Four Months, One Week

According to google maps, a straight shot from the town where I live now to Seattle, WA is 2,752 miles, and if it were to be driven nonstop, it could be done in just under two days.  We will not be driving nonstop.  We will also not be making a straight shot.

We will first go south a little, to revisit the campus where I went to college, and see a couple friends and family members who will be staying on the East Coast as we move to the West.  Adding those destinations gives us a total of 3,359 miles and a total driving time of two days and six hours.

We could, in theory, alter the route again and stop through Missouri to visit family.  That would put us at a total of 3,454 miles and a total driving time of two days and eight hours.  We could also, in theory, go north from there and visit family in Montana while we’re at it.  This would give us a total mileage of 3,504 and a total driving time of two days and nine hours.

Gas will probably average 5 dollars a gallon in August.  We can get about 350 highway miles out of my car on a tank of gas (about ten gallons), and if we round the mileage down to 3,500 that makes ten tanks of gas, which makes a hundred gallons of gas, which means $500 in gas money alone.

Now, if we drive on two tanks of gas per day, it will take us five days to cross the country.  That’s 700 miles and 10-12 hours of just driving every day.  Keeping in mind that we will be stopping occasionally to visit with people and eat food and stretch our legs, I don’t think 10-12 hours of just driving is reasonable.  So, let’s say we average 8 hours of just driving every day, and let’s say we average 60 miles an hour for the entire trip (at some points, we’ll be doing 70 and at other points, we’ll be doing 25).  3,500 miles divided by 60 miles an hour equals a little less than 59 total driving hours.  59 total driving hours divided by 8 hours a day gives us about 7 and a half days of driving.  That means we’d need seven nights of hotels.  Let’s say we book in advance and find some nice, cheap places for $60 a night.  $60 a night times seven nights is $420.

So, given the longest possible route with all the possible stops, we’re looking at a road trip that could potentially take us over a week to complete, would cost about $500 in gas money, and $420 for hotels.  Not including food and tolls, we’re already looking at $920 total to drive across the country.  (This is without renting a trailer or a moving truck or anything like that.)

If we go back to that initial minimum stoppage trip, with just the one side trip at the beginning that I refuse to compromise, where it’s only 3,359 miles, here’s what we’re looking at:  350 miles costs about $50, so 3,359 miles costs about $480.  Two days and six hours of driving time divided by eight hours a day makes six days and three quarters of a day.  That means, we’d only need six hotels, which, at $60 a night, would cost $360.  So, the total for the shorter drive would be $840.

So, the shorter trip, with fewer stops to visit family along the way saves us a day of travel and about a hundred dollars.  I’m not sure that a hundred dollars makes so much of a difference in this case, since we’re still pretty close to a thousand (plus it’s worth it if we get to visit with people we haven’t seen in forever), but I like the idea of being done within a week.  We could also spend more time driving in a day, and that would cut the trip down.

I’ll have to think about this some more…

I Punched a Deer in the Face

Anyone who’s read the Twilight series is familiar with the line “I punched a werewolf in the face.”  Well, I punched a 2,000 lb deer in the face.  With the side view mirror of my car.  (Deer:  1, Side view mirror:  0)

I had just left home to go to work and was driving on this fairly busy main road (of course, at 4:50 in the morning, there is no such thing as a busy any kind of road, but there are NEVER deer on this road), about two miles from home.  All of a sudden, out of the darkness, less than six inches away from my face, there’s a deer looking down at me through the driver side window with an extremely peeved expression.  (He was big enough to be at eye level with or taller than me when I was sitting in my car and I think I saw 4 or 5 points on the one antler.)  I was in the right lane and the deer was standing or walking through the left lane.  His antlers got caught in my side view mirror and ripped the mirror away from the car.

I’d like to say that I played it totally cool, pulled over and hauled the deer’s carcass off the road for the carrion birds to eat, because my car is that awesome and no 2,000 lb deer is going to do damage without taking damage.  But I would by lying.

I screamed, swerved, pulled over, and called my husband in hysterics.  I did not get out of the car until he got there.  When he did get there, we looked around, but the deer was nowhere to be seen.  A police officer saw our cars with our hazard lights on, and pulled over to make sure everyone was okay.  He gave me a case number for the insurance company so if it’s super expensive to fix they’ll pay for it.

Did I go home then?  Did I decide that this traumatic experience was enough to send me packing?  I mean, if the timing of this had been different by milliseconds, his antlers would have gone through my window, or my car would have smacked him full on and who knows what the repercussions could have been.

I did not go home.  I thought about it, but I had already planned to be off the next day, Friday, for a doctor’s appointment and to drive my husband to the airport for a week long vacation visiting his family on the other side of the continent.  I hadn’t prepared any of my sub plans for Friday, and I didn’t have any back up plans for Thursday.  So, I switched cars with my husband and went to work.

And almost hit a second deer about ten minutes later.  This was on a road where I knew there were deer occasionally, so I was looking for it.  She was a doe, and she was standing on the side of the road and looking both ways before she crossed – just like any sensible woman would do.

The rest of my day followed suit.  I won’t waste your time with details, but I will say this:  in a perfect world, I would have a full planning period that is never taken up with travel between schools or dealing with nit-wits, and in the afternoon, my classroom would become my sanctuary where I would never be disturbed until all the work I needed to get done was complete.  Oh, and I would actually leave work before 6:30pm.  Did I mention that I got to work at 5:45am?  Yeah.  That was almost a 13-hour work day, not counting the commute, never mind the deer.

Somehow, at the end of all this, I haven’t felt the need for an emotional breakdown, which is what I would have expected of myself.  I did the hysterics thing when the deer accident happened, but I was fine the rest of the day.  I kept telling everyone I had punched a 2,000 lb deer in the face and I think that helped a lot (consider “I was nearly impaled by a 2,000 lb deer” versus “I punched a 2,000 lb deer in the face”).  My students loved hearing the story about the encounter.  It was terrifying in the moment, and I keep thinking about how much worse it could have been and feeling so endlessly grateful that it was what it was and nothing more.  But that’s what life is all about – being grateful for what you have and moving forward with whatever that may be.

So, when life throws you a metaphorical 2,000 lb deer, don’t let it knock you down.  Punch it in the face, be grateful, and move on.  It works for me.

Old Friends

Good Charlotte’s The Young and the Hopeless CD was my favorite album in high school, and I haven’t listened to it from start to finish in years. I decided I needed to hear some music that wasn’t overplayed, so I put this CD in my car on my home from work today (yes, sadly, I had to work on a Saturday), and it was wonderful. It was like spending time with an old friend I hadn’t talked to in a long while. I remembered how I related to the music in high school, and it was remarkable how many of the same things I related to and how many things struck me in a different way.

When I got home, I put in my favorite movie from high school, 1776, and cried at the end of it.

Today has been a good day.