I didn't have any internet access during the entire drive across the country. Turns out that small motels in the more rural parts of the country don't usually have access. A typical conversation:

<blizzard> Say, you wouldn't have internet access, would you?
<nice_lady> Sure, but you have to use your own computer and
            have to have your own account to dial into.

Add in the fact that the only modem I had was the one built into the machine (see also: winmodem) and the fact that usually the first thing that I wanted to do when I hit the hotel room was to sleep meant no updates. So here it all is crammed into one entry.

Travel Day 2
Location: Winslow, Arizona
Miles Traveled: 532
Time spent driving: 8 hours
Next Destination: Probably Oklahoma City

This part of the journey ends what had to be some of the scariest driving of my life. But first.

The california desert is quite pretty. Climbing out of the LA basin into arid country beyond gives me a good idea of what early settlers had to go through to get through this area. It's a long drive between gas stations, let alone watering holes. You climb and climb and climb through small brush and rocks and not much else for a long time.

Then you climb into arizona, which is more of the same. More mountains, and you can tell you're in the rockies. I had been travelling on I-40 for quite some time now, trying to get into New Mexico. I hit Flagstaff, and it started to snow. Just light dry stuff, not much to worry about, really. I called Ryan who said something along the lines of "I was just looking at the radar, and it looks like if you get 50 miles east, you'll be out of it." So on I went. In about 30 miles, it was heavy. I grew up in Syracuse, NY, which has some of the most impressive winter weather in the country in terms of snow, and it would have been heavy for there. I find myself slowing down more and more. From 60 to 50. From 50 to 40. Now I'm doing 35, flashers on with a death grip on the steering wheel. Trucks are passing me doing 50 or 60 miles per hour and I'm just waiting for one of them to fail to make the lane change because the roads are now thick ice covered in snow and turn me into a short-lived show plow on their front bumper.

I can be driving along in fourth gear (note that this has a low power ratio) and press on the gas pedal just a tiny bit and the rear end of the car will start sliding. This is a rear wheel drive car, it only weighs around 2000 pounds and it's got low-profile summer (california) tires on it. So I pull off the highway onto the exit where you can see that meteor crater in Arizona. (I love the marketing slogan: "Feel the Impact!" Yes, the billboards all had the italics.) The nice person at the gas station there says that I need to go another 20 miles east to find a hotel. There's nothing there. It's the desert, so he really means there is nothing. I do not like this prospect, having just come off the road he's suggesting I get back onto. But I do, because I want to sleep somewhere other than my new two-seater. I drive very slowly to the next exit, without incident and manage to find a hotel with a nice person behind the desk who even gives me a nice rate because of the weather.

"I should have gone via the Phoenix route."

Oh, yeah. And on the TV in the hotel room one of the channels just had this strange graph showing. Like something on a scope from the 70s. I didn't know what to make of it. It's a shame it came out so fuzzy, because it was pretty awesome. A whole channel dedicated to measuring something.

Take me to your leader.

Travel Day 3
Location: El Reno, Oklahoma
Miles Traveled: 785
Time spent driving: 12 hours
Next Destination: Trying for Knoxville, TN.

I woke up, showered and got out the door very early in the morning. The roads were still very slippery, but mostly clear. They were, however, littered with the destroyed cars and trucks of the previous evening's festivities. Mangled piles of metal only resemble the 18 wheelers they once were. How did that SUV get on the other side of the guardrail like that? It's a shame that I didn't have a better camera to take pictures. I could use them to educate people on the fundamentals of winter driving. These include:

1. Knowing how to drive and having a crappy winter car is better than not knowing how to drive in the winter and having the largest SUV on the market.
2. The amount of energy that your vehile has increases at a rate that is the square of your speed. Please note that this means that you're much more likely to be able to stop going 30 miles an hour on ice than if you're doing 60. Much more. Trust me.
3. Four wheel drive does not mean your brakes work any better than the cars around you. Please see the previous rule. (My Miata is the same as your Dodge Durango, minus the crappy tires.)
4. If you don't know what you're doing, just stop. Turn around. Just get off the road. It's OK to be late.
5. One of the things that seperates us (the north east) from you (the south west) is that we have the snow clearing equipment to handle the snow. You're just going to have to wait for the sun to do its job. Don't be in a hurry.

Anyway, the desert after a snow storm is very pretty, especially in that part of Arizona. The red rocks are covered with a nice 4 inch later of snow, resembling icing-covered cakes. They are undesturbed by man or by truck that thows salt. Very pretty.

I plow on (hah!) through Arizona into New Mexico. Western New Mexico is just beautiful. Red rocks and mesa dominate. I wish I had more time to stop and admire. Texas arrives, and with it the flat lands that define the middle part of the country. This is the land of cows and roads that have 4 digits to identify them. On and on, and I'm in Oklahoma. (I don't know anyone from there. Is that bad?) I finally stop outside of Oklahoma city. It rained the last few hours of the journey. The same storm that brought me the snow over Arizona gets me again over Oklahoma.

Travel Day 4
Location: Knoxville, Tennessee
Miles Traveled: 858
Time spent driving: 14 hours
Next Destination: I might make it home.

Not much to report on the travel between Oklahoma and Tennessee, really. Lots of rain. I mean lots. And moving into eastern Oklahoma meant getting into some nice foothills. Kind of reminded me of home. I did stop in Little Rock, though, for food and some rest.

This is the view outside of the Clinton Presidental Library.

REPLY HAZY. ASK AGAIN LATER.

Travel Day 5
Location: Avon, Connecticut
Miles Traveled: 867
Time spent driving: 16 hours
Next Destination: I will make it home

Up I-81 through the mountains through hours of driving rain. I am tired, too. Didn't sleep all that well the night before. I drive for a few hours and finally give up and take a nap. It's amazing what a little sleep will do to your ability to drive. I drive on and on, through Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and through New York. I'm on the east coast now and the states are coming at a rapid rate. Driving over the George Washington Bridge at New York is quite neat. I've been driving for hours in heavy fog and New York is blanketed. The bridge has lights up the support columns and I can see them disappearing into nothingness. I'm driving on a bridge that just appears to be supported by nothing. An incredible and rare sight. I finally give in and stop at a friend's place after a marathon drive.

Ouch.

Travel Day 6
Location: Home
Miles Traveled: 124
Time spent driving: 2 hours

Short drive. Feel like I should have just pushed on through, but it was late and I was tired. Some interesting statistics:

Total number of miles travelled: 3522
Total number of hours of driving: 57
Moving average: 61 miles per hour
Non-moving average: 29 miles per hour
Total spent on gas: $237.16 USD
Total gallons consumed: 107.4 gallons
Average cost per gallon: $2.00
Highest cost paid per gallon: $2.99 (!)