Driving to Oregon to pick up the kids

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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.

Happy New Monkey

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?”

Crack Kills

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Sunday, May 16, 2004: Did lots of nothing all morning. I never sleep good so I’ve just been tired all day. Did some video editing and website work. Around 2pm or so I went on a bike ride to Commons Park to place a travel bug in a cache that I’ve already been to. From there I went to Riverfront Park, downtown Alton, Target to buy new headphones since my current headphones are painful and then back home. I think I was gone about 3 hours. Yesterday me and Tricia drove to Carlinville for some relative’s wedding & reception and we were there pretty much all day. I hid out in the hotel’s arcade a lot since they were playing a lot of loud and annoying music. Hrmmm, what else has happened this week…we went to see the movie Envy which wasn’t TOO bad. We also watched Duplex on DVD which I thought was pretty good.

Before I went to Oregon I emptied out my entire room into the guest room, intending to completely finish my room before moving back in. I figure being stuck in the smaller, cramped guest room will motivate me to hurry up and finish it all. Plus I won’t get all my stuff paint splattered and dusty while doing it. I originally planned to paint the room green but Spessa’s mostly wooden home inspired me to try out wood paneling instead. So since I’ve been back I’ve been putting up strips of paneling which is going rather quick. I’ve got 3 walls completely done with 5 walls left to do (the room is shaped weird). I guess about half of it is finished and it looks a lot better than green paint would have, in my opinion. After I get all of this done, it’s baseboard, molding and new carpet. Then I can move back in. I’ll be lucky to finish by summer, mostly because I don’t have the money to do all this quickly. Here’s a small picture of the wall progress though:

paneling my walls

Saturday, May 22, 2004: Worked on my walls a lot all day. Also worked on a couple sections of my home page – this one and this one. This evening my brother and I went to Steak N Shake for supper. Here’s the first thing we were greeted with as we walked in the door:

crack dealer

What a good way to lose your appetite! So of course I snap a picture. Customers are giggling at him as they leave. That’s about the extent of my exciting day.

Carlinville Wedding

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Sunday, 5-9-2004: Worked on putting wooden planks in my room this morning. Then went to Tricia’s parents house for lunch.

Saturday, 5-15-2004: Me and Tricia drove to Carlinville for her cousin Natalie’s wedding. As I was sitting in the wedding, I see Emily’s old best friend Tiffany and her brother Zach standing around. I stare at them for just about the entire ceremony, wondering if that’s really them or not. We’re an hour away from Alton so it seems unlikely that I could bump into them. But later, at the wedding reception, I see them again and confirm that they’re who they are. They don’t seem to remember me very good at first. I guess it’s been a year or 2 since I’ve seen either of them. But later when I’m at the hotel swimming pool with Jordyn, Tiffany starts asking me where Emily is and other questions. So that was really cool, seeing her again. She used to practically live at our house when she lived on our street.

Week in Montana, back in Illinois

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Tuesday, May 4, 2004: Went geocaching today with Spessa & Co. Then after her kids got home from school we went to another geocache so the kids could participate, which they really enjoyed. Unfortunately there aren’t a lot of caches in this area. Maybe a total of 5 of them that are within an hour. Had some pizza for supper.

Wednesday, May 5, 2004: Went Geocaching again today, this time without the kids. Managed to find one but failed at another since the road ended up being blocked. Turns out we were supposed to take a completely different road but it was getting late so we just went home and decided to maybe try again tomorrow.

Thursday, May 6, 2004: At some point, we all decided that I’d be spending the rest of the week in Montana instead of just one night. So I’m thinking I’ll probably leave tomorrow morning before noon or so. It’s still another 30 hours from here to Alton, Illinois and I think I’d prefer to do all that driving over a weekend instead of during the week. Last night was fun – we stayed up until 1am making calls to various Motel 6’s, posing as the front desk by doing wakeup calls, making sure their clocks were set right and asking guests if they wanted some more towels. Getting woke up in the middle of the night for things like that doesn’t appear to set well with most guests. This will be useful information to have if I ever get a job as a hotel front desk clerk so it was a good learning experience.

Friday, May 7, 2004: Left Montana at about 9:30am and drove all day. Stopped somewhere past Casper, Wyoming and slept until 7am. Or 6am. Or maybe it was 8am. All of my clocks are set on different time zones so I’m all confused. Spessa wrote “Don’t cry for me Argentina” on my back window before I left. This entertained me for most of the drive because everyone who passed my car was staring at me, looking confused. As soon as I would look over, they would quickly look away.

don't cry for me, argentina

Saturday, May 8, 2004: Finished driving back to Illinois. Finally got home at 11:15pm.

Leaving Albany, hanging out with Heywood and Heather

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Sunday, May 2, 2004: Took the kids to McDonalds for breakfast, spending my last $10 in cash. The hotel charged an extra week to my debit card which took my debit balance down to $14.00. They credited the weekly thing for me but it’s going to take probably 4 days for that money to appear back in the account. So I’m going home today and I have no money! I was supposed to drop off the kids around noon but nobody was home when we attempted that. So we hung around parks and the mall most of the morning, just killing time and waiting for somebody to get home. EvilCal was nice enough to send me $12.00 from his PayPal account to me. Then he made a post on the forums, demanding that everyone pay their hosting fees. Yauch immediately sent me $60.00 which I took out of the ATM for the kids’ lunches. The remaining $50.00 should get me halfway to Illinois.

After saying goodbye to the kids, I drove to Heywood’s house in Portland. Me, him and several friends of his drove all over the city being extremely immature for the rest of the evening. We hax0red all the computers at Circuit City, played on overhead intercoms at Wal-Mart and Fred Meyer (until they told us to stop) and videotaped the Dash For Cash prank at a few supermarkets.

My picture on a Circuit City computer.

Monday, May 3, 2004: Woke up at 7:00am after a night on Heather’s couch and left for Illinois. Decided to make a pitstop in Montana to see Mr. & Mrs. Spessa. So that was about a 12 hour drive. My GPS program instructed me to take Highway 4 to their house after I got off the interstate since it was the most direct route. After 30 minutes of Highway 4, most of it dirt, it ended in a big pile of snow. The “road” looked more like a dirt trail going up a mountain. Luckily I was only 30 miles off of the interstate so it wasn’t much effort to drive back to the interstate and find another route. I ended up at Spessa’s around 10pm or so.

Kids – April 2004

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Tuesday, April 27, 2004: Picked up the kids at 4pm and we went Geocaching for several hours. This is the first time I’ve ever taken them and they really enjoyed it. Our first was in a cemetary which was hidden inside a hollow tree and Emily found it within a few minutes. The kids traded in some of their own useless toys for some new & improved useless toys. The next one was in the middle of nowhere by a creek, hidden within a few trees. They traded in even more toys, then we walked down to the creek and played under the bridge for awhile. We tried one last cache but failed to find it after about 30 minutes of looking. Hung out at a park for about 30 minutes, stopped by McDonald’s for supper and dropped them back off at their mom’s. After that I hung out in Fred Meyer’s parking lot and played on the wireless internet for about an hour.

emily and payton looking at a cache

Wednesday, April 28, 2004: I pick up the kids at 4pm and ask them what they want to do. “Treasure hunting!” is the answer. So we go geocaching again. Only this time I don’t research the first hunt too good and I just pick the first one on the list. It ends up being a 1.3 mile hike through the woods. They had a pretty good time anyway, though, even if they got a little tired, hungry and whiney at points. At the end of the trail, there were some areas to sit around the river. We looked for the cache for awhile but couldn’t find it so that was a little disappointing after such a long walk. So we walked back and then went to Burgerville for some supper. Then we went to Baskin Robins for free scoop night but the line was going around the building so we went to a different ice cream shop instead. No free scoops but we didn’t have to wait for 45 minutes to get inside.

Thursday, April 29, 2004: Worked all day until 5pm. Then went to Taco Bell for some supper, walked around K-mart for awhile and then went to Emily’s school to watch her do a singing program with her class. After that I drove to Corvallis and walked all over downtown for a few hours. I really should have brought my bike to Oregon with me so I’d have something to kill my free time with.

Cellular coverage SUCKS in Albany. I can’t use my cell phone anywhere indoors. And when you try and talk while you drive around Albany, the calls always drop. The motel manager told me it’s not just my cellular carrier, it’s all of them. So if I want to make a call, I have to go stand out in the parking lot. But from about yesterday evening until the afternoon today, my cell phone wouldn’t work at all. The signal looked normal but when I tried to make a call I would always get a “network busy” error. I was reduced to buying a prepaid calling card to make a few long distance calls with. I guess in Albany they’re not worried about the cellular phone system when they’ve got the modern convenience of CB radio everywhere. To top it off, my internet connection at the motel is running anywhere from 14.4 to 19.2kbps. I’m spoiled with high-speed access, this sucks.

Another weird thing I’ve noticed about Oregon is that phone booths are everywhere. You don’t see that anywhere else in the country (that I’ve noticed, anyway) but it was one of the first things I noticed when I crossed the Oregon border and stopped at a truck stop for gas. I know in Alton there’s only one phone booth. And when the movie Phone Booth came out, an article I read said there’s only 2 phone booths left in New York City. But for some reason, every single city in Oregon seems to have them everywhere you look, even in Albany. I wonder why Oregon is so stuck on keeping them around. I’m not complaining, I think it’s pretty cool.

Friday, April 30, 2004: Picked up the kids at 4pm and we went to see Home on the Range. What a dumb movie. And Rossanne Barr sucks. But yeah, it was still fun. I think I might be going back to Illinois after this weekend so I’m trying to figure out something fun to do with the kids around here tomorrow.

Saturday, May 1, 2004: Me and the kids went to a theme park near Albany called Enchanted Forest. Spent a lot of the day there and had a really fun time. Emily had already been there before when she was 5 but she still seemed to remember everything. This was mine and Payton’s first time there. It’s kind of like a Six Flags for younger kids. Payton was scared to death of the log ride but I made him go on it anyway. He was crying in line and then shaking while the log drove around. But once we started going down all the hills, he loved it. On the car ride home he said the log ride was his favorite thing. Although I couldn’t get him to ride it a second time while we were there.

emily & payton at enchanted forrest

Gunfight at the Motel

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Monday, April 26, 2004: So last night was pretty exciting…I went to bed around 10 or 11pm at my motel. Around 2am I wake up to a car alarm going off outside. It’s the kind of car alarm that just honks the horn over and over. After about 10 honks, it stops. A few minutes later, it starts up again. I peek out the window to confirm that it’s not my own car alarm and I see that it belongs to some green SUV. It’s pretty loud and it’s probably waking up the entire motel cause I can hear people walking around upstairs. So this SUV alarm goes on and on for several minutes. I think it was about 5 minutes total. I almost thought about hitting the alarm button on my own keychain to add to the confusion but decided against that.

Then I hear random yelling outside. Apparently one guy is really pissed off about the noise and he starts beating the hell out of this SUV. I’m thinking, “Yes! Live entertainment!” and I’m trying to figure out how to open my window so I can listen to the action. Before I can get the window open, I hear guys yelling at each other, running around and I can hear punches outside my door while some lady is shreiking. (I guess cause her boyfriend/husband is getting beat up.)

I’m guessing it’s a pretty good fight because I can hear all this scuffling right outside my door but I can’t see them from my window. I don’t want to open my door since it’s right there and I still can’t get my window open to hear better. Around this time is where I start hearing gunshots. Wow, a gunfight! But then I hear a guy screaming, “ALBANY POLICE! GET ON THE GROUND!” A second later, 3 more gunshots and another, “ALBANY POLICE! GET ON THE GROUND!” This repeats about 5 times for a total of about 15 gunshots. Apparently the guy they’re yelling at actually gets away. I dig through my backpack for my police scanner only to find out that I’ve left it in the car. Damn! I finally get my window open a few inches so I can listen to things. It’s like listening to a live episode of COPS – a trailer trash-sounding woman tells the tale while a monotone cop asks really obvious, pointless questions to her.

I sit at the window for awhile and listen to her story. I can’t see either of them but I think they were a few doors away from me. I see the motel room door in front of the SUV is open which is where the pissed off guy came from, I think. The lady telling the story gives his room number and it’s pretty temping to get on my cell phone and call that room to try and arrange a drug deal or something. That would’ve added a little fun to the chaos outside. But I decide against that too. After maybe 45 minutes I get bored with the whole thing and I lay back down, leaving my window open. Then at 3pm, things get exciting again! I hear yelling by a guy again and then, “ALBANY POLICE! STAY WHERE YOU ARE!” This repeats over and over for a few seconds along with, “DON’T MOVE OR I WILL HIT YOU!” I guess he means he’s going to shoot him. I hear the guy run past my window and several officers chasing after him, probably with drawn guns. This time they manage to catch him. Right now I’m still lying in bed, listening to the cops interview motel guests. It’s 3:30am and I guess it’s kind of over. This kind of thing makes staying at a crappy motel worth it. You just can’t get this kind of live entertainment at a Best Western Hotel. I can’t wait to read the newspaper’s version of this story tomorrow.

UPDATE: I got a paper and read the story. Most of what the lady told the cop was left out of the story. It turns out that the cops shot this guy with a bean bag gun, then the guy attacked the cop and ripped off his badge and THEN he actually got away from them. I don’t know exactly what a bean bag gun is but they sure don’t sound very effective. The caught the guy when he returned to the hotel about an hour later.

Spending the day with the kids

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Sunday, April 25, 2004: Me and the kids go to a restaurant and have some breakfast. The kids got some birthday money from my parents so we go to Target so they can spent it on toys. Payton gets some kind of Power Rangers transformer thingie and Emily gets a giant stuffed unicorn and some Pokemon cards. We walk around the mall for awhile and then see the movie Ella Enchanted. After that we hang out at a park for about an hour, before I drop them back off at Colleen’s at 5pm. My evening is pretty boring…I do some war driving and play on the internet for awhile. Cal’s VPN server is broken so I can’t really do anything useful on the net, like check my email.

Hanging out with Jack in Portland

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Saturday, April 24, 2004: Woke up at 3am and started driving again. I reached Portland, Oregon at 8am. I started up Netstumbler to find a wireless connection. I parked in a Hollywood neighborhood to check my email and to see who was on AIM. I was hoping to talk to Heywood from messedup.net but he wasn’t online. He lives around Portland so I was gonna go bother him. Since my kids are gone for the day and I can’t see them until 5pm, I have all day to kill. I decide to track down my biological father who lives in a Portland homeless village called Dignity Village. I’ve only met him one other time before, when he hitchhiked down to Vegas in 2000 to meet me at Defcon. I get the address to Dignity Village from their website, put the address in my GPS program and I’m there in about 15 minutes. (Have I mentioned lately how much I love GPS?) I drive past it several times, not seeing it. A lady walking a dog waves at me so I stop and ask her where Dignity is. She says I’m there so I park and talk to her for awhile. She ends up being a resident there. I tell a few people that I’m looking for Jack and they tell me that he works at the Saturday Market on the weekends.

I drive to downtown Portland, park, get on the train and go to the Saturday Market. I spend about an hour walking through the crowds trying to spot him. They told me that he doesn’t run a booth there, he just helps set up all the booths in the market. I haven’t seen him in 4 years but I figure I’ll find him easily since he’s got dreadlocks. I finally end up spotting him so I start weaving through the crowds to try and catch up. After a few minutes, I say “Hey Jack!” He looks at me and says, “What’s up.” and starts to walk off. I try again, “Don’t you recognize me?” He doesn’t seem to. I tell him my name and that doesn’t seem to help. After about a minute I finally get him to realize who I am and he’s pretty surprised to see me. He starts taking me to all the booths and introducing me to everyone. Then he says to me, “There’s a demonstration downtown today. Let’s go beat up some cops and start some rioting!” So we do.

Well, not really. The demonstration isn’t too exciting. There are over 100 cops there standing around with the news crews and protesters. Everyone is pissed about a guy getting shot by a Portland cop. Jack stands there and points out all of the cops to me, seeming to know all of their names, interests and histories. We meet up with a few friends of his and head to a bar for awhile. The rest of the morning is spent walking around and meeting all of Jack’s acquaintances. Overall, it turns out to be a really interesting day. I say goodbye to him at about 2:30 and get on the train to find my car again.

I end up arriving in Albany at 4:00. I stop at a Fred Meyers to rip out a few phonebook pages of motels. I find the cheapest one and move my stuff into it, then I wardrive for awhile. I don’t end up seeing the kids until after 7pm and they decide to spend the night in my motel. Today is Emily’s birthday so she gets a few presents from me, including some FRS walkie talkies and the new Kim Possible movie. We don’t really do much since it’s late, just sit around the motel and watch cartoons on TV.

Freezing on my drive to Oregon

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Thursday, April 22, 2004 Got up around 6am or so and worked until about 10am. Then I got my stuff packed and headed for Oregon. I’m going to see the kids for a few weeks! My original plan was to leave at about 6:00am and reach Salt Lake City by the end of the night. But I got lazy with everything and I had to work for a few hours before I left. I got on the road at about 11:30am and quit driving at about 2:00am just outside of Denver. It’s actually snowing here. In April. I’m parked in a truck stop for the night…

Friday, April 23, 2004: Didn’t sleep too good, mostly because it was freezing. I kept waking up and starting the car so I could have heat. I didn’t anticipate any 30 degree weather on my trip. When I left Illinois, it was in the 60’s so I’m wearing shorts and sandals. Apparently snow is odd in April even for Denver. The morning radio DJ’s are flipping out about it and there’s quite a few car wrecks. Got up at 6:00am (well, I guess 5:00am MST) and started driving. Drove pretty much nonstop all day, through Denver, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho and finally Oregon. Once in Oregon, I still had 7 hours until I reached Albany. I drove for about 2 hours and stopped at a rest stop to sleep around 10pm PST.

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