holyoutlaw

Another beginning?

We're here! Yay! We made it.

We got a decently early start and just kept going. After three days of Montana, we were only in Idaho for four minutes. No, really. We entered Idaho at 1:11 p.m. Mountain time and left it at 1:15 p.m. Pacific time. Four minutes! Non stop Idaho!

What?

Whatever.

Anyway, the weather was beautiful, the roads dry, everything went smoothly. Well, except for the rockslide at Snoqualmie Pass. But that wasn't any worse than 520. At its worst.

Well, we're here. Julie's checking in with her parents, and as soon as she's off the phone we're going to head out to a local Indian restaurant.

Tomorrow, R. Twidner comes to stay with us. He's being passed around Seattle fandom and being feted by all and sundry. After Mashiko's Friday and dim sum today, I don't know what we can do to top all that. Maybe take him to Bullwinkle's Family Fun Center with two of Jane's kid friends. Or maybe... nothing at all!

We're left with two long days of driving, and arriving in Seattle Sunday evening, or two moderate days of driving and a short day Monday. We might opt for the easier route, but who knows.

I'm starting to anticipate what all I'll have to do when I get to Seattle. Register for school at PCNW, vote, check in with Anita, thorough housecleaning, etc. Oh well.

We've been keeping a loose scrapbook, and it's been making me think of using something like that to record what I've taken to calling meditation trips. That would be a trip I take on my own, for the main purpose of photographing whatever I want and recording my thoughts. The meditation aspect would be that I wouldn't be in touch with anyone (maybe every other day check in phone calls, if that). On the other hand, the photography part would mean bringing along an awful lot of equipment and dongles. Sometimes it's all the cords and cables and whatnot that make me decide to leave something home, much more than the weight or effort of carrying it around. Part of the reason I left my iPod at home was I just didn't feel like setting it up every night. Hah!

I brought my personal journal downstairs and I was going to do all sorts of deep personal writing. Oh well.

Really, we did. We set the alarm for six, and turned in as soon as the local weather was done.

And the alarm went off. I asked Julie how she felt, and she said immensely tired. So I said another hour's sleep would do us better for the road than an early start.

And here we are. She's been stressed and having a hard time sleeping for weeks, so if she spends the day sleeping, I can spend the day reading. But I think she set the alarm for ten, which is in a minute or two.

Our longest visits in the past have been five days, but the fifth day always involved saying goodbye. Today it's been five days since I got to Madison, and we don't have to say goodbye. Will we feel the membrane when we pass through it, the membrane of being able to stay together longer than we have in the past?

Soon after we left Madison yesterday, "Hounds of Love" came on the tape player, and we both teared up a bit.

Every time I looked at the TripTik this morning, it made me want a spiralbound, narrow ruled notebook and a fine point medium lead automatic pencil. To the point where I wandered into the mall across the street. Well, it had a large and lavish scrapbooking store, but no stationery, paper, or book store. Oh well. So I got some scrapbooking supplies. Julie was impressed. "You should be a suburban housewife, you goofball," she said. Hah! I've already pasted in our first gas receipt. Awwww.

She managed to make her already spotless apartment even cleaner, if you can imagine that. Whew. Her brother said it was cleaner than some apartments he'd moved into. (Same here.)

We met her parents and brothers at Kabul, on State Street, one of her favorite restaurants (you've likely eaten there if you've gone to a Wiscon). It was, as ever, yummy. Her older brother said, "Wait a minute. You live with your ex-wife and your having your girlfriend move in with you both?" and then gasped like he'd chomped on a habanero. I admitted that if Julie had ever written to Dear Abby, her advice would have been clear. Run screaming.

But really, it was a very pleasant dinner. There were pleasant rivers of conversation. No great topics, but in our case, that was for the best. I'm really happy they were all able to join us.

When we left, there was a long round of tearful hugs and goodbyes all around. I reassured her brothers and fathers that I'd take care of her, and her father that he'd done a good job.

After that, it was road trip grocery shopping, top off the gas tank, and one last swelter in the hot tub, drowned cricket and struggling spider notwithstanding (she removed the cricket, I the spider).

Now she's doing some packing while I clatter away here. And after I post, she'll clatter away while I do MY packing. Hah!

Tomorrow, we hope to make it to Fargo, ND, which is five hundred miles. That's quite a push, but we're young and foolish. Well, not young. But still foolish!

Julie's shipping crate got packed today. The masterful job of coordinating was done by Bolo, who managed to get absolutely everything into the crate. Including a few things Julie was convinced she'd have to leave behind: A couch, a credenza, a bookcase, and some other stuff. It was filled top to bottom and side to side. Yee hah!

The other helpers were richardsrussell, her dad, her middle brother, herself, and myself. All in all, despite the heat, it went very well. It took two hours start to finish, including panic and reorganization times. Yeah!

Now we're cleaned off and refreshed. Julie's running one last errand, and after that, it's unplug the phone and hand me the remote control.

I guess this counts as officially Day One of our Zoom Across the Continent.

I'm in Madison right now. I got here at 4, earlier than we'd originally planned. After Julie picked me up, we went to her apartment where I was able to do oh, maybe even five or six minutes of work before I had an asthma attack. Sigh. It's a good thing it was so sudden, because that meant I'd recover quickly, too. The slow slide asthma attacks (as they're called) take days.

So, darn it, we just had to lounge about in the hot tub and what not, then have dinner at Noodles. I know that Noodles is a prosaic local chain, but it's exotic to me. Hah! Julie's back at her apartment doing some more work.

Tomorrow, As We All Know, is crate loading day. Wednesday is Apartment Cleaning Day. Thursday is Hitting The Road Day. And Monday or Tuesday is Arriving In Seattle Day.

I'm very happy to be here and to see Julie. Everything feels much better now. Yeah!

Because it can happen at any time, in any context.

After I click "post entry" I'll be off to the airport. Yeah! I'll have a couple days with my sisters (and brother in law and niblings) in Oak Park, IL, then on to Madison. I'll help Julie pack up her apartment, we'll spend as much time in the hotel hot tub as possible, and the current plan is that we hit the road Thursday. Then it's a zoom across the continent to Seattle.

And then we'll be home.