Cross-Country Trip --> Day Tres!

The highlight of our 3rd day was clearly leaving the Motel 6.  Not even gonna lie, I never thought it would be so cold deep in the heart of Texas.  Pretty sure it was like 33 degrees when we left, although a large part of that could be that we left at the crack of dawn due to our sketchy neighbors in the Motel 6 in Big Springs.  I halfway expected to wake up and see a corpse or some other unconscious individuals laying in the doorsteps of their rooms with trash and graffiti everywhere.  So, basically, I've been watching too much CSI/ Law and Order/ 48 Hours...you get the idea.  As a result, I'm going to get Stone Philips to narrate the rest of my blog.

So, we hit the road amongst frigid conditions and then we had the coffee incident.  We traveled about an hour or so towards El Paso and then stopped to get a warm beverage.  I had the idea that I could walk Sammie while Jill went inside McDonald's to get her drink.  About 45 minutes into the freezing free for all, I began to wonder where the deuce Jill was.  Thoughts of abductions filled my mind. All I could think of is some backwoods type movie involving chloroform and a house in the woods.  The kind of flick that at least one person in the group is deciding to wuss out off because they don't like to be scared or some crap like that.  These same people think that "Blair Witch" is a cuss word, by the way.  Not judging, just saying.

Just as my mind was about to go completely off the deep end, Jill comes walking out of "the restaurant" (it was McDonald's, so you can barely qualify it as a restaurant.) with nothing.  So now I'm totally confused.  Was she sitting inside the restaurant drinking her coffee while I was outside freezing to death?  She came into the car and was pissed because the girl didn't put the top on correctly and the coffee spilled everywhere and she was too frustrated to go back.  Being the supportive husband that I am, I told her that we weren't wasting the 2 bucks/45 minutes (which seemed more like half a day at this point) and that she was going to go back and demand a new cup, which she did and within a few minutes all was right in her world.  She was hugging the cup as if she was an eskimo sitting over an ice fishing hole and most likely happier than a bumblebee on a flower.

That is until we encountered Ciudad Juarez.  "HONEY!  THE BLACK LINE IS ON THE GPS AND WE ARE RIGHT ON TOP OF IT!!!!"  You can almost see her eyes bugging out of her head as she notices that we're driving alongside the international border that separates El Paso, TX and Ciudad Juarez.  Pretty sure she thought some Mexican pirates were going to jump out of a helicopter and land on our 65mph moving vehicle and pull off some Mission Impossible type stunt before hijaking our car, etc.  You get the idea. 

File this under "All Over the Place", but one of the more disturbing things is when we got out of the car at the "Welcome to Arizona" rest stop and discovered that there was absolutely no grass.  None.  Zilch.  Zero.  More grass in the glove boxes around the parking lot, than there was for miles on end.  This presents a problem when your dog has to go to the bathroom and she is used to going on the green stuff.  We walked around and finally she found a stony area that seemed to do.  What I didn't care for is that there were these little burrs everywhere and they were all getting stuck in her little paw pads and when I pulled them out, they were all bleeding.  Poor thing.  She's much more resourceful than I am.  I would have been crying like a bitch for the rest of the day.  Did I mention at this point the wife is still bringing up Ciudad Juarez, or the black line, or something else that I was unsuccessfully trying to tune out.

This day ended with a complete 180 from where we started.  We pulled into Tuscon at a Hampton Inn that seemed like a palace compared to the Motel 69 that we stayed at the previous night.  To make matters complete, it was like 70 degrees and there was grass.  And by grass, I mean resembling a lawn and not the Standing Room Only section of a Grateful Dead concert.  We walked to a local bar and grill, got some "To-Go" and ate the best meal we'd had in at least 3 days.  Next stop - SAN DIEGO!

Big Spring, TX and the Motel Seis

Day 2 in Big Texas - Man this state goes on forever!

Years ago, I was traveling in Florida and I decided that I wanted to save a few bucks, so I stayed at a Super 8.  How bad could it be?  They had a continental breakfast - that I decided separated it from the rest.  What I've since realized is that I'm at that point in my life where Super 8's are not exactly clean.  I was frustrated after a night where I literally slept with one eye open.  All I wanted was my continental breakfast.  To loosely quote George Costanza - this story is not embellished, simply because it needs no embellishing.  It is simply the story of my life.  So I went to the office to get some breakfast and this guy who is literally wearing a step up from a bathrobe shuffles over, opens a drawer, pulls out 2 honey buns and directs me to a pitcher of room temperature water.  That was the final straw.  I decided at that point that I would never again stay in an establishment that was this shoddy.  If I was in college, slumming it, then sure, no problem.  But, never again.

Enter - Big Spring, TX.  The gods of mileage and time converged on this small town between Dallas and El Paso, TX.  Once I got west of Dallas, there were tens of miles that we would drive where the road qualified as the most significant man made structure.  Big Spring kinda appeared out of no where.  The coolest thing about the drive into Big Spring is that we spent about 45 minutes driving into the sunset which was a really cool thing to see.  Picture it: An Arizona license plate.  Got it?  Ok, that's what it looked like.

The most reputable place to stay in Big Spring - which to remind you - is like a megalopolis compared to anything within a 50 mile radius - was a Motel 6.  Oh Freaking Dear.  It put Super 8 into a luxury class.  If they had a Continental breakfast, i wouldn't have eaten it.  No way.  I wanted to wear an astronaut suit so that my body didn't have to touch anything in that room.  It smelled like fajitas, which is the official air freshener of the Motel 6.  As we walked into Taquito haven, what struck me is all of these people staying there who had their doors open and were standing in the doorway.  Not exactly Donald J. Trump and Associates.  If you should ever get the urge to stay there, you can look forward to the comforter with the best of Motel 6 all over it.  And when I say the best, I mean the sun with the Motel 6 in the rearview.  That's literally as close as you should ever get to a Motel 6.  Honestly, I wish in retrospect that I would have risked narcolepsy and drove straight to Cuidad Juarez.  Clearly, that would have been a better option - trafficking included.

Day 3 will be a big day for us.  We'll be driving for a complete day for the last time and are looking forward to our night in a nice, clean Hampton Inn.  After staying at the Motel 6, you cannot imagine how great it feels to stay at a nice place.

New Guy!

One of the funniest things that a few friends adopted while working at Tops was that whenever a new person started working there, we'd refer to them as "New Guy" or "New Girl".  There was a guy, named Bobby Singh, who would actually go make name tags for the newbies that said "New Guy".  In fact, I left to go to school and came back months later and was shocked to see "George", or whatever the person's name was, on his name tag rather than "New Guy".  I was like, "New Guy, what's this all about," as I pointed to his name tag. 
In any event, I have carried this on to all of my other jobs since.  In fact, one time at my last job, a "New Girl" started and then a week later there was another "New Girl" in the same department.  Needless to say, it was confusing.  Proper protocol is that they keep the "New Guy/Girl" moniker for 2 weeks.  After that it becomes ridiculous. 
As I began a new job last month, I was now the "New Guy" and I told them that it was only customary that they replace my name plate with "New Guy".  On a positive note, they have me listed in the company directory as "Jeffrey Thomas".  UGH!  Who does that?  Was my mom in the new associate setup area?  I told them they could call me JT for short.  Ugh.  That, and whoever set up my email account used my full name and so everyone is emailing me, "Hi Jeffrey!"  Ugh! 
One of the best parts of the new job, other than being called "New Guy", is that I get to bring Sammie to work with me.  It's great, because she can play in the dog park that is on-site, or she can relax in my office.  It's a lot of fun for her and it makes my day a lot more interesting.  =)

Now For The Pictures!

First Day on the Job!  You can just barely see my "Scuba Hulk" placard that I was given when I got on board.  It's Rock Star!

I was trying to get Sammie to stay still but she was so excited about being at work that this blurry mess was the best that I could do.  This is her first day on the job!



Sammie checking out the happenings of the Companion Animal division. 




Sammie at the watering hole.




<><>

<>

<><>

Sammie asleep on the job!



I've found that one of the best ways to keep her busy is by stuffing her Kong with some food.  She literally is going to town for as long as there is even the slightest odor of food left on the Kong.  We are approaching "Squeaky Clean" status at this point. 

Friends Fo-Shizzle

So, I went out to play tennis tonight with my new San Diego best friend, Wilson.  He's my new San Diego best friend based on the premise that he's the only person in San Diego that I've actually had any personal interaction with outside of work for more than 1 minute and 15 seconds.  He takes the honor away from Erica and Tyler who are my neighbors across the breezeway and they were my best friends in San Diego based on the fact that I said Hi to them, they said Hi back and then I helped them carry in a few pieces of furniture. 

So, as you can infer, my social calendar has been rocking and rolling, so I went to craigslist to see if someone was looking for a tennis partner and sure enough I found Wilson.  I was pretty sure 20 minutes into our hitting session that he was going to walk off the court and tell me not to call him again as I was so rusty I couldn't sustain a rally of more than 3 shots (that's with the caveat that Wilson hit 2 of the shots before I hit a double off the fence or hit a grounder into the net for an inning ending 6-4-3 double play.)
Funny thing about tennis though, sometimes if you play for a long enough period of time, strange things happen.  In this case, I was sweating and the steam was coming off the top of my cranium.  Pretty sure Tom Cruise doesn't have this problem.  Wilson, who was very well endowed in the follicle department didn't have this detriment, I'm sure.  So, as the steam is accumulating around my face like I'm in a sauna, I actually started returning some shots in play.  Seriously, I'm not exaggerating about not hitting a shot in.  After awhile, Wilson stopped chasing my errant shots and just watched them like he was witnessing a fireworks display with his head cocked to the side facing up in the air.

One thing I've noticed after playing with my #1 San Diego friend (I'm going to play with a few titles and see which one sounds best for Wilson), is that I'm not 18 anymore.  I remember when I was 18, I used to run and play all day long and never think twice about it.  On one occasion, I wiped out on my bike, skinned my leg from knee to ankle, watched it bleed, and then proceeded to go on to the basketball game I was headed for.  I played a full game of hoops, then rode my bike home and felt like a champ.  In fact, I remember when I used to work at Tops, I had a friend, named Melissa, who came in one time to buy a sports drink and I was like what are you doing and she told me she was jogging around the city.  I was like, "What?!?  Are you crazy?"  By all estimates, Melissa lived about 7-10 miles from Tops, and I might add that the road she lived on was not exactly "jogger friendly".  I'm pretty sure that if she continued to jog and not get picked up before returning home that she probably jogged 20+ miles that day.  I don't know what happened after she left, but that inspired me to start running and now I'm pretty much in constant pain.  Ahhh...good times he said!

So, as I was saying, my game is pretty weak, so to compensate I've got to really hustle after every shot, because when I'm running all over the place, I actually tend to get some shots back.  It's the slow shots that are hit right to me that I lauch to the moon.  Well, after a few of these dead sprints across the court the thought occured to me that there wasn't a great flow of oxygen getting to my brain.  Wilson was doing just fine.  I could pretty much taste my spleen.  He destroyed me on the scoreboard and as I was walking to my car, I thought well this is going to be an interesting night if I don't get some ibuprofen immediately. 

The perfect ending to the night is that as soon as I sat down to relax, Sammie came and nudged me to go outside for a walk.  Mercifully, she wasn't pulling or else she might have ended up dragging me like a corpse on the end of a rope.

Miles Walked Today: 2 (Does the dog ever get tired - I'm setting all kinds of walking mileage records in the brief time since I've moved)
Friends Made Today: 1
Friends Elevated to "Best in San Diego" status: 1
Odds that Wilson will ever call me to play tennis again: It's a crap shoot, but probably 60%

That's Offensive...I think...



Here's how the move went down - it was cra-shizzle...

Day 1 - actually, let's back the bus up - Saturday before day 1 - 6 or 7 of my best friends came over for what I declared as about "an hour's worth of loading".  Sha-right.  About 5 hours later we were almost done.  Our house was trashed - literally.  The only things left in the house were garbage and an air mattress.  OMG - my body hurt so much!

Note to anyone moving - Forget u-haul, forget pods, forget 2 guys in a truck - they are all overpriced.  We used ABF U-Pack it and the money we saved allowed us to get movers on the other end to move our stuff out of the trailer into our new apartment.  ABF has it's pros and cons, mainly that you must have a place to drop the trailer on both ends and don't even think about the cubes unless you currently live in a shed or the like.  Your best and only bet is to go with the trailer.  It's a great deal.  You only pay for what you use and the rates are very affordable.  Instead, you could choose the other companies and while you're at it, why don't you just spend the rest of your money on mail order brides.  Duh...

So...

Day 1 - We got in the car and let me reiterate that sleeping on an air mattress only works when you're making like Blair Witch or something.  An air mattress in an empty room is horrible.  #1 - It's freezing.  Try sleeping on it - you'll literally think you're an eskimo.  I didn't know if I was ready for a blizzard or bed.  #2 - even worse is an air mattress on hard woods - the thing is literally moonwalking across the floor while we're sleeping.  I'm like - is this an air mattress or a turbo flyer?  On a positive note, we were already half way to the car by the time we woke up.

We got up at the crack of dawn - actually it was still dark outside when we woke up and I'm happy to report it was a balmy 17 degrees.  With an absence of sweat on my brow and the defrost on full blast we backed out of the driveway for the last time.  I don't get sentimental about most inanimate objects, but there is something to be told about all of the struggles we had in building our house and getting everything we wanted in it.  There were battles, fights, and there was no giving in.  Perhaps that's a good topic for the next blog, but for now, we were ambling down to the interstate and on our way.  

If you've never traveled for 4 consecutive days in a car with a "large" dog, then I'm not sure there is anything I can say to prepare you for what you are going to experience.  Side bar - according to all of the designations out west, Sammie is known as a "large" dog.  Don't worry - we're all properly offended.

In any event, we drove for about 12 hours and stopped just west of Jackson, MS.  It was a really cool drive and by someone's insistence (read: barking and slobber) we stopped about every 2 hours.  On a positive note, that made the trip much more doable because you're always a maximum of 120 minutes away from stopping and stretching.  I had never been west of Atlanta in the car, so there was a lot to see.  On the way, we decided that Blood Gnome would visit all of the "welcome" centers.  The best was on our way into Mississippi, there were 2 ladies at the desk next to the clock in shape of a state.  I told Jill to ask the ladies if they would pose with Blood Gnome and they did.  The picture was priceless because the one lady was smiling and the other was like - get this crap over with and get your sorry east coast/west coast wannabe butts out of our cotton-pickin state...If you look closely at the picture, she is ready to break the Gnome in half. In the vein of this is insanely ridiculous - I'ma tryin' ta do my state proud an'a I get these yayhoos comin' in with this stupid troll wanting a picture...

YIKES!

~Day 2 Tomorrow ~

Can you tell me how to get...[redux]

Stop me if you've heard this one before...
2 Adults and a dog, drive across country in a car that is stuffed to the gills with worldly belongings...

Not even gonna lie.  The first item in the car was my flat screen tv.  The flat screen was getting packed and then "let's see what else we can fit" was employed.  The dog was cramped.  The wife was cramped.  I was cramped.

Obligatory worst part of the trip -
Saying ok to my wife when she decided to put us in that Motel 6 in Big Spring, TX.  I literally slept with one eye open all night long.  That place smelled.  There were sketchy people lurking in the breezeways with their doors open.  Meh!  Don't even get me started on the fact that the bed sheets were collages of all that was well and good with Motel 6.  If that was truly the case, they would be empty/white except that the filth would show up in a NY Minute.

Obligatory best part of the trip -
Xanadu!  Staying in the Hampton Inn in Tuscon, AZ.  That place was heaven on earth or at least it seemed that way coming on the heels of the Motel 6.  I was like hell with the road trip, I'm going to live in this place because this is clearly nicer than any place I've lived, let alone stayed. 

So, here's the damage - 4 days, 36ish hours, stops at every "welcome center" rest stop to take the picture with Blood Gnome.  That's an inside joke, but the gist of it is that I have a broken Cincinnati Bearcats Gnome that follows me everywhere.  It's terrific and weird all at the same time. 
Most importantly - 0 incidents, and at the end of the day that's all that is really important, isn't it? 

So, while I'd really like to write more, the dog is pushing her wet nose into my arm.  For those lay people, that's the I have to go to the bathroom type of nudge.  So on that note...