June 2008 Archives

Every now and then, you hear of something that is so good, so fantastic, that it amazes you that everybody's not talking about it. This is one of those situations

It's minor league baseball, Brooklyn Cyclones (Mets affliliate) vs. Staten Island Yankees. Ninth inning. The Yanks bring in a relief pitcher. But this isn't any relief pitcher. He's ambidextrous. That's right - the elusive switch-pitcher.

This guy was just drafted out of Creighton last week, so it must've been his first professional appearance. The Mets knew exactly what the situation called for - a switch-hitter

That's right - switch-pitcher versus switch-hitter. And hilarity ensues.

The pitcher puts the glove on his left hand.  The batter moves to the left-handed side of the plate. The pitcher then switches the glove to his right hand. The batter switches to the right-handed side of the plate. Repeat. The dance goes on.

And yes, we have video:

... but I finally got the pics up from the third and fourth days of the trip.  Sorry for the delay - no good excuse, really.

Photos from June 10 can be found here, and photos from June 11 are here.

The highlights (note the last picture - I was worried we had driven in one 2500-mile circle):

Nicole had her first day working at Yahoo's New York office yesterday, and I had an interview at KickApps, a social networking software company, two blocks away. So we decided to meet for lunch. We met about noon in Bryant Park, just in front of her office, and were walking to a Japanese place when a guy passing us says, 'Josh? Is that you?'

It took me a minute to place him: Jackson Bell, former reporter at the Glendale News-Press. Just about the last person I expected to run into. We worked together there about five years ago. He left a few years ago and moved to Paris, to go to culinary school at Le Cordon Bleu. 

Turns out that he just moved to New York two weeks ago, and is starting today at a fancy New York restuarant, Oceana. Small world.

The interview was great, by the way. It went really well, and I really liked the people at KickApps, and I like what they do.  I have a few more interviews scheduled for this week, and I'll write more on the job search when I know more later this week.

So we've been back in New York for four full days now, and I've had some time to reflect on the five days we spent cramped in the cab of a truck making our way to a new life. Here are some final thoughts:

1) We were amazingly lucky. Everywhere we went, it seems, was hit by storms, floods and tornadoes either two days before we got there or two days after we left. As we drove out of Oklahoma City, we commented to each other about the storm clouds settling in over the city. We drove east into beautiful weather, then watched on the news that night about storms pounding Oklahoma.  It was the same thing in Illinois.  Seems like we missed swimming cross-country by an inch.

2) I'd like to do this again some day, just not in a truck.  Before we left, we made a plan.  We bought a book called Roadfood, which tells you good and interesting places to eat on a roadtrip. We picked out lunch and dinner spots for most days of the trip. That was going to be our motivation - a good, unique meal that will give us a taste of local flavor at each stop. 

There were two things I didn't really anticipate. First of all, I thought we'd be driving 8 to 10 hours a day, based on an average speed of about 70-75 miles per hour.  That was impossible in this truck. Our average speed was probably about 60. That tacked 2-3 hours onto each day, which means we were arriving at our destinations pretty late, and we were pretty exhausted. Often, we just wanted to curl up in our hotel room and not bother going out for a meal.

The second thing I didn't anticipate is how difficult the rig would be to park.  I've written about this in the past on this blog, but to be blunt, it was a bitch.  Everywhere we went, we had to think about the parking situation.  Is there truck parking? Would we be able to maneuver the truck and trailer?  More often than not, the answer was no.  One day, we saw a sign for Wendy's on the freeway, and thought that sounded good for lunch.  We called from our cells to ask if they have truck parking. This conversation ensued:

Wendy's woman: "You want what kind of burger?"
Me: "Truck parking. I want to know if you have truck parking."
WW: "Truck burger? I don't think we have that."
Me: "No. We're driving a truck. We want to know if we can park it. So we can come inside and eat."
WW: "Oh, no, we don't have that."

The Wendy's Woman (truck burger? seriously?) was probably the second-most-stupid woman I dealt with on the trip. No. 1 goes to Barb at the Flying J in western Pennsylvania. This was Wednesday night.  We wanted to put gas in our truck, as many people are want to do at a gas station. I went inside, handed my credit card to Barb, asked her to activate Pump 19, then went back outside. Waiting behind me in line was a woman attempting to return a $500 GPS unit.  I pumped about $130 worth of gas, then went inside to pay.  One problem - while I was outside, Barb had accidentally swiped my credit card, instead of the woman's, and credited it $500 for the GPS. And she couldn't figure out how to void the transition. So instead, she figured she'd just charge my card $500, off-setting the credit. Except Mastercard saw this crediting/charging as suspicious and declined my card, putting a fraud alert on it.  All of this happened while I was outside. I came in to find a perplexed Barb, trying to figure out what to do. She called her manager. She called Mastercard. Nobody could help her. All along, I was standing there waiting for her to give me my card back - nearly 30 minutes in all. Finally, I said, "Listen, I got to go. You've got the transaction info on the receipts, you should be able to void this. Just give me my card back." She did.

Anyway, I digress. This was all about not being able to get around on our stops. We only went to a few of our planned stops - In N Out in Arizona (the furthest east In N Out they have, so we could have one last double-double), Cattleman's Cafe in Oklahoma City, the Dairy in Ohio - that's about it.  I'd like to do this trip in a car, where we'd have the freedom to explore these places. And hopefully avoid Barb.

So this was our morning today: Wake up at 6:30 in Bedford, Pennsylvania, shower, feed Annie, load up the truck and hit the road. Just like the three days before it. A typical morning for this road trip.

And then this: We drive onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike, heading east from Bedford, and get half a mile up a steep hill when an alarm that sounded like an air-raid siren went off in the cab. Lights flashed. "Low coolant," the digital readout said. Our speed dropped from 45 mph to 35 to 25. The engine had shut down. My eyes are wide. I think I said something along the lines of, "Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy shit!"

I pulled onto the shoulder, but the shoulder wasn't as wide as the truck, and I couldn't get all the way over before the truck rolled to a stop. The trailer we were towing was sticking out into the right lane of the two eastbound lanes. A huge truck turned a corner and was barreling down on us. Thankfully, nobody was in the left-hand lane, and he was able to slide around us.

I closed my eyes for a second and thought, "Please God, let this work." Then I turned the ignition off, waited about 10 seconds, and turned it back on. Then I hit the gas. The big truck lurched forward. 

We drove slowly - about 20 miles per hour - for another two miles to the next rest stop. Thankfully it was so close. We called Penske, and they had a mechanic there in 25 minutes to fill the coolant. These trucks eat through coolant in the hills, Kevin the mechanic told us.  Well, now we know. (See that head peaking over the engine in the above photo? That's Kevin adding coolant.)



The truck was problem-free for the rest of day, and we rolled into New York at about 3:30. I'm in Mt. Kisco now, sitting next to my dad as I type this.  Five days and 2,923 miles later, we've made it across the country. It wasn't what I expected - the days were longer, it was more grueling than I thought it would be, and we didn't have the time or the energy to see much besides the Interstates - but it was fun.  I'll write more about that last part tomorrow. But we made it safe and sound, and we did it without killing each other or our puppy. I'd say that's pretty good...

We dropped off the trailer in Elmsford, NY this afternoon before heading to my parents house, where we'll stay until we find an apartment.  Tomorrow, we unload the truck into a storage unit and turn that in, too, officially ending the trip. But this blog will stay alive. It's been fun to write, and I'll keep contributing. So don't think that you should stop reading just because we stopped driving. 

Photos from today after the jump. I still need to update photos from the previous two days, and will probably do that tomorrow.

Yes, I've posted some photos.  Not all of them. Just the ones from the first two days of the trip. So go back to the blog entries from those days and you can see the pics.

Or just click here for the first day, and click here for the second day.  Scroll down for the pics. The rest are coming soon...

We just arrived in Bedford, Pennsylvania, a small town in the Allegheny Mountains in western Pennsylvania. We drove through five states today - Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania - and are less than 350 miles from my parents house in Mt. Kisco, New York.  So close.

Driving through Indiana was interesting. Just four days after massive storms flooded much of the state, the weather was beautiful and the freeways were wide open.  We were initially going to drive further south to avoid the flood areas, but my brother did some research and told us that all the roads were open, so we stuck to the original route.



The devastation was pretty bad. We drove through miles of farmland that was completely flooded, crops ruined, soil spoiled (above).  At one point, we saw a farmer surveying his land, standing in the middle of a field of some now-dead crop, hands on hips, just shaking his head.  Pretty awful.



We stopped for lunch at a place called Young's Dairy in Yellow Springs, Ohio. The chicken sandwich was forgettable, but they're known for their ice cream, and we got a vanilla malt and a chocolate shake. They were INCREDIBLE.  If you ever happen to be in western Ohio, I highly recommend it.

Speaking of Ohio, we drove through Columbus today. We blasted The Victors the entire time.

Photos are coming, hopefully tonight. But no promises...

Update: Photos after the jump

Updated: Photos added, including a bunch after the jump.

So today was supposed to be the easy day - a 500-mile drive to St. Louis, check into the hotel room relatively early, catch up on photos and blogging, all good. Right?

Well, here's what really happened:

The day started off great. We got up at 6:30 as usual, showered, had breakfast, walked the dog and hit the road by 8. We made great time in the morning, got through Tulsa and into Missouri. It was going so well, we decided to push it past St. Louis. We looked at a map and picked Effington, Illinois as our stopping point, about 80 miles past St. Louis. We'd get a head start on the next day's miles, and we still figured we'd get to the hotel by 7 p.m. - not too late.

We called a Best Western in Effington and asked the Big Three Questions:
1) Do you have rooms for the night?
2) Do you have parking for trucks?
3) Do you allow dogs?
We then asked if we needed to make reservations for the night, or if they had enough availability that we could just roll in. We prefer that, in case we want to drive further or less.  They assured us they had plenty of rooms for the night. All good.



Then we hit St. Louis, where the Construction Gods of Missouri decided that the best time to shut down an entire freeway would be, oh, I don't know, how about rush hour?  We hit a wall of traffic (above) at about five o'clock, two miles shy of the on-ramp to Interstate 70. We were on I-270, which split into I-70 and I-64. Except I-64 was shut down. So those two miles? It took us a full hour.  Even in LA, they know not to shut down entire freeways for construction during rush hour. 



Still, we cleared the traffic by about 6 o'clock, got a great view of the Arch (above) as we drove by it, and headed east. All good - we should still be at the hotel by 7:30 or so. We stopped for gas and dinner at a cute little pump-and-munch about 30 miles east of St. Louis, called Funderburks 66. It's the kind of place that gives you a bumper sticker with your gas and food.  Seriously.  We sat outside with Annie and had a relaxing dinner, enjoying beautiful weather. Again, all good.

We got to the Best Western at about 8, and everything turned upside down. First of all, you should know that parking a 26-foot truck that's towing a car is not an easy task. You've got to find the right spot. So we decided to circle the hotel, since the parking lot appeared to go all the way around. Except it didn't actually go all the way around. Which means we had to reverse the truck. Not an easy task.

Twenty-minutes later - and a minor mental meltdown by me - Nicole had taken over the driving duties and successfully turned the truck around. Now, we're frustrated, tired and just want to get into the hotel room. So we park out front in a spot that we think will work, walk up to the front desk - and find out that they sold the last room 20 minutes earlier. And there are no other hotels in Effington that have truck parking and allow pets.  And the next-closest hotel was 30 miles away. 

The meltdown continues. We drive 30 miles, frustrated and tired.  We call ahead to a Quality Inn in Casey, Illinois, ask the big three questions, and are told they don't have truck parking, but they're right next to a Hardee's that does.  We make a reservation.

We get here about 9:30, parked in the Hardee's parking lot - and discovered that while the Quality Inn was right next door, there was a fence and a marsh separating the two, thus making it impossible to simply walk from the Hardee's parking lot to the hotel. So we dragged our suitcase, Annie's crate, the laptop and Annie on a 10-minute walk to the hotel. .  Then we had to wait 20 minutes in the lobby because there's a line to check in. A line! In Casey, Illinois!  At 10 o'clock on a Tuesday night! What are these people doing here? We have no clue.

Finally, we're here. It's 10:30 at night, we have to be up in 8 hours, we're exhausted and frustrated.  Our short day turned into a very, very long day.

So no, there are no pictures. There won't be any pictures, at least not today. And I won't promise any tomorrow. Who knows what the Road Trip Gods have in store for us?

Update: Photos are now after the jump.

UPDATED: Pictures added after the jump



Just a few minutes after driving over the  New Mexico-Texas border, about two miles away from Stuckey's, our lunch place of choice, Nicole starts freaking out.

"Oh my god," she said, "Annie's peeing!"

Sure enough, she was.  Ann Arbor, our five-month-old cockapoo puppy, had drunk a lot of water since our last stop at a rest stop in New Mexico, and she just couldn't keep it in.  Nicole picked her up, cutting her off, but the damage was done - a puddle had formed on the bench in between me and Nicole, and it was sliding towards my seat. I was driving the big truck - I couldn't do anything about it. So yes, I drove the rest of the day with a pee stain on my ass.

But I thought it was a fitting tribute from Ann Arbor to the state that pronounced 'Proud home of George W. Bush' on the welcome sign.

Oklahoma was an interesting state. Not too far after we crossed the Texas-Oklahoma border, we saw a sign telling us we were entering 'Apache-Navajo Nation' or something along those lines, and a sobering thought struck me: We were driving through ground zero of one of the most atrocious periods in America's history. This is Trail of Tears territory.  Yet today, there is nothing -- at least nothing visible to somebody driving through the state - to commemorate or remember what our government did to the area's original inhabitants.  There were tons of Route 66 museums, tons of kitschy 'Cherokee Trading Post' souvenir shops, but that's about it.



But once we were in Oklahoma City, we had a terrific steak dinner at Cattleman's Cafe. This is the kind of steak place that puts a mural on their back wall of men in suits on horses herding a group of cows - just so everybody knows exactly where their dinner came from.  Fantastic.

It's late, and we're going to sleep. We're off to St. Louis tomorrow. I'm two days behind on photos now, but tomorrow is our shortest day - about 500 miles - and we don't have a time change, so we should get there at a decent hour, and I should have time to catch up.  Nicole may join the blog fun to write about Cattleman's Cafe, because she's the foodie in this marriage. 

UPDATED: Photos now after the jump...

So I had all of these ideas for blog entries I wanted to write as we made the trek through Arizona to New Mexico. But it's 10:30 at night, we've been driving for about 13 hours and I'm pretty beat. So I'll give you the highlights.

The highlight: A gorgeous sunset near the Arizona-New Mexico border turned the red rock cliffs orange and purple.  Very, very pretty.

The crises three:
1) Our portable GPS broke. Luckily, I have a GPS-enabled phone and recently put navigation software on it as a backup for this trip. It's actually been great. 
2) Our cigarette lighter splitter broke, which temporarily disabled our iPod.  We were using an FM transmitter to listen to the iPod, but it ran on a cigarette-lighter power cord.  When the splitter broke, we gave priority to the phone charger, since the phone is now doubling as our GPS. The gas station at our next stop was out of AAA batteries, so we had to drive about half the day without any good music.
3) We almost ran out of gas. Seriously.  It was a scary moment.  We were driving north on narrow, two-lane highways, cutting from the 10 to the 40. When we got off the 10, we had about a quarter of a tank. We never imagined that the next gas station would be 110 miles away.  It was. And when we were 105 miles and on fumes, we didn't know there would be a gas station coming up. We were near panic, then like an oasis rising from the desert, we see a gas station. Yes, we overpaid. But we were glad to do it.



Family land: Years ago, my sister-in-law, Rachel, bought land in Joseph City, Arizona on ebay. Seriously. I believe we were the first people in the family - Rachel included - to lay eyes on Joseph City.  It's bigger than I expected - it actually has two exits off I-40 in eastern Arizona.  There's a big power plant. And lots of trailer parks. And not much else. 

Finally, we arrived in Grants, New Mexico, where we'll sleep for about seven hours then head out for Oklahoma City.

I'll add photos soon, if my crappy laptop decides to actually load them in the next few minutes. Otherwise, it's sleep, and we'll add photos tomorrow....

Especially if the big-ass truck is a Penske, U-Haul or Budget. Because that means the driver probably hasn't driven too many big-ass trucks.

Here was the situation on the 10 Freeway yesterday: We were moving along nicely on a long, flat stretch, got the big truck all the way up to about 65 miles per hour -- and a car in the lane next to us blows out a tire. This person thinks, perhaps logically, that she must get off the freeway ASAP. So, after slamming on her brakes to slow down to a crawl, she moved into our lane in front of us.

Bad idea. A bad tire almost became a crushed car. In our only scary moment of the day, pieces of rubber flew towards us as I slammed on the brakes, not sure if the giant truck - towing a car, mind you - would slow down in time to avoid crushing this little piece of junk (I don't remember what kind of car it was, but it was clearly a piece of junk). Thankfully, the it did, and I'm here to blog about it. But it's a lesson you should all take heed of: Don't cut off the big-ass truck.

We set our alarm for 7 a.m., but I woke up earlier, at about 6:30. I was full of nervous energy. The movers we hired to load the truck - Ray and Marc of Ray's Moving Help - were coming at 8, and we had some last-minute packing to do before they arrived.

Everything was planned out. I had picked up the truck on Thursday, and timed it to take advantage of the street cleaning. There's no parking in front of our building from 8 to 10 a.m., so I arrived with the truck right at 10, and got the perfect parking space. 

We reserved a 22-foot truck, but Penske upgraded us to a 26-footer. The truck was huge - bigger than we needed - but brand new, with cruise control, a CD player, the works.  It seemed pretty comfortable, which is important, because this truck will be our home for the next week.

It took Ray and Marc about 2 1/2 hours to load everything we owned into the truck.  It was pretty amazing - they were fast, efficient and loaded everything in nice and tight. The best 200 bucks we spent. 

We took off at about noon, stopping at Penske to have the car trailer attached. The truck was easy to drive, but it doesn't go very fast when fully loaded. Once it gets going, it can get up to 65 or 70, but it takes a while to get there. And on an uphill, don't expect it to go more than 45 or so.

The engine is loud - very loud - but it seemed to soothe Annie, our five-month-old cockapoo. She slept for much of the trip, and spent some time wandering around the cab and sitting on Nicole's lap. 

This drive was the shortest of the trip - only 150 miles. We're staying two nights in Palm Springs, going to a friend's wedding while we're here, then heading out for the heart of the trip - 600 miles per day for five days, New York or bust. So tune in here to hear more about the trip and observations from the road.

More photos after the jump.  -->

Welcome to Big Yellow Truck, a blog about, you guessed it, a big yellow truck. Except it's really about more than that. It's about the cross-country journey of me, my wonderful wife and our five-month-old puppy, who are moving from Los Angeles to New York in a Penske truck. Yes, it's big and yellow - 26 feet long, and trailing a car to boot.

Right now, we're in Palm Springs, stop one on this journey.  We're here for a wedding, and we'll spend two nights here before heading to Grants, New Mexico. I'll post tomorrow with details of the first leg of our trip, complete with photos. So check back then, and throughout this week-long adventure. And who knows, maybe Big Yellow Truck will morph into a blog about life as  young couple in New York City, and keep more than a week-long shelf-life.