She’s at 199293. That’s just 707 miles to go.

I figure a couple of trips to Ely and some regular driving around and we’ll be there in about a month (maybe two).

I guess it’s time to start saving for a new car.

Speaking of millage, my brother and two of his friends are taking their first (of hopefully many) big sailing trips down the east coast. Here’s a video of them leaving New York. Hopefully he will have more videos up soon.

They left on Friday. Here’s where they were at a little after 7:00am this morning.

Derek's Location Monday June 20th, 7:23am

We had been warned to watch out for some of the neighborhood cats. In England, Eliot and Kristine explained to us, the rules/customs about how animals are handled are a lot different. Cats can not be declawed and are basically given free reign. Eliot and Kristine have a cat door for Beck their main cat. They also kind of have a second cat, “Big Cat”, they pretty sure he’s leading a double life though and has another family somewhere else. “Big cat” likes to sleep in the guest bed Heather and Elysia were sleeping in, he is shy around people he doesn’t know though and if he showed up he did not wake anyone up. I might have had to deal with “Orange Cat”, apparently “he” is rarely seen by anyone, but he likes to sleep on the short couch in the living room (I was sleeping on the long one) based on the hair that is left behind. No sign of him though, if “Orange Cat” stopped by he was not loud enough to wake me up.

Eliot made us a delicious breakfast of french toast. Kristine made us some delicious english tea.

Around noon all 5 of us headed into Cambridge (about a 45 minute drive). We started out doing a little shopping. My legs/feet were not doing well and had not been for the last couple of days. I got to ask Eliot for medical advice for the first time. He prescribed either new shoes or insoles. I was thinking about getting new shoes before I left, then after Elysia reminded me my shoes were starting to fall apart I figured we should do some shoe shopping first. We did a little shoe shopping at the mall in Cambridge, turns out my UK shoe size is 12, and it also turns out most UK shoe stores do not stock that size. We found some good insoles though, I put them in my shoes and my feet immediately started feeling better.

We also looked around the market a little bit, sampled some ostrich meat and went into “The Eagle” for a drink. Cambridge was a beautiful town. Lots of beautiful old buildings, ivy, beautiful lawns, flowers every where, a small river with a bunch of little bridges. Pretty much how one would imagine Cambridge should look.

Eliot, Kristine and Jachin

After walking around for a while and dithering about what we wanted to eat we went to Jamie Oliver’s Italian restaurant “Jamie’s Italian”. I had a rabbit and pasta dish (I do not think I had ever had rabbit before). The waitress warned me when I ordered it that it was “free range” which means it had been shot, which meant I could find some bullets in my meat. I did not find any bullets and it was delicious. I have a lot more sympathy for Elmer Fud now. I tried some of the other dishes we had ordered. It was all very good.

Eliot and Kristine were really excited to take us to another place for dessert that served “Sticky Toffy Pudding”. They spent the whole day running up to dessert telling us how it was pretty much the best thing ever and how eating it would be life changing. I’m not a big enough foodie to say this with much confidence but they were right. After having tasted it I can not think of a dessert I would say was better.

Then we went back to to Eliot and Kristen’s house in Beck Row, chilled out for a bit and went to bed.

Monday morning I planned on picking her up. Before I could call to confirm things with the impound lot a got a call from the officer in charge of my case. He explained that they had arrested the person they found driving the car (there were two people in the car when they found it, they may have arrested both of them).

It sounds like they stopped the car shortly after midnight, Saturday night, so I guess they had the car for about 12 hours. In that time they smoked a lot. Among other things they took/ate all my Altoids (two nearly full tins of them) and took the cars manual. Looks like there might be some smallish external damage as well, but that’s nothing new for Carol.

At the impound lot they gave me the “keys”. It was a keychain, the key for my car was on there, but so were a few others. I told the lady only the one key was mine, but she said they were all mine now. I also found any (empty) 24 pack of Clear Creek Ice. They also seemed to take a rather destructive interested in the road atlas I bought during my road trip.

In the future I will be referring to them as the “Clear Creek Bandits”.

The lamest thing though, is that the impound lot charged me $138 to get Carol back. That seems a little unfair considering she’s there as the result of a crime someone else committed. Maybe if they can charge the Clear Creek Bandits I can get that money back.

So I guess next up for Carol is a thorough cleaning. We’ll see if anything else interesting turns up missing or found (hopefully nothing gross).

Also, I have a great roommate. Before I could get my car I had to go to the DMV where I need to renew my license that expired on my birthday (which I would have done on Saturday, if I had, had my car) and then the impound lot. I could have bussed/walked but Ben agreed drive me around and saved me a lot of time. Thanks Ben.

I was just going to take one load of luggage inside, then go straight bed and take care of the rest in the morning. I found a little energy left once I got inside though so I went ahead and unloaded Carol. Then slept, slept for a long time.

After sorting email and getting caught up on some computer related stuff, I decided to go for a little walk and take some final road trip pictures of Carol. Get the final millage count, etc. However when I went out to the parking lot, Carol wasn’t there.

I called my roommate, called my apartment’s towing company, and eventually filled a police report for a stolen vehicle.

Irony.

Fortunately, knowing how old Carol is (and having trouble in the past with her reliability) I have planned most of my life so it still works with out a car, I also knew Carol probably didn’t have a lot of time left, still, it was a bit sad. With this road trip I was only a few thousand miles from 200,000 and I was hoping to see that. Oh well, we’ll see if she turns up somewhere.

Here’s some stats for the road trip:

All the states I traveled, in order:

1. Minnesota
2. Wisconsin
3. Illinois
4. Indian
5. Ohio
6. West Virginia
7. Virginia
8. North Carolina
9. South Carolina
10. Georgia
11. Florida
12. Alabama
13. Mississippi
14. Tennessee
15. Arkansas
16. Missouri
17. Iowa
18. Minnesota

I feel kinda bad I missed Kentucky, I guess I just went all the way around that one.

Getting lost: I made numerous navigation errors, wrong turns, poor road selection, etc (too many to count). Nothing that really threw a wrench into any of my plans though. With a GPS it’s kinda hard to really “get lost”, but the GPS was on my phone so that made looking at it as often as I should have difficult.

Police: No direct encounters with the police. I totally ran a red light in Tallahassee right in front of a cop, I’m really surprised I didn’t get pulled over. Most of the time though I was not flaunting the law, so I guess it makes sense the police should leave me alone.

Car Trouble:
Not really anything new. I did leave my gas cap somewhere in Missouri. Also, losing my car at the end, I guess that might count as a car problem.

After some sleep Isaac showed around the house and explained all his projects and made us a hearty breakfast.

Then it was time to hit the road again. I left Meta a different way then I had arrived, but the road was just as exciting (steep hills, sharp turns) and with the daylight I could see how pretty the land scape around there is.

After coming out of the hills, it was time to tuck in for hours and hours and hours of empty corn fields. The one break came when I tried to stop in a small town in Missouri while driving around Kansas City, and get on the internet. I’d had, had good luck at McDonalds everywhere else, but this one didn’t have WiFi.

My legs were sore from all the sitting and pedaling, so I decided to drink my milk shake standing up out side. There was a guy who I had noticed coming in, who was still out there. He’s was sitting in an expensive looking tan SUV with the windows down, about 50 years old, listening to some sort of rock and roll I didn’t recognize, just rocking out. It was strange, but I got a kick out of how much he seemed to be enjoying him self. Just as I was about to leave the cops showed up, the part of the conversation I over heard went something like:
“Oh hi”
“Um… what are you doing here?”
“Just listening to music”.
“Well… you’re kinda freaking people out.”
“Really? I was just listening to music.”

I’d imagine the conversation when on for some time like that, seemed like a nice guy, hopefully he can find a place to enjoy his music with out a bunch of squares around trying to ruin his fun.

The rest of the trip seemed to take forever, and when it was done, it was like only a few minutes had past. I think that was probably because each mile looked pretty much like the last one. I feel kinda bad pilling on Iowa about how boring it is, but man, I-35 through Iowa is not exciting.

Waking up with my new quilt.

Got back on the road and almost immediately left the freeway and headed north into Alabama. The goal, was of course the town of Jachin Alabama.

7 Miles to Jachin

I found it after only have to back track once. Jachin Alabama can only be described as “there”, if you use “there” very loosely.

At first I thought the whole town was this abandoned gas station.

The Jachin General Store.

Then I found a cemetery, which was almost entirely made up of 3 families, each with their own little sections. The one thing it confirmed was that the town was probably started my Masons (something I suspect, the mason’s probably being the most likey group to use the name Jachin for a town).

Outside the Jachin General Store.

Then I found the post office. I was run by a very nice and helpfully lady, who seemed very surprised to have someone she didn’t recognize walk in. As a souvenir I mailed a letter to my self. It didn’t look like I was going to find a gift shop in Jachin.

The other part of the building the post office was in looked like the office for a lumber operation that was going on across the road. That must be the areas biggest busineess, or this is just the time of year for it. I passed dozens of trunks hauling cut trees.

Perhaps the most telling moment of just what sort of a town Jachin is, was when I asked one of the guys coming out of the office if there were any good place to eat around here. He laughed, and said, my best bet was a town called Butler (about 10 miles away).

Anyway, it was sad to see the Jachin Grocery, closed and in such rough shape, but the whole area was very nice, even with the logging. Lots of hills, pine trees, cows and red dirt.

I got back on the road, cross over into Mississippi and over lunch I got the news I had expected:

LAUNCH UPDATE: Thursday, Nov. 4 at 2:12 pm.

Launch of space shuttle Discovery is now targeted for Friday, November 5 at 3:04 p.m. ET. Existing STS-133 launch tickets and vehicle placards remain valid for the launch attempt on Friday, November 5.

PLEASE NOTE ARRIVAL TIMES: For Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex and NASA Causeway launch ticket holders, please arrive one and a half hours earlier than the time originally listed on your placard. For Astronaut Hall of Fame ticket holders, please arrive no later than 10:00 a.m.

Mission managers will meet at 5:00 a.m. Friday to evaluate weather conditions for fueling of the external tank.

Please check back for updates to the launch status.

Bottom line, not trying to wait for the shuttle another day or two was right thing to do, leaving Florida on Friday afternoon, and trying to make it back to Minnesota for work on Monday would have been brutal.

After cutting across Mississippi I went through Memphis and then into Arkansas. My goal for the night was my friend’s Isaac and Ally’s place in a town called Meta, MO. Once I got past Joesboro, AK, I lost the data service on my cell phone which I was using to do all my navigation. This was something I probably should have expected, going into the Ozarks, but it hadn’t occurred to me. For a while I was worried, the route though the mountains looks complicated when I had glanced at it over lunch. Suddenly it occurred to me I could stop at a gas station and buy a “map”. That almost got me there, but Meta was too small a town to show up on the Missouri map, so I had to call Isaac and just head for the closest town that was on the map.

The drive through the Ozarks was great. It actually did not turn out to be that difficult of a route to follow and the roads were in great condition. It was dark, so I did not get much for nice views, but all the hills and curves were a lot of fun. Especially when I got close to Meta and got off the main highway. Those roads got really crazy. It was like being on a roller coaster. Isaac told me later, that it doesn’t take much bad winter weather to close down the roads. I kept thinking the 50mph speed limit on some of the turns (normally 65) sounded more like dares then speed limits.

On US-63 near the Arkansas/Missouri border Carol chalked up her first confirmed kill. She hit a deer a couple of years ago that probably died, but it was just a glancing blow so it’s possible it survived. This was a raccoon. I remember thinking:

“That’s strange, there’s a reflector in the middle of my lane.”
“Oh wait, it’s two reflectors.”
“Oh, it’s a raccoon. Come on, move it buddy I’m not going to swerve for you.”

For some reason in the last few seconds before impact I named him Robby. I’m afraid Robby the raccoon was not very alert, smart or fast. So I figure this was probably about as good an ending as Robby could have hoped for. I think it would have been pretty painless, The initial bumper would have render him unconscious, then the second, more squishy sounding bump less then a second later somewhere under Carol would have ensured the end of his suffering.

I started off the day by sleeping in. I got a lot of sleep, which may come in handy on my return trip. I left Orlando and started making my way north and west driving down the Florida pan handle.

I took care of this trips “optional objectives” by stopping at a fireworks store. Maybe the biggest fireworks store I’ve ever been in. I have a childhood memory about a bigger fireworks store, but things always seem bigger when I was younger. So anyway, I’ve got some sweet fireworks.

Florida Fireworks, ready move across state lines.

I meet a buddy of mine (Nick) in Tallahassee. He’s living down there for several months, working on a dam. He had a recommendation for a sea food place called Crystal River Seafood. We both got all you can eat fried shrimp. It was a pretty good.

I decided to keep driving, I was looking at a pretty long day on road the following day, and I was feeling pretty good so I decided to press on and maybe shave a few hours off the next days drive. I ended up stopping at a rest stop and sleeping in my car. I figured I’ve spent plenty of money on hotels already. Besides, have I really been on a road trip if I haven’t slept in the car? Or at least try to sleep,

• Day 5 – Spend a little extra with the Selin’s and Eliot, then drive to Savanna.
• Day 6 – Explore Savannah then drive to Orlando.
• Day 7 – Hang out in Orlando… maybe do some exploring.
• Day 8 – Shuttle Launch, hopefully for reals this time, then drive to Tallahassee.
• Day 9 – Driving from Tallahassee to Meta Missouri by way of Jachin Alabama. (This is going to be another long day)
• Day 10 – Driving from Meta home to Minneapolis.

Day 5 was a slower day. Which is fine. I needed it.

After getting plenty of sleep me and Jesse took part in our traditional watching of a foreign film. Normally we would watch it with Becca too, but she was sleeping and she had already seen it anyway. It was an excellent film (one of Jesse’s favorites) called Adam’s Apples.

So, after saying ‘so long’ to the Selin’s I drove the couple of hour to Fayetteville. I meet my brothers and 3 of his “special operator” buddies at Buffalo Wild Wings for some football. Eliot’s buddies were pretty cool to, it was interesting to hear them talk about their work.

Afterwards I did a little shopping with Eliot, he had a couple of things he still needed for his deployment. I needed socks and tooth paste. Somehow I managed to pack only one pair of socks.

After shopping me and Eliot headed back to base where I made a reservation for a hotel in Savannah, and then it was time for me to hit the road again.

The trip to Savannah was smooth, though I’m regretting not leaving in time to stop a Fireworks shop at the NC/SC border. I’m going through a few more states that have more reasonable fireworks laws then Minnesota, so I’m sure I’ll have more chances to get me good fireworks.

I had a funny exchange at a Wendy’s on the way to Savannah I pull up to the first window. The lady asks me “Hey, Linda wants to know if you have any black in you”.

I say “Um… no, I don’t think so”.

Lady at the first window yells to her coworkers, “Nope, he ain’t got any black in him”.

Sound of laughter coming from inside.

“Alright, pull up to get your food”.

So I pull up to the second window and the lady there hands me my food and ask “Sarah thinks you’re married, are you married?”. I respond, “No… I’m not married”.

“Hey Sarah! He say’s he not married”.

More laughter.

“Thanks you have a nice day”.

I can’t exactly put my finger on why, but it seemed pretty funny at the time.

(Note, I’m making up names… because I can’t remember their actual names).

Afte staying up super late the night before talking with the Selin’s, I followed that up by getting up early. I got a hold of my family and we arranged to meet them in Troy where we could all go to hike in the national forest and see Morrow Mountain.

One of the nice things that worked out with this trip is that I was just planning on visiting the Selin’s on my way to the shuttle launch, then I found out my brother Eliot was going to be at Pope Air force base that weekend too, then I found out my mom and dad and two of my sisters were also going to visit him that weekend too. So I pretty much got to see a lot of my family with out having to take much of detour.

Everet, teething and happy to be out of the car.

After meeting up with the family in Troy we all went to the Uwharrie Nation Forest for some hiking. Then we went down the road a little bit to Morrow Mountain. Morrow Mountain was very cool. It was the highest point in the area and it had a nice picnic area at the top with some great views. The weather was perfect.

Hiking in the Uwharrie Nation Forest.

Jesse, Becca and Savannah on top of Morrow Mountain.

Savannah on top of Morrow Mountain.

Afterwards the Selins took me to a good German restaurant the Waldhorn. By the time we got back to the Selin’s I was so tired I went almost straight to bed, but not before I found out the shuttle launch had been been delayed until Wednesday.

Jachin and Grandma

Lots and Lots of driving. I started in Indiana, drove across Ohio. In to West Virginia, through regular Virginia and almost all way the way through North Carolina to stay with my friends Jesse and Becca on the southern end of Charlotte. About 15 hours of travel… lots and lots of driving.

It did not have to take quite so long. I cut across country in Ohio and got caught behind farm equipment several times. I also tried to go right through the middle of Columbus during rush hour. By the time I got to the mountains it was starting to get dark. It fun driving in the mountains, there are a lot more reflectors on the road the further south you go. Will all the curves and hills it felt like I was in a video game. All the rejectors got really tripy once all my real energy was gone and I was just going on caffeine. I also went through the longest tunnels I have ever driven through.

Carol at a rest stop, ready to get back on the road.

One of my favorite moments was listening to the Omnivores Delma learning about how all the corn we’re growing is a bad idea while stuck behind a combine.

After getting stuck in Columbus my leg was was cramping up after all the gas gas, break break, gas, break, gas, I stop at Clear Cedar Creek Nature Preserve to stretch my legs.

Me at Clear Cedar Creek Nature Preserve stretching my legs.

Other then that, kind of a boring day, just lots and lots of driving.