Cross-Country Hell

As some of you might know, Carol and I drove cross country two weeks ago. We flew out to Baltimore, drove down to the outerbanks, packed up a 20 foot Penske truck of some of Carol's moms stuff and then drove back. I had a really long post planned, but I think I can sum it all up in a top 10 highlights and lowlights.

Lowlights
10. Mark 7 areas off my list of places I wouldn't mind living in. The entire states of Kansas, Kentucky, and West Virginia, and then portions of South Eastern Utah, Southern Illinois, Southern Indiana, and Eastern VA. The Verdict is still out on Missouri. We passed two casinos and they had a lot of porn shops.
9. Rush Limbaugh- Used to enjoy listening to him, but when you only have AM/FM radio and you have to listen to him for the full time, you start to realize two things; he repeats the same thing over and over again and probably 60% of the time it was commercials.
8. Beards- I grew a beard during the week. It appeared in full after 4 days. Thought it was going to continue, but it just sort of died out. And wow, there was a lot of gray. While it did keep me warm during the day, it was very annoying during the evening. Ugh.
7. Enterprise Rent a Car- Screwed me in the outerbanks by not having a 4X4 truck despite stating that they did. Ended up getting it stuck in the dunes and having to pay $250 for a 2 inch tow out of the hole I dug. But looking back at the situation, it probably was for the best. The tow truck driver let us borrow his truck for an additional $100 so we could load up all of the furniture, then his buddy came over and left a 20 ft trailer so we could load up all the goodwill stuff. Then I complained to my people out here at Enterprise and they comp'd the rental and gave me a free spot in their upcoming golf charity event. But at the time, it was bad.
6. Wellsfargo- Seriously, how long does it take a check card transaction to hit the books? One day? Fine. 3 days? Unacceptable. Bank of America is within minutes.
5. "Quick stops in Vegas"- Explained in the post above.
4. Penske Truck Rental- Made sure that I rented a new and nice truck from Penske. They stated that they had a hook up for my IPOD. I had reserved 20 furniture pads. All for the nice price of $700 plus insurance and tax. Well I got there and no furniture pads and no IPOD hookup. Oh, and the power outlet didn't work so I had to ration my cell phone power. And the Penske got shitty AM reception so I couldn't get Dr. Laura and Coast to Coast. Had to listen to repeats of Rush and Hannity. God I hate Hannity. And yes Don, we did play your wonderful game. Kept us occupied for about 10 minutes as we only had about 5 stations at a time.
3. Underestimating your drive time. Louisville to Denver in one day. Didn't seem so bad since I was told that it would take 7 hours to get to KC and another 7 to get to Denver. 14 hours? So we got to KC in about 7.5 hours and then I saw a sign for Denver stating 605 miles. Um...if I do my math right, we would get there in 8.5 hours if I did an average of 75mph. Still not too bad. Then we hit a major accident in Bumfuck Kansas that shut down the 70. There is one lost hour. Then I ate some really bad beef jerky. That's two stops at 20 minutes a pop. Then there were stops every 2.5 hours because of gas issues. Yup, that's 18 hours of driving.
2. Losing the alphabet game to Carol because of a huge mistake. We both on Z. Carol was asleep. We were approaching Mt. Zion and I saw about 4 signs for the national park, but never called it out. Carol awakens from her sleep and calls it out in a matter of minutes. Let's just say that I threw a huge hissy fit for about 10 minutes. I almost cried.
1. Missing the under on the Louisville to Denver trip that Eric posted by 5 minutes. You know you have a gambling problem when you are trying your hardest to keep the Penske truck at 75 mph despite catching trails and seeing things that aren't there on the road just to beat Eric's line.

Highlights (only 5)
5. Jeep Wrangler. By far the best off road vehicle I have driven. Handled the dunes in the outerbanks with ease, despite it being stormy and having high tide whenever we were traveling.
4. Some places I would live; Denver, Western VA, and Vegas.
3. Mesquite, Nevada: Got there at 10:00pm. Carol and I both fell asleep without gambling. I woke up at 5:00am the next morning and went down to the casino, where I found it completely empty. I walked over to the craps table and there is one dealer counting cards on the table. Asked him if the craps table was open and he said yes. $2 limits. He promptly removed the cards, grabbed the stick and cashed in my money. Ummm....where are the other dealers. Oh, they are either on break or catching up on admin stuff from the night before. So I'm at a regulation craps table, rolling dice by myself with only one dealer. He stood next to me with the stick and had to run down to the other end, grab the dice and then pay me out. Lots of fun.
2. Carol's Brother and Girlfriend- What great guy. I was always on the fence about him because of his treatment of Carol, but we get in late, he has fresh fruit for us and then tells us that he scheduled massages for us the next morning. Very nice.
1. Quality time in the truck- Without a radio for the most part, I had a wonderful time with Carol. A total of 48 hours of driving and we had a blast. A little surprised.