D-Day +1

Woke up late today and didn't get out the door until 8:30a or so. Our truck was still in the parking lot and our cars were whole, so overall, we were off to a good start. Filled up the truck and Megan's car at a gas station down the street from where our motel was and we were on the road a little after 9:00a. We didn't have to negotiate Albuquerque's stupidly laid out road system since I-40 was literally "right there." I was up to 45MPH 5 miles down the highway since we were on the west end of the city and we missed most of rush hour; my morning could have only been made better if the truck had a few extra horses under the hood. Driving across the country in that piece of crap was probably one of the most mentally painful experiences of my life; no kidding, folks.

Driving across the desert on I-40 is about as fun as it sounds, so in other words, it pretty much sucked. There's nothing to look at, the truck doesn't handle uphill at all, and I made it my mission to not use the AC for the duration of the trip in order
to conserve gas and increase our gas mileage. Basically, I had lots of time for some personal reflection while sweating out all of my bodily fluids because I was rocking back and forth in my seat in a futile attempt to make the truck go faster. Things got somewhat interesting in Flagstaff when we tried to find a place to eat but couldn't find anywhere to park the truck+car trailer combination. After driving around and turning the truck around a few times, we gave up and got back on the highway. We found a truckstop a few miles down the road with a built-in Subway, so not stopping in Flagstaff actually worked out in our favor.

The only other "exciting" moment of the day was trying to cross the Arizona/California border. They have a mandatory check point station on the highway that everyone has to go through. I'm assuming that it's the Californian government wanting to make sure no bugs or plant diseases come into the state which could potentially kill all of their crops. Anyway, I get up to the station and the marshal asks me to step out of the truck and open up the back. Since I'm not transporting anything illegal (plants or Mexicans), I happily comply. I open up the back and what's the first thing she finds? Part of the tree I hit when I was backing up the truck at my old apartment. Yes, that's right, a plant. A plant that I said I didn't have when she asked if I was transporting any plants. She sees the small cluster of leaves on the floor, grabs them, and asks me what it is. I nervously laughed and told her it's, "A tree." She said it's okay and tosses it to the ground. After she inspected the inside of my truck she wanted to see in the ice chest I had in the cab. You know, the ice chest that has, among other things, a banana that I can't legally bring into the state of California. I guess she was ready to go home because I opened it up for her and she gave it a casual glance before she let me go about my business.

Crisis averted.

Needles isn't too far away from the state line, so we didn't have much more driving to do. We found our motel without any problems, parked the truck, and got out of the heat. Needles is without a doubt, the hottest place on earth. I think it's actually hotter than hell, which is saying a lot. Needless to say, we didn't want to spend much time outside. Of course, we found out we didn't have much of a choice with that desire because after we parked the truck, we found out that the car tow was broken.

We had to park the truck on the street because there was no where else to park it. I didn't want to leave my car on the car dolly overnight because it would have been a great opportunity to have it stolen. In the process of taking the car off of the dolly, we discovered that the ratchet that locks down the sprocket that tightens the straps that keep the car on the dolly was... broken. This meant that we couldn't secure the car back on the dolly in the morning. Meaning we weren't leaving at 7:00a like we planned if we couldn't get it fixed. We called the truck rental emergency line and they said they would try to get someone out tonight, but it would probably be tomorrow morning before anyone came. It sucked, but at least we figured this out tonight instead of tomorrow. As it turns out, the mechanic made it out tonight and fixed us up before he even called us to let us know he was here. Talk about service, no?

I think the plan at this point is to get out of here early and get in to LA so we can unload the truck and get it back before 6:00p. We'll see how that goes.