Operation: Spruce

The trip is going wonderfully.

It’s 5:04 p.m. on Monday and it’s incredibly sunny, the temperature hitting around 65 F degrees as we’ve been driving. Andrew and I are both wearing t-shirts and earlier in the day he said with a growl “it’s too hot”… apparently he doesn’t know where he’s headed.

We’re driving 75 miles an hour and flat sparse land is passing us by with only highway signs, trees, and houses planted on it. The only disadvantage to driving this fast is a pitched whistle that occurs from the Cabriolet’s convertible top.. otherwise it’s fine. Earlier today we visited Falls Park in Sioux Falls, which at first I mistook to be a sole one foot high waterfall. (It’s good we turned the corner.) For all concerned with Andrew’s cheese level; he ordered cheese curds earlier today, so it has been met.

I can’t believe in a couple of days I’ll be able to see family again.

-Julie

In the morning we scurried around the house trying to find everything that we wanted to pack and ended finding much more than we really anticipated, but we made it all fit… we also decided to make ourselves some little bumper sticker logo things for the trip (see pictures in the gallery at the end of the post).

On our first day of travel we left the house at about 12:30 (an hour and a half later than we meant) and went to Grandpa’s house to say goodbye, which was emotional for everyone involved.

We then headed up to Milwaukee, then to Madison, then Wisconsin Dells, where we stopped at a place called Mirror Lake State Park. Turned out to be nothing really all that special, but we got some nice photos out of it. We worked our way through Wisconsin until we finally crossed the Mississippi into Minnesota where we drove another few hundred miles to finally end, as planned, in Fairmont, MN. Nice little town. The car gave us absolutely no troubles, I’m very glad. Time for me to go to bed, I say.

The day before the trip Liz and I went to run some errands… one of them getting laundry from Julie’s house (long story, our drier burnt out)… we had a container of Downy fabric softener in the car… well, it managed to open up in the car it soaked the entire back end of the car; trunk, under the seat, the foam in the seat, everything… so I had to take all of that out and clean it and put it back together again before I could even think about packing. Which was quite a feat, mind you — here’s what the car looked like throughout the day:

We considered ourselves ready for action at the end of the day, so we went to bed more or less happy.

I realized this morning, minutes after the truck left, that my darned passport (and $700 in saved money for the trip) were actually packed in a small cedar chest that I had packed in another of my boxes about 12′ into the truck… I freaked out pretty bad and we even had the truck depot hold the truck there before we found out that I can still cross the border as long as I have a birth certificate and valid ID, which I have both of. Whew. Anyway, the truck is gone and we’re planning on leaving on Sunday now (because Julie has a paper for class to work on and I have to pack the car). So it’s going to be a busy day tomorrow.

Julie and I finally finalized the route we’re driving and any possible stops along the way—the newest route is at http://turbogfx.net/operation_spruce. It’s looking good for weather, too—more or less.

Tired, exhausted, relieved, anxious, terrified… So many things right now. Today, we—a team of devoted family members and volunteers alike—finished packing the truck. Julie’s house—once and forever known as “Dartmoor,” sits on its lot, empty; a shell of what once was great; the bustling home of a family who willingly divided itself to complete a drastic transition to a new form. A new way of life, a different angle on the world, a new page in a book. The other half of their belongings are now—after 6 months of repetitive packing, sorting, cleansing, and shoving—finally traveling toward their intended destination. We must remember, however, that possessions are not what makes a man, it is their family, friends, and personality—and soon, Julie and myself will be part of the reunion of a divided family. I can not wait to begin our trip northward. The truck is packed. Now it’s time for us to do the same.

Today was an odd day for sure, we got up, packed some stuff in my room, went to lunch with Dad at 1, then came back to my house and piled some stuff into the station wagon to take it to Julie’s house for packing… once we got there, we spent 5.5 — that’s five and a half — hours packing the truck from around 4:00 to 9:30. Quite a nice effort and it shows for sure, the truck is now 6-7 feet packed. I set up my stereo and a bunch of lights in the truck to keep it well lit and friendly for working in. Liz is going to upload some videos I made eventually, I’ll post them when she does. Tomorrow it’s more of the same.

End of Day Three

Truck Amenities

That’s right; we’re ready for the truck to show up at Julie’s place now. Today we went there and cleaned some more stuff out of the garage, including some wood that my grandpa took. We’re in the mindset now where once we start putting things on the truck, we’ll know what to do with our limited space. Once we were done with Julie’s house we decided to go to Salvation Army to donate some of my things, and to shop, of course, and that took up the rest of our day. Tomorrow the truck arrives.

Hello to all five of you out there who have been watching this blog (or rss feed, whichever the case may be) intently for the next update; here it is!

Last week I got my car back, block heater installed, suspension installed, coolant leaks fixed (nearly for free, that one!) and aligned & ready for a trip north-west. The suspension feels nice and solid (thank goodness! I’ve never felt it this nice before) and the block heater works wonders for starting the car in cold. Paul @ Anderesen evaluated the oil leak from the rear main and, upon seeing it was only a drip once and a while, suggested it’s not serious enough to worry about, and spared me (or rather, dad) the $300 to install the Speedi-sleeve. A nice break.

The past few days have been odd. 2 days ago (March 2nd) I went to trial for my “donuts-in-parking-lot” ticket, and didn’t actually need to plead guilty or not guilty — we (me and the cop) “reached an agreement” for me to go on 90 day court supervision. Awesome. I’ll settle for that, and not take my chances with the judge ruling in his favor and complicating my exit from the country further…

When I got my license back from the court, I noticed that it had expired… so we went to the DMV today to renew it, and lo and behold, the entire state’s DMV computer systems were down at the time, so we went back in the evening to get it done. So I have a new license now, which is pretty cool.

It’s looking like the truck will be coming this thursday (it’s actually 1:08 am as I write this, on Wednesday, so that makes it technically tomorrow) and from the sounds of it it’ll be here a week for us to pack it. Time to get our butts in gear.

Today was a fine day indeed, consisting mostly of yelling between my mom and my sister Hannah, but that’s a whole other story in itself. I’ve been playing around with MS Streets & Trips 2009, and it seems that it’s quite powerful for this trip (works pretty darn well on Windows 7 Beta 1 too…) so I think we will be using that for the main part of our trip. I’m planning gas stops, hotels, even lunch stops in advance now, it’s pretty cool. Too bad Subway is so prominent in Canada, we might be a little sick of it by the time we get to our homies in Canada. Anyway, here’s a link to the prospective route…. according to this, we can make the trip in about 3 days, 8 hours or so. Nifty!
http://turbogfx.net/operation_spruce/

Well it snowed about 4 inches last night, so we didn’t really feel like leaving the house… we worked in my bedroom a little and did some stuff around the house here (after I snowblowed of course). Last night my mom was vacuuming and knocked my made-of-awesome Binary Clock off its pedestal, instant death for it… it caused two prongs on the bottom of the voltage regulator to bend and touch each other, which overheated the voltage regulator, which in turn started putting out 9V instead of 5V, therefore frying the Schmitt trigger IC chip, which I happened to have a spare of. I popped the spare in the socket and fixed some soldering and it was like new. Whew, I worked on that thing for a good month before I got to a final product… glad I could fix it. Anywho, tomorrow we’re hoping there’s no showings so Julie and I can go to her house and do some more work. After which, we do more work here. Like I said, crunch time…