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Thursday, June 10th, 2004: Got up at 7am to leave again for Oregon. I’m picking up Emily and Payton and bringing them back to Illinois for the summer. It’s a 3 day drive back which is a pretty long drive for the kids so I’ve removed the passenger seat of my car and I’ve built a table and bolted it into it’s place. This table will hold a TV and Playstation 2 so the kids can play games and watch DVDs on the way home. Hopefully this will make the drive a little easier on them. They seemed to really hate the drive TO Oregon, but that one was 5 days long with no air conditioning so this one should be slightly better. We’re also going to make a pitstop in Montana for a few days which they should enjoy. Here’s a picture…  My drive didn’t get off to a very good start. I got about 90 minutes out of Alton and got a flat tire. Apparently I ran over something and it put a big gash in the side of the tire. This happened just 2 minutes before a Wal-Mart so I’m thinking that Wal-Mart is probably throwing spikes on the interstate in front of their store to help out with business. Curiously enough, Cal got a flat tire on his way to Texas last year and that was in front of a Wal-Mart as well! I pulled into Quiktrip and put the spare tire on and then drove to Wal-Mart. They told me it’d be more than a 2 hour wait to get a new tire. So I found a tire shop nearby and they had it done in just an hour. In the end, I lost about 2 hours of driving time and $70 for a tire. Otherwise, the day was really boring, as expected. I ran into a lot of really bad thunderstorms. The radio kept warning of hail, tornados and damaging winds in Kansas but I managed to somehow miss all of it. I made it to about Cheyenne, Wyoming before stopping at a rest area for the night. I think that was at about 1am. Friday, June 11th, 2004: It was cold last night! I wasn’t really expecting it to be cold since it’s June. The radio said it was in the 30’s so I had the heat on for a few hours. At least my car wasn’t covered with snow like last time, though. I got up at 5am and started driving again. Once again, a boring day. I’ve been listening to a lot of mp3s and a lot of talk radio. Before I left yesterday, I wrote on my back window with window paints which seems to be becoming a tradition with me. This time it says, “HAPPY NEW MONKEY!” and it’s causing nonstop stares as I drive. The stares are more of the “What in the hell…” variety this time. My window from last month simply confused people but I think the confusion this time is much more intense.  While I was getting gas this morning I noticed a guy staring at my window. I said “hi” to him and he said “hi” back to me. I said, “Happy New Monkey.” He didn’t reply and avoided eye contact with me. Nobody has actually asked me what it means yet. They just stare and/or laugh as they drive past me. Right now I’m sitting in a truck stop diner outside of Boise, Idaho, eating waffles, bacon and writing all this. Maybe I’ll add something to the side window before I take off again. Or maybe not. I should reach Bend, Oregon by 8pm tonight which is where I plan to stop and spend the night. I don’t know what I’ll do all day tomorrow. Maybe visit the Saturday Market again or just play around on the net all day. My plan is to pick up the kids at some point and then leave early on Sunday morning. I think Kalispell, Montana is 10 hours away which is where we’re going. Saturday, June 12th, 2004: I got to Bend last night. There were no rest stops that I could find and I didn’t feel like finding a good truck stop to sleep at so I just got a cheap motel for the night. I ended up waking up and leaving the motel at 6:00am or so. In the morning there was some kind of hot air balloon race happening. I sat outside of a Starbucks and played on the net for awhile, then started driving to Albany. I got there around 10 or 11am and picked up the kids. They wanted to get started on the drive so we ended up driving all day instead of hanging around Albany. We made it to Idaho before getting a motel for the night. The kids added some new drawings onto my windows - Payton put some Pac Man ghosts on each side window and Emily wrote “Beep Beep” hoping to make people honk at us. As I was driving through Portland, some guy honked and I looked over. He took his hands off the wheel to give me the peace sign which made his car just about swerve into the next lane. His wife grabbed the wheel to stop the car from going anywhere. Wednesday, June 16th, 2004: I haven’t written much this week because we’ve been busy. We got to Montana on Sunday around 2pm and have been here since then. It’s been cold this week so we haven’t done a whole lot of outdoor things. Yesterday we went on a Geocache in Hungry Horse which involved about an hour of rock climbing. We’ll probably be leaving for Illinois tomorrow morning. Today we went to Norm’s News for lunch, a pottery shop to paint pottery, another geocache in Whitefish that we failed to find and then swimming in the lake by the geocache. Thursday, June 17th, 2004: Me and the kids left The Spessa’s house around noon and drove all day. Right now it’s 11:00pm and we’re in a motel in Hardin, Montana. I went into the office and asked how much a room was and the lady told me $48.00 but she didn’t take credit cards. So I checked my pocket and only had $43.00 in cash. The lady told me that would be enough - she said she would just take the cash and not claim it on her taxes so it’d be like free money. Good thing I’m not an IRS agent! This motel is the worst I’ve stayed in this year…there are extension cords tacked all over the walls instead of receptacles built in, there’s no thermostat on the electric heater and I have to turn it on by turning on the circuit breakers (it’ll probably get really hot tonight!), the paneling is different colors every few feet, the light switches are all in bizarre places and extension cords are running out of my porch light to power my air conditioner and all the other porch lights. At least it’s clean and has cable! Today I drove about 10 or 11 hours which is 1/3 of the trip. Tomorrow I’m hoping to drive from early morning until late at night. I doubt I’ll actually make it to Illinois tomorrow night but I’m a little hopeful. It’s slightly more than 22 hours according to my Street Atlas program but I always seem to do it a little faster than the program suggests. Maybe I can get there at 3am or something. I’ll probably end up in a motel in Missouri though. The kids have been really good in the car today, mostly just watching Futurama DVDs. Let’s hope tomorrow goes well too. Friday, June 18th, 2004: It’s 11:00pm and we’re sitting in a Motel 6 in Mitchell, South Dakota, watching Johnny Bravo. We’ve still got 12 hours to go so I guess I’ll get home around 10:00pm tomorrow night, hopefully a little earlier. I’m tired of driving. Today we got a late start and made a lot of stops. We stopped at a cool place called Wall Drugs in Wall, South Dakota and wasted about 2 hours there. Saturday, June 19th, 2004: We made it home at exactly 8:00pm. The drive was much easier today than it was yesterday. Payton’s quote of the day: “Daddy, how much Pokemon can you read before your head explodes?”
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