Garmin Electra

The Girl just gave me a Garmin Nüvi on the expressed condition that I never make her navigate anywhere ever again. This last trip back from DC I had a chance to road-test it. I gotta say, it's pretty fucking sweet.
I've made that trip about 20 times, so I didn't really need the map function, but I was all about was the statistics function. I became obsessed with raising my "overall average" and keeping the "time stopped" to a minimum.
My obsessing allowed the time to fly by and I made the trip in record time - 10 hours and 45 minutes. From the start (leaving DC at 10AM), the device called the estimated time of arrival as 7:48 (central time) - I thought the thing was fucking nuts. I've never made the trip in less than 11 hours and 15 minutes, but the Garmin called it within 3 minutes from the get-go. How, I have no idea.
My proudest accomplishment was keeping my stopped time down to 22 minutes - That includes time stopped at traffic signals, in traffic, and fuel/bathroom breaks (3 each). Impressive.

I can't wait to take it out and test the map function.
Cartography rulz!
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Here's the Garmin breakdown of the DC to Illinois trip:
745.3 miles
Total Trip Time: 10 hrs. 45 min.
Moving Time: 10 hrs. 24min.
Time Stopped: 21 min. 46 sec.
Max Speed: 85.9 mph
Moving Average: 71.7 mph
Overall Average 69.3 mph

Heading Home

I've gotten everything wrapped-up here in DC, and am driving back to Illinois this morning so that I miss the ice storm tomorrow.

Here I come.

Nothing Says "Valentines Day" Like Logistics

I finally got everything wrapped-up back here in DC. Now I'm just waiting for the weather to clear (and this damned head-cold to dissipate) before driving the 12 hours back to Illinois.

I'm thinking that'll happen either Saturday or Sunday.

Consolidation Means Consumer Freedom

Um... Nope.

I'm freaking pissed. I just went to book a flight back to DC for the weekend, and I found out that the stage had been dramatically altered.
I used to fly ATA constantly. They had retarded-cheap rates running between Chicago Midway (MDW) and Washington National (DCA) . You could get one-way tickets for under $70 bucks with a few weeks notice - last-minute rates barely broke the $100 mark. I fucking loved it.
ATA just drastically cut its routes and sold off most of the company to Southwest. Effective November 1st they cut out of DCA entirely.
This freakin' blows - DCA is the only DC airport with subway service, now the flight from Chicago to DCA that used to cost me $68 now is gonna run me $187 (the chepest one-way non-stop rate I could find).
Whaaaa?!?!
I could take a flight with a 5 hour lay-over in Detroit (the non-stop runs about an hour and a half), or fly to Dulles (IAD) or Baltimore (BWI) for around a hundred bucks, but I don't wanna do that.
I guess that I'm gonna have to fly from fucking O'Hare into BWI or IAD and then drop $50 on a cab ride back to DC.

Suck it, free market.

Williamsburg - Break It Down

Now that I got all that pesky sports crap outta the way, I can finally focus on writing about asinine nonsense again - Thank Christ.
Here's my day-by-day breakdown of my trip down to visit The Girl's parents for Thanksgiving.Tuesday
Arrive back in DC in the wee hours of the morn, fuck around on the internets, sleep (I think), unpack all of my IL crap, re-pack most of the crap back into the same bag for the trip to Williamsburg, leave for southern Virginia.
We left at 10PM, so we wouldn't the fifth circle of modern-day hell - I-95 holiday traffic. I learned that lesson last year.

Wednesday
We arrived in Williamsburg at about 1AM - Smooth fucking sailing. I stayed up and had a couple of beers before falling asleep watching the Skins/Cowboys game from the week before on NFL Replay.
Spent most of the day prepping food for Thanksgiving. Later, we took a walk out in the woods down to the James River - I got a bunch of cool photos (see above pic), and Milo got covered in ticks (5 and counting).

Thursday
Football, booze, and food - That's about it. Perfect.
We did head out to Target at midnight (mostly outta drunken wanderlust) for some crazy black-Friday deals, but they totally weren't open.

Friday
We headed out to the Williamsburg Winery and proceeded to swig wine in a fruit fly infested cellar for 2 hours - I fucking loved it. The wine was mediocre, but I didn't waste a drop. In fact, The Girl's Dad and I spent a good portion of the "tasting" whispering disparaging remarks about all of the milquetoast pussies that comprised the rest of our group who kept spitting and dumping every fucking drop of alcohol that they were given.
Me: "That guy hasn't swallowed one drop of wine yet, do you think he'd mind if we split his portion and gave him fancy convoluted descriptions of all of this swill for him to scratch down in his gay little notebook?"
Mr. Dad: "Dear diary..."
Me: "... My fat-assed wife has my nuts in her fanny pack and won't give 'em back."
I was really disappointed that Williamsburg Winery didn't have a port on its roster, so afterward I hit the liquor store, picked up a couple bottles of Virginia port and spent the reminder of the evening with her family sipping fancy fortified wine by the warm glow of the fireplace. Nice.

Saturday
We spent the day at the Berkley Plantation, best known as the birthplace of William Henry Harrison, everyone's favorite long-winded/short-lived 9th president. Tour guides do not appreciate being asked if they could recite the W.H. Harrison inauguration address in its entirety for the edification of the crowd.
That so would have been better than the tour itself. I'll save you the eight bucks and trip to rural Williamsburg: Unfinished basement, hallway, pink room, another pink room just like the other, room with a desk, small little room with another desk, end of tour.
According to the educational video we were forced to watch in the cellar, Berkley Plantation was the birthplace of American whiskey - I looked all over that damed place and couldn't find one drop of whiskey, not even in the gift-shop. Fuckers.
Speaking of gift shops, while I was in the gift-shop I tried trading The Girl for 2 tins of boiled peanuts, a Virginia lighter, and 3 souvenir ashtrays. They looked at me like I was the one who was crazy. "It's a plantation for chrissake, y'all know that this is a good deal... I could go to the plantation down the street and get all of this chintzy crap plus one mule for her - Just look at those hips... Come on, people - You're killing me here. Hey, Honey, Where're you going?"
We got back from the nation's lamest plantation and packed everything back up for the trip back to DC. We headed out after dinner, and made it back in decent time.

Oh, wait! I even learned something on the drive back - If an elderly gentleman gives you a dirty look whilst pissing next to you at a rest-stop urinal, the worst thing you can possibly say is: "Hell yeah - The sweet stink of asparagus . You know you love it, Bitch... Recognize."
Trust me, I know.

More of a Text Message than a Blog Post

I'm havin' one hell of a time back in the IL. Huge thanks go out to EdP for swallowing his Sox Pride and scoring us some great tickets for last night's (not so great) Cubs game.

BBQ Sunday?

Lessons Learned

About twice a year I manage to drive out to Illinois from DC. Surprisingly, every single time you learn something new. This isn't a good thing. This time I got stuck towing a 15x7 Trailer behind me. Here's some stories and/or observations:

Woke up: 5 AM (CST)

DC Experience
I headed over to the U-Haul place as soon as it opened. I'm pretty damned sure that I was the only one there that spoke English (aside from the black girl doing her nails way behind the counter who acted as a reluctant interpreter for such pressing questions as "Which size trailer hitch do I need?" ). Luckily I had a reservation, and a rudimentary grasp of Spanish, so we were on our way.
I never have towed anything larger than a small motorcycle cart with the Jeep, so driving from the U-Haul place towing a huge-ass trailer through the heart of downtown DC during the morning rush hour was sort of a baptism by fire. Hot, hot, honking, swearing fire.
We loaded up the trailer, and I got to drive back through downtown DC again. This time I headed through the 'hood - Bad move. Up on Georgia I could hear kids trying to get into the trailer while I was at a stop light. I knew that the $25.00 U-Haul lock was a good idea.
Like an idiot, I showered before loading up the trailer. I was soaked through with sweat from loading a metric ass-load of crap in 90+ degree weather, so I grabbed a quick rinse-off and a change of clothes before heading out.

Left DC: 11:15 AM (CST) Tuesday

Trailer + Mountains = Bad (Bad + Rain = Worse)
Holy Shit, I must have made this trip a dozen times, but I was white-knucklin' it through this whole leg of the trip. No, not that Ed.
I did learn the importance of shifting while driving automatic. Shift it from drive into "12"* gear for ascending steep inclines and kick it to neutral for the downhill. Repeat endlessly. Pounding outbreaks of rain make it all the more sporting.

Wood Chucks
There are a shitload of groundhogs up in Pennsylvania and Ohio - Those little bastards were everywhere. I'm just sayin', is all...

Reign of Rain
In Western Ohio I was treated to weather phenomenon that is normally reserved exclusively for Jan de Bont films or biblical epics. It was actually really fucking cool, but...
Sometime in the afternoon I was heading along and then all I could see in front of me was a wall of black punctuated by lightning bursts. Pretty fucking scary. I headed into it, and immediately regretted doing so. It was midnight-dark, sideways firehose rain kept trying to push over the trailer, I couldn't see 10 feet in front of the windshield, an blinding lightning was crashing down on all sides of me. I slowed down to 35MPH turned on my hazard lights, ,and hunkered down behind the Semi in front of me - It was fine. This lasted for about 10 miles, and then... bright sunshine, weird.

Indiana at Night
You know what? I always pick on Indiana, but this time I actually enjoyed that leg of the trip. Well, except for the omnipresent "Indiana burning plastic" smell, which would freak out anyone who had been towing a packed 3000lb trailer for the last 10 hours straight.
By the time I got to the Ohio/Indiana border it was already dark out. I had been going for so long that I was starting to see tracers, but I figured that if I could get through the Indiana and Illinois construction fiascoes without traffic, it would be worth it.
Driving through Indiana in the dark was actually an unexpected treat. It's a lot like being in junior high, getting drunk on Boone's Farm Pina-Colada "wine", and porking the one really ugly girl in your class with the lights off. You know full-well what's going on, you're kinda queezy, but it really ain't so bad, and (plus) you're making great time.
My favorite part of driving through Indiana after dark was flying through all of the mind-bogglingly-stupid construction projects. "Let's take 3 lanes down to 1 on a bridge right after a sharp turn - What could go wrong?" I was freakin' giddy that I missed that crap.
Indiana should just give the fuck up and accept it's place as the Arkansas of the North. Fixing roads? Who the hell do they think they're fooling. Just change the state slogan to: "Indiana - This Is As Good As We're Gonna Get", and go back to watching the WWE in the state's collective double-wide. Everybody's happy.

Jesse White - Conceptual artist
I finally escaped Indiana only to be greeted back to my home state by approximately ten thousand orange and white striped barrels everyfuckingwhere.
My theory is that some asshole bought (IL Secretary of State) Jesse White a Marcel Duchamp coffee-table book for his birthday, and now he considers himself a surrealist installation artist. I missed the press conference where he stated "This piece is called 30 miles of highway with endless barrels over the one good lane that isn't riddled with potholes".
What the fuck? There's one good lane on all of the IL 80/94 stretch and it's covered in motherfucking construction cones. Are they saving that pristine lane for if the Pope visits?
I finally got through all of that shit and then was greeted by Secretary White's "deconstructionist period" once I hit I-88 - It's like he just had to top the Minnesota 'Dadaist Bridge' installation piece.

Bounce
Crazy bouncing action is awesome for mexed-out vintage low-riders, not so much for 1999 Jeep Cherokees towing a 3000LB trailer. For some fucking unknown reason the Reciprocating action between truck and trailer kept making my Jeep bounce like a motherfucker . This phenomena kept happening throughout the trip, but really intensified up on 88. At that point I was queezy already from eating nothing but 1 bag of Nacho-Cheeze Combos and a handful of pep-pills over the last 24 hour period. The last thing I needed was the bouncy. I tried to stop the bouncing by (alternately) coasting, braking, and accelerating. That really did little to stop the bouncing, but really did a great job of looking like I was moving drunk. The only thing that stopped the bouncing cold was if I hit a pothole or a risen crack in the asphalt - Luckily, I was driving down I-88.

Drunk-Ass
I had traveled 740 fucking miles and 10 miles from my destination I almost got wiped by some drunk asshole in a pickup. I've seen a lot of drunken driving in my day, but this takes the fucking cake - This sort of drunken driving is usually reserved for silent-film serials and DMV "awareness" videos. Jerkass was driving down the center of 56 at 30 miles an hour and swerving to the edges of both lanes all the way between 88 and 47. I finally saw a window and jetted past as fast as I possible could. Drinky pickup guy got spooked, went off the road, corrected and almost came back right into the trailer. He missed the back by less than a foot.
Idiot.


Arrive at Parents' House: 1:15AM (CST) Wednesday

Soundtrack
I love WMA CDs. I threw together about 5 WMA CDs with different albums on 'em for the trip. I used one of 'em. That's right - one CD lasted me from just north of DC to Naperville. 13.5 hours straight.
I started the DC leg with the Summer WILT.
Just after leaving the DC region I threw on the roots/country mix I made, because country is the ultimate road music. I'm really picky about "country music". I love the old stuff, and I like the alt-country stuff, but almost everything that has come out of Nashville since 1962 is total shit.
Here's the mix:
Patsy Cline: "12 Greatest Hits" & "The Patsy Cline Story"
Drag the River: a B-Sides comp I threw together
Greg Graffin: "Cold as the Clay"
Chad Rex and the Victorstands: "Gravity Works, Fire Burns"
Son Volt: "Trace"
Stanley Brothers: "Complete Columbia Recordings"
Uncle Tupelo: "89-93 - An Analogy"
Whiskeytown: "Pneumonia" & "Stranger's Almanac"
Wilco: "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot"
Willie Nelson: "The Essential Willie Nelson - Parts 1 & 2"
Great fucking driving music.
At Naperville (when Patsy came back on), I threw on the second Comp and listened to (most) of the new Against Me! album.

Breakdown of Trip (By People Passed)
People I Passed:
- An elderly Asian lady driving a Cadillac
- 3 or 4 tractor-trailers going up mountain**
- A mini-van with a half dozen bikes piled up and haphazardly strapped to the roof
- 3 Hispanic guys in a smoking*** Malibu
- Drunk-Ass

People who passed me:
- Everyone else (including a fucking cement mixer)

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Footnotes
* Wow, This thing has 12 gears? I'm assuming that it stands for 1st and 2nd, but having 12 gears would be so much sweeter
**Later passed by same trucks going down mountain
*** Literally. Smoke was pouring out from under the hood. They just kept booking along at 45 MPH

Back In IL

14 hours, 15 minutes - Tons 'o' stories.

Look for the full post tomorrow (ie: later today).

Until then, here's my 5 day forecast:
Tomorrow: I'm free, but have to get up early Thursday morning.
Thursday: Haul crap up to western Wisconsin.
Friday: Drive back (through New Glarus - sweet!). Turn around and haul another load up (if needed), if not - Drink.
Saturday: Drink
Sunday: John From Cincinnati season (series?) finale.

Headin' West (With a Vengeance)

Tomorrow I'll be heading back to the heartland in yet another attempt to clog up the nation's arteries and induce severe national cardiac failure. Okay, I'm just going to be towing a trailer full of crap up to western Wisconsin for the parents, but I still like my made-up reason better.
If I can make it back in one shot I may have a free afternoon on Wednesday. There's a decent chance that I'll be out on Friday. But for damn sure:
ANNEX DRINKIN' NIGHT THIS SATURDAY.
I expect the D-Town drinkin' brigade to be out in force. Carve it in stone, bitches.

W-R-O-N-G (Everyone's Accusing Me)

I just learned today that I was way-wrong on my plans for Illinois this August.
Today my dad asked me if I could haul back a bunch of random crap from DC to IL. By "ask", I mean "told me". He's payin' for the gas.

Now it looks like I'll be back in the Illin'noise from sometime around the 8th of August all the way through the 20th or so. At least that's how it looks right now. Break out the drinkin' shoes, D-Town.

Anyone know how to get a refund on a non-refundable airline ticket?

State Fair Warning

Due to circumstances beyond my control, it looks like my annual August journey back to IL is a no-go. Instead I'll be doing a quick weekend barnstorming tour of Chicago on the 17th, 18th, and 19th of August.
So far, I've got something on the 18th but the rest is wide-open. There's an off-chance that I might make it out to D-Town for one night, but it's very unlikely.

Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

Back Home & Almost Sober

I'm back in DC now. The IL adventure is over and I've got 10 straight days of drinkin' stories to show for it.
I still need to get a wrap-up of the Naked Raygun show up here - Look for it tomorrow when the world stops spinning.

Done, Dumb, and Dung

My Illinois reunion tour has come to an end. I survived (barely).

I'm heading back to DC at the break of dawn tomorrow, and hopefully will have some time to post up a wrap-up of my Midwestern adventure sometime in the near future.

Happy trails, little cowpokers.

Original Wisconsin

I'm on my way up to Prairie Du Chein, Wisconsin. We're going up to look at a piece of property that my parents just bought along the Mississippi Reagan.

I'm going along on the conditions that we stop at Cabella's, the Mount Horeb Mustard Museum, and the New Glarus Brewery.
Uff Da, bitches!

- Sent From Blackberry Handheld -

Ready or Not...

I'm packed and ready to head out sometime between 4AM and 5AM tomorrow morning - look for updates from the road.

Homecoming In Your Eye

I'm planning on leaving for Illinois on Friday (probability = 25%), or Monday (probability = 70%), or sometime in between (probability = 5%). Regardless, I'll be back for the Monday night Bears game, so if anyone wants to get together and rip on Matt Bulger's fat fucking whore of a wife over a load of beers...
I'm packed up and ready to rock. I've just got a few last hoops to jump through, then I'm free to go. I've even got the kick-ass Rogue’s Gallery CDs cued up in the Jeep for the drive out (thanx auftn & jeanz), hopefully they'll serve me better than they did during the Virginia dirge.

Now it's time for you blog monkeys to make with the fun - I should be back until the 28th or so. Let me know of any events of interest transpiring within that time frame.
Here I come - Rock me like a hurricane.

Danger Chicagoland; Danger, Danger, Danger!

Okay kids, here's the deal:
I'm still in limbo about what to do with the rest of my fucking life, but the field is narrowing. It looks like the travel thing is out, due to the fact that I'm broke as a joke. The job field in DC isn't really yielding much, but I have a bunch of folks out scouting for me. I did get offered a job in the State Department, but I really don't want to work in the administration at this point, and the hours in a job like that will kill you. Meh. I'm in no big hurry; I'll still be drawing a paycheck throughout February, and I renegotiated my lease up to April 1. Therefore, I'm holding off on making a final decision until late January.
I've decided to start shopping out my resume in the Chicago metropolitan region, and am planning on coming back for a long stretch to do so. I may be back as soon as next week, all I'm waiting for here now is my holiday bonus (if I'm even getting one) and for Cabelas to ship my ammo for the SOCOM and the M16 (no, seriously).
I'll post up the details as soon as I get 'em.

Photocolonial

I just finished uploading four and a half pages of photos of my trip to the deepest darkest regions of colonial-themed Virginia up to my Flickr page. I weeded through several hundred pictures and culled the juiciest morsels for your optical absorption. In all honesty, there's probably too many pictures of various shit shot against the sky, but it was either that or a plethora of ground-level pics besieged with throngs of rotund tourists.
I made sure to keep my lens up, 'cuz I know that's the way you like it. You're dirty like that.

Virginia is for Virginians

We started off the day with an exploratory trip around the neighborhood where I got a bunch of kick-ass pictures of the local scenery.
The rest of the day has been chock full of football, booze, and loads 'o' food.
Full... so full.

Hell Trip

It's approximately 170 miles from DC to Williamsburg. Yoohoo Maps approximated our total travel time at just under 3 hours. Yoohoo Maps are a bunch of filthy lying sons of whores.
It took us SEVEN fucking hours to get here due to the obscene holiday travel rush. After 4 hours on the road, I looked down at the odometer and realized that we had only gone 54 miles - I then spent the next 15 minutes screaming at the top of my lungs about averaging 13.5 miles per hour while punching wildly at the roof and swearing. Fuck that.
The last 100 miles were relatively smooth, but the first 70 were pure hell. Come Saturday, we're waiting until 11PM to leave in hopes of missing the rush back North.