I finished the work on www.econotree.com . It’s now xhtml 1.0 compliant, and uses two different css sheets to render correctly in IE and everthing else. It’s got a neat permits page. Now I hope it helps people find us.
Got a new car too, I’ll post pictures soon.
It just keeps getting better. We got up early all primed to maybe get home today. Whoever is in charge of this trip had different plans.
The tooth that had been bothering me all week was really acting up today. I’ve been able to deal with it by taking Advil and not chewing on thaty side, figuring I could get it fixed as soon as I got home.
Then we got in the truck and it wouldn’t start. Damn!! The hotel porter tried to jump it, but his heart wasn’t in it and he didn’t have time to play. I walked to a gas station and got the number to a tow company that does jumpstarts. (I was actually surprised that there are tow companies that don’t do jump starts.)
The professional jump worked and we were on the road only two hours late. We made good time through Utah, only stopping once at a rest stop over looking the heart of Utah. I wonder how many people see this sign and decide to hold it until the next stop.
We were out of Utah before we knew it. One more state to go!! The road in Nevada starts with what I call a third gear pass. That means I have to downshift to third and crawl uphill at 30 mph. We did 4 of these passes over the course of the day.
All day my tooth was getting worse and worse. We stopped in Elko and there was no way I could eat anything and the Ibuprofen wasn’t touching it. When we got to Battle Mountain I decided something needed to be done. I looked up a dentist there, but the receptionist said he was going to be sick until next week. (Sick until next week???) Ok, so that idea was out.
Kyle looked up dentists in Winnemucca on his cell phone and gave one a call. Seeing that it was about 4:30, they weren’t willing to stay late. Since Kyle’s phone was roaming and not getting the best of signals I almost gave up. Then I had an idea that wouldn’t have been possible until recently.
I called Amy and asked her to check the internet for dentists in Winnemucca willing to do an emergency job on my tooth. She called a couple and called me back to tell me it din’t look good. I was resigned to being in pain for the next 36 hours at least.
Then against all odds, one of the dentists called back!! And it was the same dentist Kyle called. We were 15 miles away so I called back and assured her we would be there at around 5:00.
So we made Winnemucca at 10 till 5, found the place and got my tooth pulled. I immediatly felt better. Of course the Novicaine helped. She gave me a prescription for antibiotics and we were on our way by 5:20. A big thank you to Dr. Marvil.
We continued on until Reno. I didn’t want to do the Sierras at night so we stopped and got a room at Boomtown. There was no internet connection there so we ate dinner and lost a few bucks on the slots. Got to bed early to hopefully make the final leg of the trip.
When I wokeup in the morning, things weren’t looking good for continuing the trip. It was just as windy as the night before and there were some ominous clouds on the horizon. I checked the road report first thing and yeap, the road was still closed. Went and got some coffee, did a little work on the site and let Kyle sleep.
When I went to go get more coffee I noticed some trucks getting on the freeway, hurried back to the room and checked the road site again and it seems they had just opened the road to west bound traffic only.
I thought about it for about 15-20 seconds and decided to chance it. The weather hadn’t changed a bit, so I didn’t know how long the road would be opened but any progress west was progress. Besides, who am I do question the whole Wyoming Dept. of Roads?
The road opened at 8:18 and we were driving up it by 9. The conditions were not any better then the day before, in fact they seemed worse. We passed 3 big rigs lying on there sides, the blown snow was really bad in places and the mountains we were climbing into looked downright nasty. I was half hoping and half dreading being turned around again.
We didn’t get turned around, we finally made it to Rawlins. The sky was just as crappy there and it was windier then ever, but we had made it.
From Rawlins to Rock Springs it seemed all downhill (grade wise) and uphill (luck wise). The wind slowly died down, there was no more blowing snow and the truck was able to do it’s top speed of 60 again.
Rock Springs to Evanston was even better and Evanston to Salt Lake City went by in a flash. We are spending the night in Salt Lake City on the west edge of town near the airport so we don’t get caught in any inbound rush hour traffic when we make our early exit. I’m not promising anything but we are both thinking it would be really nice to be home tomorrow night.
What started as an inconvenience yesterday became a major pain today.
We woke up to a clear, but breezy morning in Sidney. Even the birds were hiding from it. The view to the west looked pretty nice, with no signs of what was to come.
The trip to Cheyenne was nice. A little slow because of the wind in our faces but we made good time. Even found a place that sold Djarums, which eluded me in Iowa and Nebrasksa. And since I smoked the last one I had this morning, this store saved the day.
As soon as we started going uphill toward Laramie, things started going downhill. Looking at the road you wouldn’t think there is that much of a grade but the truck sure noticed it. Between the climb and the headwind we were down to 35 mph in some places. It started getting a little breezier and harder to see when all of a sudden the traffic came to a stand still. And the longer we sat there, the stronger the wind blew. It took us 2 hours to cover the 40 some miles from Cheyenne to Laramie.
When we got to Laramie and ate lunch it was just as windy but with little blowing snow. The mountains we had just crossed looked so peaceful. We finished lunch, got back on the freeway and were directed off the next exit. WTF? They had closed the road.
So it seems we were forced to stop really early today. This throws a wrench into everything. Kyle’s going to miss his scheduled flight, and probably a day of work. Myself, I would rather get home as soon as I can, but not at the cost of safety. Just this last March there was a 22 car pile-up in the same area that we need to cross next. I could do without that.
More pictures.
Ok, now I know why red state dwellers voted for you know who. So that everyone else might be as miserable as they must be.
Iowa and Nebraska are states a lot of people claim to be from, but I’ve never known anyone who went to live in those states from somewhere else.
There’s a reason, it’s the sameness of landscape. Another cornfield, another row of bare, broken trees. (There was a ice storm last week that accounts for a lot of the trees.) You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. The towns try to project some identity with differently painted water towers, but they just look the same too.
We started in Des Moines and ended up in Sidney, Nebraska. The weather started out pretty nice; 28 degrees and calm. We soon passed into Nebraska at Omaha, which was bigger then I imagined. The freeways twist here and there almost like the Bay Bridge maze.
I kind of liked it right outside of Omaha, we stopped at a rest stop overlooking the Platte River valley and took in a vista that was what I imagined Iowa would look like. Seems that Nebraska is much flatter then Iowa though.
The view never changed, at least until dark. As we gained elevation we did see more and more snow on the ground. First snow I actually had to drive through this trip was in Kearney. Kearney is a dump, at least what I saw of it. Had some lunch and got out of there as fast as we could.
Hit another rest stop out side of Kearney. This one had a lot of snow on the ground, but pretty much the same sort of vista.
We saw Kyle’s old roommate Josh pass us just west of the 74/80 split. He’s headed back to Corvallis, but left Des Moines 3 1/2 hours after we did.
Our final stop for the day is Sidney, also known as Cabela’s world headquarters. We got here at 10 till 8, and they closed at 8. I did buy a sweater though.
While we were in Cabela’s they announced that I80 was closed eastbound right outside of Sidney due to blowing snow, which started about 10 miles east of here. (As I write this, it is 28 degrees out, but with a wind chill of 12 degrees.) The fact is it is closed westbound, outside of Cheyenne. (Cheyenne was our original destination for the night.) So we’re stuck here until it opens again, which should be the morning.
One last thing, if you are a vegetarian or a Djarum smoker stock up before you get to a red state. If you ask for a Garden Burger or a pack of Djarums you will be greeted with a blank stare.
This day was not nearly as smooth as the first. We were picked up at 7am sharp. Checking out the truck and signing all the papers took about an hour and a half, mainly because they had to get the brake lights working.
Then we had to travel on some of the worst roads in the midwest. Wisconson rally needs to spend some money on road repair.
Top speed of this truck is about 61 mph and that’s downhill with a tailwind. Uphill it feels like it will barely make it. That’s going to be fun in the next day or two when we get out of the flatland.
The worst part is when the alternator started to fail. We had just gassed up in Annawan, IL when I noticed the charging gauge was in the red, and the battry idiot light started to come on. I limped the truck across the Miss. river (I don’t feel like trying to spell that right now) and stopped at an Iowa “Welcome center” that advertised free WIFI. I made up a user name and password but it kept bounching me back to the login page. A helper at the welcome center offered to let me use the master username and pass but it still wouldn’t work.
She watched me trying to enter it then said “I know what’s wrong, it doesn’t work with Firefox”. WTF? Come to find out it doesn’t work with Safari either, which left me SOL.
She did show me the directions to an AutoZone store but I decided to take my own way along the river. It was off the freeway so if the truck totally died I wouldn’t be on the side of the road in 75mph traffic. This was the right thing to do, as along the river is an industrial area much more likely to have a place that could repair a truck.
We stumbled across a repair shop called QC Auto Service. I must have been guided by a higher power because they diagnosed, found a part and repaired the problem in about an hour. Just enough time to get some really good tacos across the street.
Dave the mechanic was a real crackup. I’ve found everyone in the midwest to be quite helpful and friendly, but the people at QC take the prize.
So to wrap it up, we’ve only gone about 350 miles so far, it started to try to snow about 7pm and now we’re holed up in Des Moines for the night. We’ll get a good nights sleep tonight, hope the weather clears by morning and try to make up for lost time.
Here’s the pictures of the trip:
Kyle and I are on an adventure. We flew to Milwaukee to drive a bucket truck back to Redwood City. Our first night is being spent in a La Quinta Inn right near the airport and we should be picked up first thing in the moring by the truck shop.
So far so good. The weather here right now is actually better then it is in San Francisco or Coravllis. It’s 47 degrees and cloudy right now. In SF it’s 45 degrees and windy and in Corvallis it’s 37 degrees.
Hope the weather holds out. I wouldn’t mind seeing snow on the side of the roads, but I could do without driving through a blizzard.
This is part of a site I’ve been working on. I’m trying to get all the tree permit requirements all in one place. If you look close, no two citys have the same requirements. It makes it kind of hard to keep track of. I also took the time to use xhtml-strict and css.
Well it seems my mysql backup file was hosed when I upgraded Wordpress. Going to have to start this over again. I’ll try to get it right this time.
Right now it’s time to sleep though.
