The Great Bittle Road Trip of 2011

Let me just start off by saying that after driving 2,200 miles in 3 days, flying home at 10:30pm Tuesday night, and then teaching Wednesday-Friday, it's no wonder I haven't gotten around to blogging about our Bittle Road Trip! The idea of trying to capture the experience in one blog post was so daunting that I've been putting it off since I got home, and decided that rather than try to retell it all (including many sentences like, "And then we drove past many cornfields, and some trees...and then some more corn fields, and then a lot of grass."), I'd sum up a lot of it in list form. Hooray for laziness!

I'll start with The Plan, which was to get Bittle, her cat, and her car to Michigan so she could begin her new adventures as a college professor there. We spent quite a bit of time planning this sucker out so as to avoid disasters such as

getting lost

being stalked by serial killers

breaking down or running out of gas in the middle of nowhere

missing my flight home

leaving behind panicked children and/or parents

experiencing anything that resembles an episode of "Supernatural"

This meant hammering out an exact plan for where we'd stop each day, reserving hotel rooms in 3 cities to prevent us from wimping out and stopping early (and therefore leaving ourselves to drive 17 hours on the last day or something), leaving behind notes and gifts for the girls, and texting our parents constantly to let them know we were Not in a Ditch Somewhere. Our overnight stops would be in Park City, UT and Lincoln, NE, and then we'd get a room in Bittle's new city in Michigan on the third night since she still needed to sign the lease for her apartment.

Our plan was excellent, except for the fact that a Certain Hotel in Park City, UT failed to save us a room (which is, as Jerry Seinfeld points out, is the whole point of making a reservation) and sent two Bittles and a cat off to hunt down a place to stay at 9:30pm. Luckily, the desk clerks at the hotel next door called all over Utah and beyond for us, and eventually found us a Best Western just across the Wyoming border that had a room and accepted pets (that second part was what nixed the few available rooms in Utah for us). I'll be sending a gift to those ladies this week!

An extra hour later, we pulled into the small, totally dark town of Evanston, Wyoming and realized we were totally breaking our "no reenacting episodes of Supernatural" rule. We pulled up at the hotel and were greeted by a guy with a flashlight, who led me into the dark lobby while Bittle sat outside and texted me: "You just went into a dark hotel with a guy and a flashlight. Is everything OK in there?! Do I need to come in?" Luckily, Bittle and Sadie the Attack Cat didn't need to intervene; they'd just had a lightning storm that cut power to the office building, and there were a couple of other non-scary humans in the lobby with me while I got us our room. Whew!

Beyond that, and the crazy tomato truck driver who cornered me in a gas station the next day to try starting a political debate (Him: "You're a pretty lady. I hope you're not one of those crazy liberal b*tches from California!" Me, edging away: "Um, I kind of am." Him: "Well, explain to me why you people believe I should have to share the things I earn through hard work with people who sit there and do nothing." Me: "Actually, I'm just going to use the bathroom."), it was a pretty uneventful trip. Since we had a strict timeline (plus a cat in tow) and not much time for exploring the sights or checking out the World's Largest Ball of Stamps, we mostly toured the gas stations of the midwest and entertained ourselves in the car as best we could.

To that end, we'd spent many an hour compiling themed playlists and CD's for the trip, including...

songs about California (you'd be amazed how many there are!)

music of our youth (mostly 90's R&B)

music featured on "Supernatural" (courtesy of Bear's awesome sister of awesomeness...have I mentioned that "Supernatural" is our newest obsession?)

White Guys With Soul (Jason Mraz, Justin Timberlake...), which then evolved into White Guys We Like (Pete Yorn, Jakob Dylan, Chris Isaak, etc., plus Bittle indoctrinated me with some Robbie Williams), which really could have been titled Stuff We Listen to All the Time, Anyway.

NKOTB (duh)

...and it worked out perfectly, bringing us much joy and many important realizations, such as

we have no idea what Pete Yorn or Toad the Wet Sprocket are singing about

Tony Toni Tone! is still good stuff

"OMG why did our parents let us listen to this?!"

Since we had such a limited glance at each state we passed through, we decided to go ahead and create new state mottos and/or pass judgement on them based on what little we saw:

Nevada = all Vegas and hotness (and not the good kind)

Utah = windy and lightning-y but we'd still like to move to Provo (seriously, gorgeous town)

Nebraska = "If you need to find us, look for some grass...we're over by The Tree." This is also apparently where tires go to die, judging by the number of them we dodged on the highway.

Iowa = exactly how you'd picture it, but pictures don't do it justice! Also, if you need any corn, they've got you covered.

Illinois = Land of Confusing Interchanges and Idiotic Drivers

Wyoming = land of many buttes, a crazy homophobic pickup truck, and, suprisingly, these mud flaps (on a male truck driver's truck):

(Clearly, those states are not in order and I skipped some, but I wanted Wyoming last so the picture could follow, and there were some states we were either too tired or saw too little of to say anything about them at all!)

And now there will be assorted pictures I took, also in no particular order...

We tried for many an hour to get good photos of picturesque farmhouses and barns, but didn't have much luck:




The I-80 is lined almost entirely by these "fat cones" and numerous signs detailing what they will do to you if you hit a highway worker (in CA, they just set up a few skinny cones and wish the poor workers luck). We saw zero construction, or even evidence of construction, and they totally threw off our cruise control groove every time they showed up. Curse the fat cones!!



Sadie was full of kitty rage until we figured out that an air-conditioned cave, constructed by Bittle's denim jacket hung over her legs, was where she'd much rather be...and then we didn't hear a peep out of her for a good six hours:



I vow not to judge the collective intelligence of people in Wherever I Took This Photo based on the signs in their restrooms:


To sum up the rest...

the girls didn't even notice I was gone for the first 36 hours, thanks to a sleepover at Grandma's and a birthday party to attend the next day

Bear had a rough bedtime with them Monday night when they realized I wasn't coming home in time to tuck them in, but they did OK the rest of the time

they enjoyed the gifts and little notes I left all over the house (inside the coffee maker lid, on the car window, near the girls' shoes...), which Bear referred to as "a charming version of Memento"

Bittle's apartment and new town of residence are gorgeous, although she will enjoy both of them much more when the movers finally arrive with her belongings (a full week late!)

my flights home went smoothly, which was good because it was my first time flying alone (or for longer than 30 minutes, for that matter)

there are probably many things I forgot to include in this post, because the whole thing is now a blur

Bittle has declared that although our trip was 80% enjoyable (the other 20% being comprised of the Park City hotel fiasco, the cat rage issue, and the very-so-very much tiredness involved in the process), if and when she moves back from Michigan, she will not be repeating this drive!

And thus endeth the saga of the Great Bittle Road Trip of 2011. Though it was free of drunkenness, prostitutes, car chases, roadside attractions, and other road trip cliches, it really went much better than we expected...and now I'm glad to be back home!