Notes from the Road

If you have a flat tire on the highway, Iowa is the place to do it. From what I hear, Iowa is filled with Good Guys who are never happier than when they are rescuing drivers in distress. Being rescued by an Iowa Good Guy is much easier than trying to explain to the AAA dispatcher where exactly you are.

I-80 is not Route 66. Route 66 is about novels and legends and TV shows from the 60’s. I-80 is about corn fields and playing “Name that Road Kill”. It’s all beautiful, in its own way, it just doesn’t change… for days.

Rest stops, once you get to Ohio, turn into Service Stops. These are high class rest stops where you can not only use the bathroom and buy something from a vending machine, you can also have lunch and do a little shopping, all in a building almost as nice as Cherry Creek Mall - at least it seems so after traveling for several days. Ahh, Nebraska, Iowa, and the rest of the states along I-80 could use some of these.

There are also “Text Stops”, basically small parking areas with decent phone reception.

We stayed at AirBnb homes for the first nights after we left home. The last two nights, however, we stayed in hotels. We paid a little extra to have the dogs with us, but then, we got a good free breakfast in the morning. This made traveling much easier.

If I ever run an AirBnb, I will make sure there is breakfast food available. I haven’t figured out why every AirBnb doesn’t do this. BnB = bread and breakfast, doesn’t it? Some of the homes had neat amenities (means cool stuff) like a pool table, a jacuzzi, exercise machines, a backyard grill and patio. Not one had any food available for guests for breakfast. Not that we expected a big meal fixed for us, but hey, some cold cereal and milk? Maybe a toaster and some bread and butter?

We brought two of our adult kids along. This has been great except I think Patrick’s getting the short end of the stick when it comes to beds. Places would list beds: 1 queen, 1 full, and 1 couch. Patrick would offer to take the couch. Fine.

We gave away about half our possessions, though it may not seem like it when the two pods arrive on Monday. The previous owner to this house left a whole bunch of stuff here. For the most part, it’s really cool! There’s a beautiful dining room set with a large china closet (big enough for all our fine dishes and Chris’ pipes), a glider rocker and footstool, a bookcase, a coffee table with storage drawers that’s bigger than our closet, a large TV cabinet, two wall clocks, a picture of the beach and a lighthouse, plants and plant stands, artificial plants (several), a queen sized bed, two pellet stoves, a recliner, a small chest freezer, a grill, a snowblower, a lawn mower, many keys that don’t seem to fit anything, two ironing boards, and a cement mixer.

We’ve really appreciated the bed and the dining room set. We also love the glider rocker. I’m sure we’ll appreciate some of the rest of the stuff, too, but not all. When the pods arrive, we’ll have to decide what stays with the house and what goes into the next giveaway.

Update on Monday… We now have internet, though some of the wires will have to be updated before we can do too much. There seems to be a lot of reversals in the way things were wired. We definitely need an electrician out soon anyway. There’s still some knob and tube wiring in the attic that must come out. We also had locks re-keyed, opened bank accounts, and started emptying the pods. One pod won’t open. The driver tried and tried, felt all around to see if something had fallen against the door, and finally suggested we cut the door open. Uh, I want some confirmation on that one. In writing, please.

As we wait to hear how to open the blasted pod - the one where our bed is stowed, we have been moving furniture and boxes and more furniture and more boxes. Thank goodness Patrick came along to help. I’m quite impressed with his ability to lift large boxes of books. We have a lot of them. We still have a little to empty out of the first pod and lots of boxes need to be emptied and places found for the contents.

I suspect we’ll keep busy enough indoors tomorrow while it snows. We’ll have plenty of books to read.