Nanno 'n' me

Nate picked me up at 6AM yesterday, which wasn't a problem considering that my eyes popped open at 4:30.

The truly disturbing part is that once during the night, my eyes opened... slowly. I started to make out the painting on my wall and the lamp hanging from my ceiling, and I thought, "Wow, I have a painting just like that on my wall at home... and a lamp just like that, too." It was the first time in all the single-night stays in the last several weeks that I've awoken and not known where I was. And I was in my own bed.

Yesterday was lovely weather for driving. Cloudless or little white puffy cumulus clouds the whole way. We made it through Oregon, Idaho, Utah and about 100 miles into Wyoming. I would have been much more impressed with the snowy peaks and brightly colored hills if I hadn't just been in the Alps. All I can say is that these sights (including abandoned cars, rusted out factories, truck stops, and mile-long freight trains with oil tankers) just seem so American. American West. It's like "gritty highway poetry and everyday life" vs. "romantic Baroque gold leaf and sipping tea on the bullet train." We're still in puberty, especially in the western states. Europe seems like an unapologetic and self-aware member of our kin who has settled nicely into late middle age, with all the treasures and trappings of a somewhat turbulent life on display in the paid-for apartment in the old center of town. I knew I should have seen this first. But now, seeing it second, I understand our place in the world a little better. Somehow. I dunno.

Several crossword puzzles, many rounds of 20 questions (I couldn't get "a waffle" and nate couldn't get "a road sign"), espresso, and hundreds of songs kept us awake. About 16 hours after leaving, we parked our exhausted carcasses at the Super 8 in Rock Springs, Wyoming... right after it started to snow.

We named the Sprinter "Step-Mujzah," because our regular van is named "Mujzah" (think Austin Powers: Goldmember, "Fah-jzuh," "Oh, your FATHER???"). Anyway.

When my eyes popped open this morning at 4:30 (3:30 Pacific!), and Nate had told me that we'd just go when I woke up because I'd be up and he could sleep in the car, I tried to wake him, but couldn't. Finally, I half yelled, "Nanno. I'm up." We collected our stuff and left. But I left my pillow.

The thing is, it had snowed during the night. The freeway was wet, but not icy. The whole of Southern Wyoming looked as though someone had gone after it with one of those powdered sugar sifter/sieve things. In the half-light of the early morning, if it had not been for the sagebrush, I would have thought I was driving on the moon. I might have even believed it... seemingly everwhere else on the Earth exhausted in three weeks, why wouldn't I be on the moon?

I love the signs for Sinclair gas station signs because they look all 60s and they have a little dinosaur on them. So you know where your petrol comes from.

It's also strange and somewhat unbelievable to be posting blogs and writing emails from inside a very large van headed down I-80 toward Kansas City, Missouri.