the flight

Timing-wise, this worked out well. The plane took off just after sunset Sunday, and about 12 hours later, it landed just before sunrise (Tuesday). Sleep on the plane wasn't necessarily restful, but there was some; I was probably awake for six or seven hours of the flight.
Customs was ridiculously easy. The lady looked at my passport and entry card with a scowl, same for the printout of my electronic visa, but stamped a 12-month work permit in my passport. Kirsten said her officer said Kirsten's visa wasn't in the system, but gave her the permit anyway. No checking of the supposed requirements - they didn't ask to see proof of funds or health insurance.
The quarantine officers weren't any different. I told them I'd been on a farm and hiking in the last month (both questions on the entry card that sent you to the "something to declare" line). They wanted to know only if I had hiking boots with me. A negative response, and I was waved through. Kirsten had hiking boots, which sent her into a different line and delayed her about a minute and a half for boot inspection.
A shuttle into the city dropped us off right at our hostel, to which I am eternally grateful for allowing us to check in before 7 a.m. Four or five more hours of sleep and I'm up at noon - right back on my regular schedule.

Jetlag? What jetlag?

we're off

Or will be soon. Off to the ballgame, anyway.
Friday we ditched the car in favor of air travel from Portland to San Jose, where I have relatives. Since Aug. 1, I have driven approx. 4,000 miles across this Great Land of ours (well, perhaps 2,000 miles across great land, and the rest across places like Kansas).
Today is my last day in-country for some time, although the thought doesn't really sink in, considering I haven't had a destination with this much unknown involved since leaving home for college.
I do, however, have a good last day planned. A day game at SBC Park watching the Giants and the Mets (what better last day in the U.S.A. activity than a baseball game?) along with a meal in San Francisco.
Then board the plane, which should leave the ground of SFO at 9:45 p.m. Sounds like I'll be in the air as the apocalypse bears down on New Orleans. I'll be hoping everything survives, so the city is just as I left it for my return.

long way around

This is about what the trip has looked like so far. Rand McNally puts it at a little more than 3,100 miles, although we took winding routes across Montana to push our mileage somewhere beyond that.
I hadn't been through Washington for more than 10 years, and had never been the driver across the state. I'd forgotten what the ride into Seattle on I-90 is like - 20 miles away from downtown, you're still in the mountains, with almost no sign of a metropolis up ahead. At about mile 17, you hit the first sign of suburbia - Big Box chains, identical dwellings marching along a subdivision - but even there, it's different. The chains' signs have to compete for viewing space with the covering of evergreen trees, and the suburban home architecture is shoehorned onto a hillside. It almost makes the sprawl easy to look at.
My decade-old impressions of downtown Seattle were only reinforced by walking around for a couple hours - not enough to get a true feel of a city, I know, but enough to know I'd like to spend a lot more time there. After five years of Midwest schooling and four years in the South, it'd sure be nice to get back to the mountains.
Four more days, give or take, and I'll have entirely new mountains to look at. The road trip has taken up most of my thought space - drive for a day, see friends or family for a day, drive for another day, see a whole new group of friends or family - and the fact the end destination is actually 6,500 miles across the Pacific hasn't had a chance to really burrow it's way into my brain.
Today, we drive to Corvallis to see my little brother at Oregon State, then perhaps to Portland before giving up our auto-mobile life for airplanes. A skip from Portland to San Francisco Friday, then a leap from San Francisco to Auckland, New Zealand Sunday (but we land Tuesday).
No accommodations or other plans have been made in New Zealand, beyond the first two nights. We finally did make hostel reservations for those a few days ago.

a word of advice

When you go to Glacier National Park, drive into it from the east. There's nothing quite like churning out the miles of farmland plains on Hwy. 2, then cresting a small rise and having a line a mountains pop up on the horizon.
After their initial appearance, the peaks hang there, hazy in the distance despite your best efforts to decrease the distance, until the granite finally gives in slightly and moves into clear focus.


Continue into the park via St. Mary's and the Going-to-the-Sun Road, and the vantage points are better from the east as well. You get to roll up into the hanging valleys and Logan Pass, then take in the vista of a glacier valley with dimensions and suddenness you can't easily comprehend.


The sights from Going-to-the-Sun will stun you into silence no matter what, but I'm telling you, come in from the east. (Even though that means you don't get to start in beauty. It just makes sights all the better in the end).

the itinerary

Since I'm apparently not going to have time to post in detail any time soon, a recap of my last month:
Aug. 1 - drive from Hattiesburg to Memphis for my final assignment as a full-time employee.
Aug. 2 - cover the Conference USA media days, then drive to Springfield, Mo.
There spend a week in the company of two toddlers, and take a one-day side trip to Arkansas.
Aug. 10 - drive from Springfield to Columbia, Mo.
Aug. 11 - drink too much
Aug. 12 - wake up with the intention of driving to Denver. Go back to sleep with intention of getting rid of hangover. Wake up again, in the afternoon, and fulfill both intentions.
Aug. 14 - drive from Denver to Billings, Mont.
Aug. 15 - drive to Geraldine, Mont., with long detour into Paradise Valley, south of Livingston and north of Yellowstone.
Aug. 19 - drive from Geraldine to Missoula, Mont., with long detour through Glacier National Park and Whitefish.

Miles covered in the car so far: more than 2,900 (exactly 2,361 since leaving Springfield Aug. 10).

Future plans include a Monday trip to Oregon, then a short flight to San Fransicso before heading a good way away on Aug. 28. Rather, we take off on Aug. 28, and land in Auckland, New Zealand, on Aug. 30. At 5 a.m. I'm sure jet lag won't be an issue.
At all.
Once we land in Auckland, of course, the next item of business will be to ask, 'What the hell do I do now?'

it's hard to update on the road

spending too much time in the car to get much up - so far, the drving has gone from Hattiesburg to Memphis to Springfield, Mo., to Columbia, Mo., to Denver and today to Billings. Only about 1,500 miles to go, more or less.

maybe we won't kill each other

So for the next three weeks or so Kirsten and I will be traveling about 2500 miles in the car, driving for a day, then stopping for two or three days. Eventually, we'll end up in San Francisco and fly away.
I've done long road trips, by which I mean a week or so of hitting different cities each day or two. After about five days of living out of your car, tempers flare. Tension rises. Kirsten and I may not be engaged by the time we get in that plane.

no more health insurance

I am officially unemployed. My last story for the Hattiesburg American, at least as a full-time employee, was sent minutes ago.
It's an anticlimactic end - as always before a Conference USA media day in Memphis I stayed out too late and had to wake up too early. Now I'm just really tired and facing a five-hour drive.