Let me just start off by acknowledging that when we got to the motel last night I found the damned battery pack for the pump. It was in the pump bag. So, yeah. I'm THAT guy.
We made it as far as Corning last night. We pulled off the road just before 11 and just as delirium was setting in.
Once again Monty woke up every one or two hours last night. At 4 am I finally caved and let Kurt give him a bottle. Today he's eating like a coke head does coke. Frequently and a lot. And he cries if he doesn't get it fast enough. I swear tomorrow he's going to be a pound heavier. Consequently we only have half a bottle left and at least five hours til we get to Seattle. If we don't stop. Which, of course we'll have to.
Speaking of which, I have to pee. Again.
My body is falling apart. I've got a pinched nerve in my right shoulder and some jacked up nonsense happening in my lower back. When I get out of the car after any stretch of travel I hobble for a good ten feet before I can manage to bring myself upright. It occurs to me that if I don't start doing something about this now, I'm going to be in a wheelchair in five years. My 71-year-old father has fewer aches and pains than I do.
Meanwhile, my skin is broken out like a 16-year-old Pizza Hut employee's. The Bugles, Chex Mix, Good n' Plentys, and Cinnamon Bears are probably not doing wonders for my complexion. I have a compulsion any time I'm in a gas station convenient store to buy crap. Also, I get really into truck stop diner food on long hauls. I could feel my skin breaking out as I was jamming biscuits and gravy from The Iron Skillet into my maw this morning Between my old man hobbling and my bepimpled (It's not a word, but face it, it totally should be.) face I am looking SUPER hot, guys. Try to contain yourselves.A road trip seemed like such a good idea when we were mapping it.
We're about 200 miles south of Portland. We just passed a sign that read "Wake up America. Obama is killing us." Maybe that's why he wants us all to have health insurance? We stopped for lunch in Ashland at The Wild Goose Cafe where we had some dangerously good cherry pie and fantasized about buying a house in Ashland and working at Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
We're passing miles and miles of grazing cows. Does it worry anyone else that our meat and dairy cows spend a good deal of time breathing in car and truck exhaust? I don't know. It just seems... gross?
I did an episode (is that what they're called) of Ryan O'Conner's Tell All podcast. You can listen to it at www.tellallpod.com.
Here's what Monty looked like just after we passed from California to Oregon:
Over it.
