We had been planning to take some time off the road for several months and make a visit to Minnesota to visit my dad and stepmom. So that’s where we are today. A few days of visiting then we’re hitting the road… this time with them. We have a week long road trip planned that will take us thru Wisconsin, to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, down thru lower Michigan, a stop in Toledo, Ohio for a couple days, then back to Winona. We’re making a big, fifteen hundred mile circle with the intentions of visiting family, friends, and just a few old places we’ve been to before and new places we haven’t seen yet. Basically this trip is in typical Jorge and Rhonda fashion…. We’re playing it by ear and going where the wind blows us. It ends in Toledo with a Palenske family reunion. That’s my dad’s side of the family. We’re a small bunch but expecting around 25 people and it should be a fun time for us all.
We were more than happy to put the hot Houston summer behind us and make our move up to Columbus, Ohio. When we got there in the middle of the night, we were surprised by how cool it was – or maybe it just felt cool after spending so much time in Texas. In any case, it was the middle of the night when we got to downtown Columbus and we gave the truck and generator a break by just sleeping with the windows open. What a relief that was! We had been planning to take some time off the road for several months and make a visit to Minnesota to visit my dad and stepmom. So that’s where we are today. A few days of visiting then we’re hitting the road… this time with them. We have a week long road trip planned that will take us thru Wisconsin, to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, down thru lower Michigan, a stop in Toledo, Ohio for a couple days, then back to Winona. We’re making a big, fifteen hundred mile circle with the intentions of visiting family, friends, and just a few old places we’ve been to before and new places we haven’t seen yet. Basically this trip is in typical Jorge and Rhonda fashion…. We’re playing it by ear and going where the wind blows us. It ends in Toledo with a Palenske family reunion. That’s my dad’s side of the family. We’re a small bunch but expecting around 25 people and it should be a fun time for us all.
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Another busy week has flown by. We made the trip to Kansas City easily but once we finished, our dispatcher said he had some trailers over near Los Angeles that needed to get to New Jersey as soon as possible. He wondered if we could help out by driving it to at least St. Louis. Since we’re soon taking a couple weeks off, we thought we may as well pick up an extra run so we agreed to do it. Once we handed the trailer off to another driver in St. Louis, we had to get to Houston for this weekend’s move of ‘Wicked’ to Columbus, Ohio. The move from LA to St. Louis is mostly along the I-40. If I had a nickel for each time we’ve run up and down this road from coast to coast, I could buy a tank of fuel. I know what is on nearly every exit from Barstow, California to Oklahoma City. With our old company, this was our regular route. So much so we’d notice every new billboard, new business, and have learned where to find the rare green and grassy spots for Rocky. This interstate was built to replace the old ‘mother road’ – Route 66. A lot of the old road was actually paved over with interstate but parts of it still exist. It’s one of my favorite subjects and I love to look at the old pictures of what surely must have been a hazardous ride from Chicago to LA. There is a Route 66 magazine I love to get my hands on when I can find it. It regularly points out things that I would have never noticed and have nearly blended back into the desert landscape. I imagine how hot and dusty and long the trip must have been. Afterall, it’s a long ride even in an air-conditioned, air-ride, semi truck. The old road was full of little oddities that people would advertise to capture a few dollars from the travelers pasting thru their towns. Things like rattlesnakes, buffalo, and even jack rabbits must have been attractions for Midwesterners that may have never seen them. The interstate isn’t much different today. Have you ever seen the movie “Cars”? It’s a great movie pretty much based on the story of Route 66. I’ve taken a lot of pictures this week while driving on yet another trip down this road. Since New Mexico has the majority of the preserved sections of the old road, most of the pictures are from there. The first six pictures are all from a little Indian tourist trap that sits a the Arizona/New Mexico border. Click on them to enlarge and see the captions. The truck was doing some goofy things on our trip to Austin so we decided once we finished there and got to where we’d pick up the next show in Dallas this weekend, we’d put it in the shop and get a couple items fixed. Plus that way we could check into a hotel and wouldn’t have to sit in hot Dallas in the truck, running the generator and air conditioning 24/7 to barely keep cool. We got there on Wednesday and didn’t have a thing to do until Sunday. They got our cruise control working right away but made a mountain out of a molehill on another small issue we almost weren’t even going to mention to them. At one point, they were trying to fix things that weren’t even broke when we took it in there. They finally called us to let us know it was all working but not before we had to pay $1500 to get it back! As one service manager recently told me... big trucks = big bucks. And of course today the truck is doing the same exact thing it was before we took it in. Hmmmm…. Those of you who know us well, know we are constantly losing everything. Nothing is sacred and is at risk of disappearing at any moment. Last week we stopped to fuel and as long as we were stopped, I gathered up the trash for Jorge to toss in the can. He did. About eight miles down the road I started looking for my cellphone to make a call. It was nowhere to be found. Jorge’s cellphone only exists so I can call mine when it’s lost. I tried to call it to no avail. We could not hear it ringing at all. Finally we came to the conclusion that it must have fallen in that trashbag we had just left back at the last truckstop. Now we’re about ten miles down the road and decided to turn around and go check on it. When we got back to the trashcan Jorge had thrown the bag in, I called my phone again. Sure enough…. The can was ringing!! That was last week… this week I left it in a taxi which thankfully hadn’t moved yet before Jorge was able to run back and check for it. Does anybody know if they make anything to improve your memory? We are leaving Dallas as I write this and heading to Kansas City, Missouri. We’ll be there by 8am to load in ‘Dream Girls’ at the theater there. It’s back to hot Texas after that as we have to be in Houston by next weekend. Not too much going on with us this week. It’s been much sitting around and waiting. From Indianapolis, the company sent us to pick up a load in Warren, Michigan. That’s in the Detroit area. We had plenty of time to get there so we were able to make a stop in Englewood, Ohio and get what should be the last of the mail coming to our address there. Plus we got to check on our belongings all packed away in our storage trailer until who knows when. They seem to be just fine. At the back of that trailer, I had the foresight to pack two big tubs of clothes – winter and summer. That way I don’t have to go digging too deep at the change of seasons to find what I need. To everything else packed in that trailer, there is no rhyme or reason. I'd never find anything if I were to look for it. At least I can find my clothes or grab some different ones for a change. From Englewood, we headed north up towards Michigan. We were able to have lunch with some family in Toledo. The next day, we stopped at one of my old Lutheran day schools I had attended as a child. Incredibly, we found one of the teachers that was fresh out of college when I was there, still teaching. I attended this school in Monroe from first to fifth grade so it had been many years since I had seen the old place. The cornerstone on the church that is connected to the school said 1968 and I remember clearly being there when it was set into place as the church was being built. So that was a fun trip down memory lane for me. We had to wait for it but finally our load in Warren was ready and we headed down to Atlanta. We started out at 7pm in Michigan and at exactly 9am we were dropping it at its destination in Georgia. We amaze ourselves sometimes how quickly we move around the country. Today finds us in Charlotte, NC picking up a load tomorrow morning that will have us over near Austin, Texas on Thursday. Then up to Dallas for some more work on Sunday. It’s hotter than blazes here in North Carolina so I’m sure not looking forward to what I’m sure will be some miserably warm and humid days in Texas. Oh well… at least it’s not snowing! We’ve put some miles on the truck the past couple weeks. From San Francisco we drove back to Las Vegas. We picked up scenery from a show that had been playing at the Mandalay Bay and brought it back from whence it came, Indianapolis. That’s also where we saw this year’s fireworks display just as we were entering town. We waited a day in Indy then headed up to Warren, Michigan where we’ll pick up a load going to Atlanta this weekend. |