My route went:
- Sunday: Delaware (my parents' place) to Pittsburgh, PA
- Monday: Pittsburgh to Columbia, MO
- Tuesday: Columbia, MO to Denver, CO
- Wednesday: Denver, CO to St. George, UT
- Thursday: St. George, UT (by way of Zion Canyon) to Los Angeles, CA
My relationship with driving is sort of like Calvin's relationship with bicycles. Basically, I hate driving with every fiber of my body. And for the longest time I avoided it as much I could, which is actually very easy in Philly, because it's such a condensed, walkable city. Before driving to LA, the longest drive I'd done was for about 5 hours. To Pittsburgh actually. So driving cross-country, for me, was sort of akin to a sprinter just deciding to run a marathon on a whim. Well with that said, I'm happy to say I arrived in one piece, in a relatively drama-free, albeit grueling drive. Thoughts and picture spam follow...
Random thoughts:
- Driving from the green hills east of the Mississippi to the dry, flatland plains in Kansas, through the majestic Rockies of Colorado and the stunning canyons and Mars-like topography of Utah and Arizona, to the soul-sucking deserts of Nevada and California, an obvious thought dawned on me - the US is effing humongous, and there may not be the same diversity of sights available in any other country in the world
- Driving in the midwest is a joy. Those guys know how to drive. They give signals when they're switching lanes. They don't cut you off. It's nice. Plus, the roads are straight as an arrow. And there's not many cars to begin with. Definitely the most stress-free part of the trip
- Randomly you'll be driving and you'll see blown out tires on the road. And you'll think, "God please don't let my tire blow out and turn me into a vehicular pinball"
- Kansas is hot. Really hot and humid. I thought it was a pretty temperate place, but I made a stop in Hays, KS and got out and as the sun blasted me, I instantly remembered Ichiro Suzuki’s first joke... yeah, Kansas is hot.
- The Rocky mountains are awesome, but coming down the Rockies, you'll see these long patches of dirt with signs calling them out as runaway truck ramp. I thought it was both ingenious and frightening to think they'd planned for a truck in a Speed scenario
- The canyons in Utah are amazing, but driving through the rocks in Arizona is as close as you can get to driving through Mars, totally otherworldly
- Driving through Nevada is the worst, most soul-sucking experience possible. When you're driving and the sun's pummeling you at 110 degrees, all the A/C in the car doesn't do a thing in the world. It felt like I was in an oven that whole time. I couldn't wait to get out of that hellhole, but...
- Driving past Nevada doesn't provide much respite, because the deserts of Cali are not much better... and the traffic picks up and the drivers get worse
- The weather gets much more tolerable once you get to LA, but the traffic gets even worse and the drivers that much more crappier ;-)
- Being in a car for 12+ hours a day is a surreal experience. The world passes by your eyes, minute by minute, hour by hour, but inside that car, it's like time doesn't exist. It's sort of like an out of body experience. I left on a Sunday, arrived on a Thursday, and every day feels like a day that doesn't actually exist... let's call it Caturday
- I think truck drivers have the toughest jobs in the world. That is one job I couldn't do. I would gladly do things like become a peasant farmer, go on a deep sea fishing expedition for months at a time, but I could not become a truck driver even if you offered me a million bucks
I took a time lapse video of my whole drive from Delaware to apartment, but getting those 80,000 images into a manageable video is providing more technical challenges than expected, so I’ll share that another day. For now, you get picture spam.
Picture spam
I drove by the world's largest basket in Newark, Ohio. Umm, it was a pretty big basket.
I randomly drove by this humongous cross somewhere in Indiana, but eh... I've seen bigger.
Like this one. The world's largest cross in Effingham, IL. It's 196 feet tall, they built it just shy of 200 feet, because FAA regulations would require them to stick a beacon on top of it. Incidentally, yes, I am about 175-feet tall...
Which would make this Kansas version of Paul Bunyan about 2,000 feet tall. But sadly, an unfortunate accident shrunk me back down to normal height and I was no match for this 30 foot tall Johnny Kaw statue.
Yeah, they like it big in Kansas. World's largest Easel in Goodland, KS.
If I get on my tippie-toes, I can just about touch it though.
Some spot in Colorado, just past the Rockies. Great views all around.
Some random spot in Utah.
The next bunch of pics are all from Zion Canyon. I started going up the canyon road, but then I realized it would lead me to the Grand Canyon... which initially was on my list of things to see, but didn't make the cut. Once I realized this, I did a U-ey and turned back down and got on the shuttle bus like all the other good, little tourists.
Finally, Thursday, 8pm, I arrive in Brentwood.
-Brian Sim
