Indiana to California on I-80: Day One

Packing up the house, cleaning, etc. Ugh. I'm so, so grateful for all the help we got from our friends and family. Without you guys, I would have set the place on fire.

Then a shocker: My last day at work was on a Wednesday. On Friday, my former employer announced it was going to cut its workforce through buyouts.

Talk about dodging a bullet! I'm not really going to talk about The Indianapolis Star (on the "if you don't have anything nice to say" theory) but there's a lot of good people in a *very* bad situation there, and I feel for them. Good luck, guys.

And it's the Newsroom, dammit, not the Information Center. I'll go to my grave before I start spouting that stupid corporate speak!

Sigh. OK, breathe, breathe ...

And I'm fine now. ;)

Day One

We said goodbye and left Indiana on July 4. Yep, it was Independence Day.

Illinois was the same old, same old. It had the nicest rest stop I've *ever* seen, though -- it was even staffed. My cats thoroughly rejected all the suggestions from the pet books that they come out of their cages and walk around and drink some water every couple of hours and refused to budge. Only Gabriel was brave enough to accept the leash and hop up on a picnic table to look around, but you could tell he wasn't thrilled with the idea.

Stopped at a gas station at the Illinois border that didn't sell Coke products. I didn't think places like that existed. Then we crossed the Mississippi, which was the first time I'd done that by car.

Iowa was hillier than I expected, but there were lots of fields and cows, which is what I did expect. The rest stops there had wifi ... pretty progressive, if you ask me. This trip has taught me how dependent I am on the Internet.

We passed the world's biggest truck stop (or so they claimed) and the International Museum of Wrestling. We were getting tired when we hit Des Moines, so we pulled into a Motel 6 for the night.

The cats kicked up another fuss, so we had to resort to letting them out of their cages and locking them in the bathroom with all the kitty essentials (food, water, litter box) one at a time.

So much for finding cool little restaurants along the way -- we were exhausted, and dinner came from Burger King. A little TV watching with my Whopper Jr. and we crashed.