the New Mexico state trooper with his lights flashing…and I was getting a speeding ticket. This blog is the first I’ve owned up to that because I’m actually quite embarrassed by it…since it’s now a pattern and I’m basically a traffic offender, a speeder and a repeat offender on the failure to wear a seatbelt violation (I’ll be doing time with Paris fairly soon…and I meet the criteria of mental instability for a special medical unit I think)…but my NM trooper wasn’t nearly as nice as the Nebraska state trooper that stopped Lindsay…and he presented me with a ticket I had to sign checking a box either admitting guilt so I could mail in the payment or making an appearance in court to contest, which of course is not a choice because what, I’m going to drive back to NM to make my defense…which was tempting though because I don’t really see how these troopers can get an accurate read on our speeds from across the highway going the other direction…then doing u-turns across the highway in that annoying manner that kicks up all this dust just to ticket you and make their Memorial day weekend ticket quota! Ugh! But, yes, Linds I did smile when you got your warning from the nice Nebraska trooper…and what I remember which was so awesome was that when you asked if you were speeding, he said “I can’t say” or “It’s hard to say” and I’m like then why in the world did you pull us over, in the dark late at night off to the side of the gravely road which is like so much more dangerous than the shocking and terrifying speed of 78 miles an hour that Lindsay was going!@! But I did smile so happy that you got a warning and not an actual ticket! I took it as a sign of really good things ahead in the state of Nebraska!
Well I could write on forever in this blog about our road trip and all the fun in Omaha with you and your family but I know I can’t do that … but I must add that I’ll never forget the moment we crossed the state border and into Nebraska and drove in and I first noticed the landscape around me and I felt like I was home…and I just filled up with emotion in my chest and my eyes…and I know it’s because of how much I love my great grandmother, Blanche Walters, oldest of eight siblings of Hastings Nebraska, the one who kept everyone together with her grace and loving kindness and warmth, but brought on in that moment by seeing the lighting at sunset and the landscape of Nebraska around me and what it looked like and the farmland and thinking this is what my grandmother experienced here and maybe this is what she looked out across sitting on her porch on their farm there in Hastings all those years ago…and I felt like I had roots here, I felt connected…and that is an amazing thing about life, to feel connected to something, your family, friends, the beauty of this country, and it was just a very special moment…and then we were just a few hours from Hastings…on our way to Omaha…with Lindsay’s warm and fun and amazing and welcoming family…Thank you Lindsay for our amazing road trip together which I’ll never forget, and which it was so great to truly be able to help you, to get home in time for Jaime and Erin’s graduation, but which also helped me so much…to feel that freedom and connected and full of hope and promise ahead! cb
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