Time travel, trucker style

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homeI’ve been out long enough to have certain highways I dread having to travel. Every time we have to go I-70 West through Indiana – which is pretty much every single time we leave the house, I pray for an alien abduction that involves time loss so I don’t have to look at I-70 West through Indiana again.

If I’m really lucky, it will be one of those days when I look up and we’ve suddenly gone 200 miles. I almost completely missed Illinois last time we ran through. In an effort to brainwash Indiana out of our trip, somewhere east of Indianapolis I became engrossed in interweb articles about Monarch butterflies and didn’t look up again until we split off toward the South in Effingham.

“Where are we?”

“Just hit the 57 split in Effingham.”

“Wow. No kidding? Did I fall asleep or something?”

“I don’t know, I’ve been kind of busy, you know, driving and stuff.”

“Did you know some Monarch butterflies travel 3,000 miles in a lifetime?”

“Nope. But I do know I’ve hit about 3,000 of them down in South Texas.”

“I don’t think National Geographic would appreciate that factoid.”

Then there are days when the miles stretch on forever. These always seem to be when we’re heading home. It seems like I can send five e-mails, update the blog and read at least one article about something weird, and we’ve only covered 10 miles.

“Are we in Texarkana yet?”

“No. We just left Von Ormy an hour ago. We’re a good six hours from Texarkana.”

“I wish I had an alien friend who could lead us through a wormhole so we could make it to the house tonight.”

“It wouldn’t matter.”

“Why?”

“Tires aren’t rated for wormholes, can’t run ’em. And I’m pretty sure some of your friends are aliens.”

It’s a good thing he’s a funny guy. Makes even the longest days better to have a sense of humor.

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