To the ocean on a whim Pt III

So...

We how have 2 dogs and no car. The tow truck picks us up about a half hr later from...surprise! the tow company next door. We are informed that my AAA membership only includes free towing for 5mls. After that, its $9 per mile. Well, that puts us out of money in another 5mls, and still 40mls from Reno.

So what do we do? We call AAA every 5mls to get another tow. All the way to Reno. The truck driver was cool - he left us hooked up and we just had to fill out 9 or 10 charge slips. We did actually have to call every time so that there would be a record of a dispatch. Of course we want the guy to get paid!

He drops us in Reno at a mechanic he said he knows pretty well. The short of it, is that I need a new clutch, my car is old, and so it will be at least 2 days and about $800.

$800??? Gulp. Okay, so what's plan B? Well, there wasn't a plan B since I had no idea my car was going to break. First thing, we check into a motel 6. We sneak both the dogs in, and say that its a single person to reduce the charges as much as we can. We bathe the dogs (they were dusty and disgusting)...and now we've completely blown our cover here, so we are definitely limited to one night. No human could dirty a tub that much.

Meanwhile I make the dreaded phone call to my parents....its not what you're thinking. I didn't ask for money. I called to request that my savings bonds (that have all just reached maturity) be wired to me so that I can pay for the car. I obviously got myself into this mess - even though it wasn't my fault, I still couldn't bring myself to ask for the money. It's just not something I do very well (generally not a bad quality I would say).

This of course leads to many questions. Why? How did that happen? You're WHERE??!?! Why are you in Reno? And so it continues....AND YOU'RE WITH WHO???? Yes, this was the first time I really acknowledged to my parents that I had a boyfriend. Ever*
Eventually, Dad agrees to send me the savings bonds, but cashing them will take a day. I do get the money the next day, and its just enough to pay for the car with about $80 to spare.

At this point, we're wandering Reno looking for something to do, somewhere to stay, and a place for dogs to shit. Not many options for us on any of these fronts at this point. This is where I start to get shady (only a little), creative, and slightly desperate.

First off, we have no clothes really. just what we've been wearing for 4 days now...since we didn't bring extra clothes in our haste to make a romantic getaway. But fortunately, I am not quick to spend for the sake of it, and I still have 2 Old Navy giftcards left from christmas.

We start walking in the direction of an Old Navy according to the phone book, and a cab stops and offers us a ride. We politely decline because we don't have any money. The driver says he'll just take us, we don't need to pay him. He has kids our age and wouldn't want to see them walking around the city. Cool guy! So he takes us to Old Navy where we buy some clothes and a few dog leashes. I never thought I would buy a doggy accessory at Old Navy, but this time it was handy**.

Here I decide to pull an old reservations trick to get us a hotel room...and not just any hotel room - a NICE hotel room. I call the Atlantis Hotel & Casino.

Me: I would like to book your room - the $59 weekday special
Agent: I'm sorry, I don't see that here
Me: well, its advertised
Agent: Okay, I apologize but it doesn't look like its available anymore.
Me: Could you please check with your manager? You have advertised this rate, and it says "offer valid until March 1"
Agent: Can I place you on hold?
Me: Sure

a few minutes pass...

Agent: M'am, we will be happy to honor that rate for you.

And so we make our reservation, and slowly make our way to the hotel. We chose this one in particular because we could see it from the pay phone. Ha ha!

We hadn't really considered how we were going to get the dogs into this giant hotel, but we managed. While I checked in, Gobbler ran the dogs around the city block several times. Being that they were puppies, this was enough to exhaust them thoroughly. I come out with our key, we bundle the dogs in our winter jackets and throw them under our arms. Honestly, it really just looked like a bulky winter jacked. Not bad considering we were concealing 20lb rottweiler puppies!

We have to make our way through a huge casino to get to the elevators...the fact that we made it through this gauntlet is testimony to our success! The black dog (later to be named Drake)'s tail starts to fall out as we reach the elevator...but we get in without any other riders.

We readjust - careful not to reveal the dogs since we are most certainly beneath a security camera - and make our way to our room.

It's awesome! Looking back through many travel experiences, this is not the nicest place I've ever been, but it certainly was at that time. And, very conveniently, the carpet is sand colored. This means that since we cannot take the dogs out to pee, if they have an accident, it will go unnoticed. hurrah!

Because the dogs want to play, and are quite loud, we cannot leave the room. We order room service - and while waiting for the delivery, we run the tub and put the dogs in the bathroom so that the water will drown out any noise both ways. It worked.

The next morning, we get out undetected. Success! I check out and our grand total including fees was $64. Not bad.

We make our way back to the shop and pick up the car. It's slightly less than expected: $ 790. Awesome. So what do we decide to do? Take the long way home via Las Vegas. Gobbler was just barely 21 and was eager to see what it was like to be in a casino. We had surely lost our jobs, and had nothing to lose. We didn't have enough money to get home anyway, so we may as well enjoy ourselves.

This is the shady part. After spending $4 in quarters over 16 casinos in Vegas, we make our way home. We run out of money somewhere in Utah, and from it's thievery. We gas and go once, and steal a package of kraft singles from a K-Mart. Not my greatest moment, but we had to do something and this is what Gobbler thought was the easiest. He was right. It was pretty damn easy. Too easy. I know there is bad karma out there with my name on it. Maybe it's already come and gone, maybe there's more on the way. I guess I'll find out.



It wasn't a romantic getaway, but it was my first REAL travelling experience. My first time hitchhiking, first time stranded, first time in 3 states, and a whole week of really getting to know someone the way you only can in times of desperation and at an age where the world is still your oyster. I can't say that this is the way I prefer to do things. But I can say I would do it again, I'm glad I did it, and even though we never made it to the ocean, the adventure and non-predictability of it all drew me in completely. The lifestyle of a traveller is like a drug - a very serious, costly and addictive drug. I don't regret a minute of it. This initially harmless trip to the Oregon coast changed my life course completely, and I am so grateful.







* Even though I had been with him nearly 6mos at this point, its just not something I have ever really been comfortable talking with them about.
** Up until then, we had been using twine we found in the dumpster at the auto repair shop.
***

Author's Note

I know I said these would be brief, but it turns out my first attempt is pretty long. Sorry!

I will write each one with as much or as little detail that is necessary to give you the whole picture. Those are the only stories worth reading anyway :-)

To the ocean on a whim, Part II

So unfortunately, with only 30mls to go to our destination, we turn around and head back towards the rockies. We aren't to disappointed, because it was a fun few days, but it would have been nice to see the ocean. At this time in my life, I had only seen the Pacific ocean once when I was 7, so I was more disappointed than Gobbler.

About 6hrs into the journey back, we find ourselves driving through northeastern California. Unfortunately I cannot be more specific because there is NOTHING in this part of Cali. We are in a desert, the closest city is Reno, NV. Gobbler is driving (my 15yr old standard Honda) and says, quite casually, that he thinks we may lose 4th gear before we get back so we'll have to go easy on the clutch.

I don't know what this means. I know how to drive my car. I don't know how to identify problems, fix them, or prevent them for that matter. I don't even know what it means to "lose" a gear.

Gobbler explains it means that the gear doesn't work anymore, so we would be limited to the next gear until the clutch is repaired - which, yes, can be done.

Phew. Well then I don't care. I just want to get back to Colorado, and figure it out from there.

About 10 minutes later, we are going up a good sized hill (particularly in this flat landscape), and Gobbler says that it looks like we've just lost 4th gear - oh - wait. Actually, we've lost all the gears. The car rolls to a stop and we push it to the side of the road*

Here we are in the middle of the desert in California without having seen a car in at least a half hour, and we are stranded. We need to get home in 14hrs, and we don't have a vehicle and have at least 800mls to go. This is a problem.

Gobbler suggests hitchhiking. I have never done this before, and when you're from the midwest, hitchhiking is a well known way to get killed. People just don't do that unless they are trying to escape from prison or they are totally out of their element. All the same, they don't get picked up. So to me, this sounds like a BAD idea. However, we don't exactly have any options**

I reluctantly stand beside my knight-in-shining-armour-with-a-death-wish as he sticks out his thumb. He insists that we will have better luck if I stick out my thumb, because people are more likely to stop for women. After 30min without a vehicle even acknowledging Gobbler***, I agree to give it a shot. Gobbler hides down in the brush, and a dusty, very old, blue aerostar minivan passes us...but then, after about 150yds or so, slows down to a stop and pulls over. We run after the van - hurrah! we have a ride. But where do we want him to take us? Gobbler requests the first place with a phone when he asks where we need to go. I guess this was the best thing to say, but I didn't even know who we were going to call.

Judge Ito, keeper of the aerostar, drops us off at the next dot on the map: Doyle, CA. What is in Doyle? A gas station, a towing company and the remnants of a few motels. It has the classic look of an old west town that no longer functions due to the labryinth of interstates that have popped up in the last 50yrs.

I realized at some point on the drive that I had a AAA card that my parents had gotten me while I was living at home. I know there is some towing benefit, but I don't know what it is. Once we arrive in Doyle, we go to the towing office to see what they can offer us with the card. They inform us that we have to call AAA, and they will then send the closest towing agent in the area (probably these guys). We go to the gas station 20ft away and call AAA. After answering enough questions to apply for a passport, they inform us that help will arrive in 45min to an hour - from Doyle Towing!!! hahaa....

As we wait for our tow truck, a little girl, maybe 7yrs old runs up to us, barfoot- she's screaming "will you take my dogs? will you take my dogs?" She's in tears and pointing at a box by the wall. She's insisting that we need to take her puppies with us or her Dad is going to kill them. Gobbler nicely tells her that if she promises to take care of them and behave herself, he's certain her father won't kill the puppies. Right at this moment, a giant of a man - at least 6'7" with a 10 gallon cowboy hat - comes around the corner. He's got a shotgun slung over his right shoulder****.

He looks right at us and says, "I've got too many kids. I don't need no damn dogs. You can take 'em, cause they ain't stayin' here"

Clearly the man means business, there's a little girl crying, and we love dogs. Well, we agree to take one. I don't know why our bleeding broke hearts thought that without a vehicle and 800mls from home we should add a dog to the mess, but we did. We walk up to the box to choose our mut, and we can't do it. We can't just take one. We now have 2 (very large) puppies, a broken down honda and $52.

to be continued.....


*for this reason I love standard vehicles. pushing is easy.
**no cell phone yet....back in the day
***I can admit it now - he was a bum, he looked like a bum, and I wouldn't have picked him up either. Even now, when I generally will pick up a hitchhiker in certain area where its generally acceptable
****I know, this sounds just a little too Hollywood, but its the honest truth. There's no other way to describe the man

To the ocean on a whim, Part I

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Most people have someone they think of as their first real love. A person that probably shaped you partly into your adult self, helped you over the bridge of your teen years into what you've become. To different people this means different things, but I think many can relate and picture that person in their mind.

Gobbler* was that person for me. This isn't a story of how we met, why we fell in love or why our relationship ultimately deteriorated. This is a story of how hopelessly romantic and irrational decisions leave you with a busted car on the side of the road with 2 dogs and, in the end, no money.

Gobbler and I decided one night while reading in bed that it would be a fabulous idea to go see the ocean. I should have prefaced this by saying that we were living in Colorado - so instantly, YOU probably see the irrationality with wanting to just get in the car to "see the ocean". Blinded by love - or at least what the movies have led this generation to believe love should be - we did not consider the potential problems we could, and ultimately did, encounter.


My logic was, "hey, we don't have to work for 3 days!" I am a number cruncher by nature** and so in my sing-song-I'm-in-love logic, 1200 miles divided by 80mph got us there in a mere 15hrs! Not bad! And then we would have to drive back, but we could easily swap drivers to make it work. By these calculations, we had enough time to see the beach, visit Gobbler's mom, eat at Wendys (Gobbler used to work there and wanted to visit. I can't think of any other reason why we would make PLANS to go to Wendys), and turn around and come back.


The fatal flaw of a number cruncher - and this is probably true no matter what profession they have - is that we typically fail to acknowledge or plan for nature. By nature I mean anything that could happen in the universe to alter the perfect miles-per-hour model I have outlined. Anything that could upset your numbers. And what's even more ridiculous is that typically, something ALWAYS upsets the numbers...and yet we never learn.


We hit the road for the Oregon coast at about 10pm - roughly 30min after the initial idea occurred to us. Enough time to grab a sleeping bag and a few CDs, but that's about all. We are doing okay, until we reach nothern Utah. Rather than taking the interstate, we decide to take a state highway that looks to be a far shorter distance than the interstate. We had already begun to realize that we were not moving through the windy, wintery mountains at 80mph, and therefore we were not on point to follow our beach/rents/wendy's schedule. So the short cut seemed like a good idea.


Note in hindsight: state highways are never faster. never. unless where you're going happens to be on that highway, and even then its probably not faster.



As a result of our little detour, we lose a LOT of time and are roughly 6-7hrs behind when we reach Kalamath Falls, OR. This seems very close to the coast on the map, and I guess it is. In fact, its a 2 lane road almost the whole rest of the way. What I still can't figure out is, even in a fierce blizzard where no one has plowed, how does one get lost on a single road?

Well, we managed. The end result is that our time was cut fatally short, and we had to turn around 30 miles from our destination, for fear of losing our jobs if we didn't show in 2 days.

to be continued....


*I know I said I would use Aliases, but to keep them straight I had to pick something noteworthy to me. I know this is a weird one, don't ask. Its not gross, I just don't plan on alluding to that person's true identity.....(ps thank you to sibling who uses footnotes in her blog, which frankly makes a whole lot of sense so I am copying)

**which I am sure will lead to some of you wondering why I end up broke so often....its hard to explain, but I know where every dollar went -even those that went to waste

Here's the rules

Many people have told me throughout the years that I should write a book about all the interesting things that I have done in my short life (so far). I am not a writer of novels, but user-friendly blog formats like this are something I can wrap my mind around. I have traveled a fair bit. More than most, but certainly less than the hardcore world trekkers that really manage to let go of all sense of stability and do as their heart desires. From these experiences, I have taken away new friends, good stories, some cool souvenirs and, thankfully, no diseases and not a single citation other than a speeding ticket or two.

This blog will consist of (relatively) short, true stories that have happened to me. I will change most of the names, because there are people who prefer annonymity and that's just the right thing to do I guess. I will attempt to use the same aliases from blog to blog