Speaking of road trips, it’s looking like I’ll be attempting this one in a couple weeks.

I have a co-worker who’s moving to Anchorage for a job transfer and he needs someone to tag along and help drive while he hauls a trailer full of stuff into the arctic (via a Toyota 4-Runner with 202k miles on it). I know 2600 miles and 48 hours of driving through absurdly cold and desolate road won’t be 48 hours of pure fun, but really, how many chances in your life do you get to say that you drove to Alaska in winter? Yukon ho!

Oct 18 – Oct 28

A few initial thoughts, roughly in order of occurrence, after returning to Grand Rapids…

-Our Sycamore-lined street is gorgeous. The house has a ton of projects that I want to start on. The house definitely will be the nicest place we’ve owned once the kinks are ironed out. The backyard view is amazing.

-It really is nice to be in a place where anything you want is accessible. Just about any store you can think of has a presence in the area. Grand Rapids has a baffling number of restaurants. In Yakima it was pretty much Red Robin or Mexican food.

-Meijer was disappointing. I remembered them being cheap for everything, but walking through now, almost every single grocery item is cheaper at the stores in Yakima. Cereal was especially bad. I never pay more than a couple bucks for a decently sized box of cereal and I couldn’t find even the generic brands or sale-priced items for that price at Meijer. Milk shouldn’t be more than $1.99/gal regular price (come on, MI is way closer to dairy land than WA is). And I’m not used to crowded aisles.

-In my state of disappointment I expected to be underwhelmed by the Meijer bulk gummy bears, but they were spectacularly good.

-I can’t believe how gray it is here. I can’t believe how much it rains here.

-Meijer grew on me a little when I was able to pick up dinner, a leaf rake, and a shower head in one stop.

-Okay, I was kind of looking forward to the rain, but this is ridiculous. Our backyard seems to have turned into a bog. I don’t mind bundling up and raking leaves in the rain, but wiping off twelve muddy dog paws every time they go outside gets old quickly.

-I bet I could tile the half bath while I’m in town. Hmm, seems to be some water damage to the sub-floor, better rip that out. Hey, I can see the basement.

-Basketball at the old stomping grounds was just as I remembered it. Good to have that back, now I need an Ultimate Frisbee game.

-I thought I would be annoyed by a return to traffic and waits at stoplights, but back in the queue it didn’t seem like a big deal. I really don’t like the third world condition roads though.

-Holy smokes, radio is terrible here. I’ve heard more Limp Bizkit (first four seconds mind you, as I frantically push the preset buttons) than in two and a half years out west. I had pretty much stopped using my CD player in WA, but I’ll definitely be going back to it now. Kind of digging having two FM sports radio channels though, especially ESPN Radio.

-Very excited for lake surfing again; need to get that replacement board.

-In general it’s really good to have a home again. I like puttering and fixing and having projects. But, I’ll also kind of miss the simplicity of the one-bill, no maintenance responsibility, rental lifestyle.

-Honestly, I thought I remembered how bad the lack of sun was, but it’s even worse than I remembered. I’ll be open to any and all suggestions of road trips, etc in the coming year.

Present

So now I’m back in Yakima working out the remainder of my work contract, most likely heading back to GR long-term in late December. I flew in on Wednesday and have been using a $50 craigslist bike as my means of transportation, which other than a 35 degree ride through a rainstorm at 6 am Thursday morning, has worked out okay.

Oct. 15
After work I spent the evening packing and weighing all my stuff. I wanted to avoid a tire-destruction incident similar to the last cross country trip and also wanted to avoid overtaxing an engine that already struggles on steep inclines even without a load. According to Ford, the payload capacity of the Focus is 827 lbs. I weigh about 170 lbs. Trammell and Taylor combined weigh about 125 lbs. All the stuff that I ended up Tetrising into the back of my car weighed in at 500 lbs and change, so in theory at least I was following the car rules. I was in bed by 11:30 pm.

Oct. 16
My alarm was set for 4 am, but I woke up at 3:48 anyway, fed the dogs, showered, ate a couple bowls of cereal, double-checked the weather, double-checked the straps on my bike rack, double-checked the room for important left-behind items. Eased my low-riding car onto the road at 4:45 am under a misting rain. Taylor rode shotgun while Trammell perched behind my head on a blanket poofed up on top of my surf bag. They seemed to know the road trip drill and stayed awake just long enough to watch me fill up the car with gas, then curled up to sleep. The car felt sluggish and I wasn’t ready to push it through the steep mountain passes just outside of Yakima, so for the first hour I followed a non-highway canyon road north, winding along next to the Yakima River, planning to connect with a flatter section of I-90 on the far side.

Thirty minutes into the drive I came around a bend and was met with oncoming headlights in the opposite lane and a boulder in the road in my lane. I flinched as I tried to straddle the rock with my car and swore (startling the dogs awake) as it bounced hard off the bottom of my car three times. Not a great beginning. Hope everything is intact because I’m not stopping on a completely dark road in the middle of nowhere.

We connected with I-90 near Ellensburg, where I should’ve stopped at a gas station to peak at the car’s underbody but didn’t, and nudged the speedometer up to around 65 for the first time. The incline on the east side of the Columbia River provided the first real uphill test and my stress level dropped a little as the Focus handled the climb without issue. For the next hour or so I poked through thick fog (which would turn out to be the worst weather I ran into during the drive), sometimes with visibility only a couple dozen feet in front of me and wished for the sunrise. As daylight murkily emerged through the fog, Taylor sat up and joined me in watching the road and passing farmland. Trammell slept until we stopped a rest area to stretch our legs and where I finally poked my head under the car and was happy not to see any fluid gushing onto the parking lot.

Even on the east side of Washington, which doesn’t have dramatic mountain peaks as a backdrop, I was struck by what a gorgeous state it is. Expansive rolling vistas everywhere.

In Idaho, I knew Fourth of July Pass and its 6% grade would be the first true indication of my odds of making it through the mountains without disaster. After a long uphill climb where my car struggled by not abnormally, I was pleasantly surprised to see a sign marking the top of this pass. Hey maybe we’ll be okay, just a few Montana passes to go and then downhill into flat land.

In Montana, my car threw a hissy fit. It happened not long after I filled up with 85 octane gas at a station near the ID/MT border. I blame the 85 octane. At first, my car started sputtering and surging toward the end of long inclines (I just barely eased over two mountain passes), but later, just about any stretch of road that pointed up sent my car a-spasming. With a good head of steam and some determined coaxing we made it through though. I pumped in the rich people gas at my next couple of fill-ups.

We merged onto I-94, which would take us just about the rest of the way back to Michigan.

I stopped at a rest area west of Glendive, MT and ran the dogs for about an hour, hoping a good cooling off would do the car some good as well.

Montana was easily the most spectacular stretch of road on the drive, particularly as the views opened up east of the Rockies. It also had the most blood stains on the road and the zippiest semi drivers. The highway was eerily dark and empty after the sun set.

I had been chugging caffeine since Glendive, something I rarely do, determined to make North Dakota on day one. I had been hoping for Bismarck, but with eyelids drooping at about 11:30 pm PST, I settled for Dickinson, ND. I drove around for a little bit, gassed up, and talked to Mary on the phone, before pulling into a Holiday Inn parking lot. I stretched out the best I could across the front seats with Taylor squeezed in nearby and fell asleep around 1 am PST

Day 1 stats:
1070 miles
18.5 hrs on the road including rest areas, etc.

Oct. 17

Two and a half hours of fitful sleep later I woke up cold and with the parking brake poking into my side. Back on the road we go. A couple hours of sleep is usually a decent enough recharge to keep me lucid and I felt fine as I pulled back onto the empty highway. Caffeine, talk radio, and repeated deer sightings along the road also helped to keep the focus. Up until this point the roadway had been buttery smooth, but North Dakota finally brought the first few stretches potholes and rough concrete.

I stopped for breakfast at a McDonalds in Fargo. There are few things in the world better than breakfast on a road trip. A random mom-pop diner with some friends is better, but a Sausage McMuffin, warm and aromatic in your lap while you drive, is somehow great too.

Minnesota brought dawn, a steady rain, a few more bumps in the road, and the first hint of traffic congestion. It also disappeared more quickly than I expected and suddenly I was 100 miles into Wisconsin.

Near the Illinois border I was really starting to drag, but a meal and a stretch break seemed to iron things out.

And then Chicago and an hour-long first gear (second gear tops) traffic jam that I was less than pleased about. The dogs seemed to enjoy finally getting to hang their heads out of the window though as we crept along.

Blink, Indiana, blink, so long Indiana.

And on into Michigan for the first time since May 2006. On the home stretch. Immediately over the state line the roads are dramatically terrible, almost intolerably bad coming from a state the day before with zero potholes. How is this allowed? No live construction though, which was nice. A couple hours later, past midnight local time, I rolled into GR via 131 and then 196. Everything looked just about the same

Day 2 stats:
1115 miles
18 hrs

So for those who don’t know, here’s the situation: My work contract here in Washington runs out December 31. Mary’s already in Michigan working and taking grad school classes. We most likely will close on a new house in Michigan by the end of October (just locked in our interest rate at 4.5%, huzzah!). I’m renting a room month-to-month with two of the dogs. Since I’ve been keeping an eye on jobs in Michigan for the past eighteen months or so, nothing at all has come up similar to what I’m doing now (as far as I can tell the state of Michigan is going out of business). I suspect I could go back to a social work job without too much hassle, but that social work job probably would pay less than what I’d get from unemployment starting in January. So, unfortunately, logic says keep working here for a couple more months until I get canned. At which point I’ll either have a long paid vacation (apparently up to 59 weeks right now) or a short paid vacation followed by a new job.

A problem I run into with that scenario though is that I’m kicked to the curb in the dead of winter, resulting in a January cross-country drive with a car-load of stuff, two dogs, and $40 Wal-Mart tires on my car. I’ll be honest; I sure like being alive and I really don’t want to make that drive. I mean, yeah, it might turn out to be a bright blue-skied crisp January day across the entire country, but the last time I crossed (white-knuckled) through the Rockies in inclement weather I vowed never to do it again (see below).

So, the only way around this that I’ve come up with is to drive back to Michigan early (before the snow is flying), drop off my car, dogs, and worldly possessions, then fly back to Washington, work for a couple months, and fly back to Michigan at the end of the year. Running shoes and city bus for transportation I suppose. So there may be a brief October homecoming coming up here.

So far so good on the new house. Nothing major came up in the inspection (and we had a very thorough inspector). Financing seems to be in order. Our interest rate is laughably low, around 4.6%. So, with a fifteen year mortgage and a 20% down payment, our monthly mortgage ends up somewhere around $450/month. I guess that’s what eight month winters and fifteen percent unemployment gets you. Way to go Michigan!

All that and it’s actually a pretty decent place or will be at least once we give ‘er the usual treatment – can’t wait to start ripping apart multiple rooms at once, right Mary? Anyway, as you can see from the picture below, doctored from Bing Bird’s Eye, we’ll have a nice big fenced backyard that backs up to a pond/woods.

After our house in Yakima backed up to a massive park, I kind of got used to not having neighbors behind, so that should be great. There’s a gate in the back fence that opens up to the woods behind. Or maybe we’ll just complain about mosquitoes all the time.

Worcester is one of those dead end, speed bump-interrupted, Sycamore-lined streets that I’m sure moms with toddlers dream about. Or maybe old people, I don’t know. The Google Street View car evidently drove through around Halloween and you can see Jack-o-lanterns aplenty on front porches. I’m assuming it will be a pretty peaceful neighborhood. Though when your next-door neighbor has cranberry red exterior walls, who knows what madness lies within.

The location really is nice. Next to the woods, but you can still be on 96, 196, or the beltline in less than five minutes, so the whole city is fairly accessible. Quick interstate access also means a little shorter trip to Lake Michigan. Mary can be at work in three minutes. Knapp’s Corner with its movie theatre, sports bars, family restaurants, bourgeoisie Meijer, and whatever else got dropped in there in the past three years is five minutes away (no more 28/Kzoo Meijer). Yankee Clipper library is a walkable half mile away.

Inside the house, there definitely is work to be done, but for the most part, the major components actually are in good working order and just need some spit shining. On the main floor: three bedrooms, one and a half baths, kitchen, dining room (with slider to backyard), and living room. Roughly 1100 sq ft. The basement has a rec room, laundry/storage room, and two illegal bedrooms.

The kitchen in our first house had smoky carpet, lime green walls, and a stove and fridge that hung out in no-man’s land, and a tiny skinny layout. Our second kitchen had 18 layers of ugly flooring, giant mirrored doors, and a long skinny layout. For the first time in our home owning career we’ll have a kitchen with a normal functional layout. The cabinets are in great shape and plentiful. The floor is fine, but I’ll throw some ceramic tile in there somewhere down the line. No appliances. And I really wanted a breakfast bar, but I guess I can just knock my knees against the counter while I eat my cereal.

The dining area can actually fit a normal-sized dining table, so that’s cool. Hardwood floors in the living room and bedrooms. Fireplace in the living room and another in the rec room downstairs.

So those are the pictures of the nice stuff. Believe me, there’s plenty of ugly to go around as well. I’m sure as projects commence the unsavory bits will make their appearance on this site.