Cross Country Commute

Well the tour is officially over, but we’re not going to talk about that right now. Why watch the season finale when you have the episodes you’ve missed DVRed? Right? While these are reruns to me, they’re new episodes for all of you.

The last time I wrote, I was in northern California. From there I headed east (obviously). First up was a trip back to Nevada, this time through Reno. Reno doesn’t really look that different from Vegas. After Nevada I made my first trip to Utah (state #44 for me) and spent the night in Salt Lake City. We got there late and left early so I didn’t have any time to explore, but on the way out we drove through Park City where there are still lingering remains from the 2002 Olympics. I love the Olympics and watched as much as I could that winter, so it was really cool for me to see that.

Then it was a long day of driving the entire way across Wyoming. The landscape out there is really interesting at first, but it became less exciting after several hours.

From there we were finally in Nebraska, our most immediate destination. I have only ever been in Nebraska once before. My previous visit was on our Colorado to Michigan whirlwind trip. We stopped at a truck stop in Nebraska. It was freezing and windy. I liked that trip more. This time everything smelled of cow manure. Don’t get me wrong, I tip my hat to farmers and applaud how hard they work to give us stuff we eat every day, but I have no idea how they live in that smell! I guess you get used to it, but it was a rough couple of days for us. When we arrived in the town where we had the show we couldn’t smell it, so we were relieved. The show was in a crowded auditorium that got warmer and warmer as the night went on. We thought we would cool the building by opening the doors, however, the wind shifted just as we did. What started as a hot, sweaty room turned into a hot, sweaty room that smelled like cows. I was not sad to leave.

From Nebraska we continued east to Pittsburgh with a brief stop for some of us in Chicago (see next post). I really don’t remember much of this travel from California. I spent nearly every moment of those days looking for jobs, writing resumes, researching, and making phone calls. I feel like I did a lot of that over the last nine months. I really don’t know where all the time went…