Parts Three and Four of the Drive

Well, the third installment of the story, which covers the remainder of Tuesday night straight on through the third and fourth days of the drive.  As you recall, we crawled to the nearest food establishment to inhale some dinner at 8:30 at night, after 14 hours on the road.  We hit the jackpot when we stumbled into a seedy Mexican joint purveying dirt cheap margaritas. 

The watered-down margaritas did little to dull the pain of returning to our room.  On the short walk back, we noted that the freegan (or more likely homeless person) digging in the dumpster and stuffing treasures into his backpack had moved on.  With defeat in our hearts and Mexican food-babies in our bellies, we trudged up the stairs to our room and shut the door that had no chain or deadbolt.  We brushed our teeth in the bathtub, because it had cold water.  We looked around…for the…cat?

Where was the cat?  He had vanished completely.  We tore apart the room for several minutes before Ajax came strutting into the middle of the floor looking all nonchalant like, “Oh, hai, guys, what’s going on?”  Neither of us saw him emerge, but a few minutes later Andy watched him disappear into the bed.  Yes.  INTO.  Not under or behind or just between the sheets.  INSIDE the actual structure of the bed.

As it turned out, the bed frame was nothing but four pieces of 4x6 lumber nailed together to form a rectangle which rested on the floor.  The two twin box springs supporting the king-size mattress were screwed onto the bed frame.  Because that’s necessary.  Someone might steal one of these box springs, guys.  The box springs were overhanging the end of the “bed frame” by about six inches, and the fabric covering the bottom of the box springs had torn.  Naturally, Ajax found his way into the crevice this tear allowed him to access, and he proceeded to crawl into the space between the box springs and the floor, where he was completely hidden. 

Ajax soon returned to the world of the (barely) living, and we set about blocking his access to this netherworld.  We stuffed some trashcans and luggage under the overhanging box springs and figured that would be enough.  Utterly depleted by this effort, we then attempted to go to sleep.  In the stillness, the room’s ultimate flaw revealed itself. 

I had just drifted into a half-sleep when a noise assaulted my very soul.  Was I on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral?  Why, God, WHY am I hearing a spaceship firing up three feet from my head?

Oh.  It’s the air conditioner. 

There seemed to be two settings.  Off, and NASA.  The high in Tulsa that day was something like 104, and we were on the 2^nd floor.  Turning off the AC was not an option.  So we suffered.  We slept in 10 minute spurts.  The machine would roar into action and blast frigid air for a few minutes, and then abruptly shut off for about 10 minutes before repeating the process all over again.  It was the aural equivalent of waterboarding.

Finally, around 4:30 in the morning, we gave up.  We arose to shower, pack, eat and get as far from Oklahoma as we could, as quickly as humanly possible.  I got out of the shower to find Andy in a panic.  The cat was gone.  Again.  Ajax moved the barricades just enough to squeeze back under the bed, and promptly fell asleep.  There was no coaxing him out.  We had to lift the entire bed – frame, box springs, mattress and all.  We propped it up on the trashcans and I had the distinct pleasure of crawling under the bed and into the filth to extract the cat.  I may or may not have contracted AIDS from this experience.

By 6:30 we were hauling it out of there like our lives depended on it (because our sanity actually did).  When we crossed into Kansas, I wept.

I was even happier when we made it to Colorado, for three reasons.  First, this sign.  I love how a lot of the West seems to think it’s still 1989.

Second, we began to see signs of the Rockies in the far distance.   And, finally, we were going to stop for the night in Colorado, a mere two states away from our final destination.

Wednesday afternoon we made it to Fort Collins.  I know from its reputation that Fort Collins is a legitimately cool place.  However, it could have been freaking Compton, California and I would have been happy to stay there for a night, simply because it wasn’t Tulsa.  We stayed at a newly opened La Quinta, which was also objectively quite nice.  Comparatively, however, it was a palace of epic proportions.  Spending a night there made me feel like a real person again.

We slept in until 7 and hit the road shortly after 8.  We stopped for our typical roadside peanut butter and jelly somewhere in Wyoming, where we watched this rainstorm sweep across the open range.  Later, we passed by Sinclair, Wyoming, a town that exists solely within the boundaries of an oil refinery and looks like the movie sets for Brazil and Mad Max got together and had a post-apocalyptic baby. 

Finally, around 3 in the afternoon, we crossed the border into Utah.  After four solid days of driving, I was actually grateful to be there, if only because it meant I could soon stop driving hundreds of miles each day.  Much to my pleasure, northern Utah is actually a really pretty place.  We drove past Bear Lake before turning south into a canyon that would lead us to our new town.  Actually, we first turned south onto a side road that quickly turned into a gravel road and then a pock-marked dust road because the GPS seemed to think this was a reasonable detour.  Once we found the real road, the canyon was beautiful.  There was a lot of precipitation this past winter and spring, so the river was rushing alongside the road and everything in sight was a different shade of green.  I was actually happy to get stuck behind a truck hauling a camping trailer, because it gave me an excuse to slow down and take in the view.  

Bear Lake - Much more impressive when you're not trying to take a picture and drive a car at the same time.

Driving through Logan Canyon

 We stayed in a hotel the first night, and went out for dinner in town, where we got a crash course in the twisted labyrinth of Utah’s liquor laws  (which could be a rant in and of itself).  The next morning we signed the lease for our apartment and unloaded the bare essentials we had hauled out in our cars.  Thus began our 10-day stint of suburban camping while we waited and waited, and waited still, for the movers to deliver our stuff.