Except me.  Sure, if you are taking a road trip across country and you specifically plot out places to visit and you take your time, a road trip could probably be amazing.  However, when you’re driving on Route 80 with 3 cats in your backseat and all you want to do is be finished, not so much.  Yet still people keep saying how lucky we are, and how they are jealous that we are on this Road Trip…. Clearly they’ve never driven across country by route 80 for the sole purpose of getting to California.

Day #1, Destination: Wauseon, Ohio.

So we left from Delaware where we were staying with Gaz’ mom.  We had bought a dog crate for the three cats so that they could be with each other and have enough room to walk around a little bit.  As we started driving Uzumaki, one of our cats, got out of the top holes in the cage and was loose in the car.  So we had to pull over and wrangle her.  Both her & Aeryn, cat #2, were panting like dogs.  They were freaking out, meowing and clearly unhappy.  Rocky Meowboa, cat #3,  was just laying down trying to sleep.  He had the right idea.  So the Veterinarian had told us that we could give our cats Children’s Benadryl instead of a Cat Sedative because it was actually safer for them.  So we got some medicine with the active ingredient recommended and an eye dropper.  As soon as a drop went into Uzi’s mouth she turned into the girl from the exorcist.  She started foaming at the mouth, making just a terrible terrible face and spitting everywhere.  So… She hates medicine… ok.  We bought some cardboard to put over the top of the crate to keep her in and we were on our way.  They meowed for like… 3 hours before they finally caught onto the fact that Rocky Meowboa had the right idea.  Then they slept.

We then headed towards the only actual stop we were making to check a place out.  We went towards Penn State so I could just take a look at my alma mater and eat some D.P. Dough.  On the way there we were driving through some mountains and a torrential downpour started…. Awesome.  But we got there in one piece and I had some good food.  It was neat to take a look at Penn State and it brought back some memories, but we couldn’t really walk around because I didn’t want to leave the cats alone in the car.  SO we moved on.

This day took the longest and we didn’t get to our hotel until 2AM.  On top of it it was a Smoking room in a crappy motel.  All the hotels we were staying in were Best Westerns but this one was by far the worst.  Of course the night we needed sleep most, we were in the worst place.

Day 2, Destination: Omaha, Nebraska

So, in the morning we woke up to pack the car and it was FREEZING.  It was awful.  And it takes us awhile to tetris in all the crap we have, but we did it. We head out to get something to eat.  We were looking for a 7-11 or something, but we could not find it.  We did find a Burger King and a Taco Bell.  So Gaz goes into the Taco Bell and a woman is cleaning the door that works there.  He was going in and got stuck on the door, he had to hold the door with his knuckles for a second while he got unstuck.   So he gets inside, and everyone is chatty.  There’s southern accents (??) and country music regaling the south playing.  Ohio, really?

Employee #1 (To Gaz):  You should go put fingerprints all over the door she just cleaned, haha!
Window Cleaning Employee:  Yeah… well.. (annoyed) he already put his knuckles on the door.

Ohhhhhh kay.  Creepy nothernsouthern passive aggressive.. let’s be on our way.

The rest of the drive this day was pretty uneventful.  Plains, plains, plains… OH LOOK A COW… Plains, plains…..

We got to Omaha and went straight to the hotel.  This hotel was much nicer than the last and we got to sleep.

Day #3, Destination: Rawlins, Wyoming

So in the morning we got to have breakfast at Perkins at least because there was one attached to the hotel in Omaha.  That was a highlight of the trip.  But neither one of us, as it turns out, really likes Perkins food.  Oh well.

So we drove.  Plains, plains, plains…. and we got to Wyoming!!  We got to our hotel at 8:30 this night which was really nice because it gave us some time to relax.  There was a Domino’s nearby so we ordered some Pizza and watched Castle! Woohoo.

Day #4, Destination: Winnemucca, NV
So, in the morning we drove through town to get some breakfast at McDonalds.  This town (Rawlins) is a ghost town.  Everything seemed to be a small chain store, and most of it seemed to be closed.   The one highlight is that there was a Blockbuster that closed down but a local shop, Video Mania or something, was still open.  Good to have local priorities.   It was pretty surreal seeing all the abandoned buildings like that and closed down stores.  We got to McDonalds though and saw some dudes dressed in cowboy attire.  They pretty much ruled.

And we’re off.  This day we drove through Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada.  We stopped at a cute rest area called “Little America” to get gas and Ice Cream. The gas stations out here are called “Sinclair” and have a dinosaur mascot.   This gas chain is apparently the namesake for the Sinclair family on the show “Dinosaurs” (Thanks Nick).  So we filled up on Gas and kept driving.  Once we started getting low I was looking for a gas station, in Utah now.  And there was NOTHING for like 40 miles.  The last gas station back was 60 miles.  You’d think if there was no Gas for 100 miles there would be some sort of sign warning you of such, but nope.   So we had a fun adventure riding the E and hoping for the best.

Scenery wise driving through Utah was interesting.  Seeing the actual Salt Lake was pretty neat.  And there was lots of weird looking desert. We get to Nevada and arrive in Winnemucca.  This is one of the towns in Nevada that still allows legal prostitution!  It was lit up with some small casinos and kind of made me feel like I was in Las Vegas 60 years ago.  It was a neat little town.

Day 5, Destination: Milpitas, California

And today… the day to end all days.  It was supposed to be a 6 hour drive to our destination, the quickest of our drives so far.  It was supposed to be easy and fun because we were almost done.

It wasn’t.

We were driving on 80 and I was sleeping.  Suddenly I heard what sounded like a Gunshot and the car jolted.  There was this piece of a truck on the road that was a huge metal pipe with a wheel on it.  It was in the middle of the lane and Gaz thought it was road kill so tried not to hit it with the wheels.  The middle of the car got torn apart instead.  The bottom covering was torn off, and the pipes leading to the Muffler was punctured in 3 places.   Awesome.  So, we sat around, made some phone calls.  I was not sure how much damage there would be so I started the claims process.  There were two other cars affected by this piece of hardware.  A guy whose tire blew out and a woman who swore the pipe “Hit her car so hard”.  So this lady gets out of her car and starts grilling us…

Lady: What was that, did that come off your car.

Gaz (while on the ground trying to inspect the damage done to our car): It did not come off our car, the guy in front of us hit it too we don’t know what it is.

Lady:  Can you come look at my car..

So Gaz goes to look at her car with her and sees nothing visibly wrong.  She points out a “bubble” on her tire..

Lady:  Should I drive on that?  How fast should I go?

Gaz:  I don’t feel comfortable giving you this advice.  If I were you I would call Triple A and have them take a look.

Lady: Oh I don’t want to wait for all that, should I drive?

Gaz:  I told you what I would do if you want to do something different that’s on you but I don’t know enough about cars to give you car advice.

Lady:  Oh you’re funny… what are you a lawyer?

So this goes on and the Man, the Lady and Gaz are chatting about what’s going on and they go down the highway to find the culprit.  They moved it out of the roadway so that other cars would not hit it.  This was despite the Lady saying they should leave it there so that “Someone like the police can find it”.  yeah, ok.

We decided after while to move on.  We found the closest place that could look at mufflers was Meineke in Reno Nevada.  We were about 80 miles away from Reno.  But we took our chances.  Oh the car sounded just awful and it was so scary to drive that way, but we made it!!

The guys at Meineke were super nice and helpful.  To get the Honda Stock kit parts would have taken a week so I had them just fix the piping and do what they could to get the car drivable, and they did.  We were there for an hour or so.  The Manager there mentioned to us that there was some Snow up in the mountains on 80 and we might need some Tire Chains.  Oh no!  So we asked if they sold the chains at the checkpoint, he said no.  Derp that makes no sense!!  We asked if we should buy the chains from him and he said it looked clear on the weather cams so we should be fine.

An hour after leaving the place, we were not fine.  We got up to the mountains past Truckee and it was snowing and ice.  Mind you, we’re in California at this point.  So we get up to the checkpoint and the guy is like “You need chains or you need to get off the road”  So I asked “Well, what do we do?”  He mentioned we could turn around and go back to Truckee, or buy chains from this guy in the minivan right over here.  As luck would have it that guy was selling chains much further down the road when a competitor setup right next to him.  So he had to move his station to the end of the line, so luckily he was right there.  We asked how much for the chains and install and he said 60 dollars.  That seemed like a fair price, considering the chains themselves at meineke were 70 dollars.  He installed them lickity split and we were on our way.  These tire chains say to drive no faster than 30 MPH.  Well I was doing just that but I still had to put on my hazards since everyone around me was way too gangsta to care about chain rules.

So then we get to a point where we’re out of the mountains and now Gaz has to figure out how to take this chains off.  Now he’s wet and dirty, and damnit today just  sucks!!!

On the way to Milpitas we discover that now my gas gauge is not updating and always says full.  Damnit.  So today I am going to have to take the car into a Honda Dealership and pay for even more repairs.  Poops.

California, you’d better be awesome.

And I am NEVER driving across country on Route 80 ever again.