Day 2: Davenport, Iowa to Golden, Colorado

Totals Today:

Mileage: 857 (1717.5 total)
Average Speed: 71.7
Max Speed: 86.9 mph (Dad, not me).
Time Today; 12 hours
Total Moving Time: 23 hours 57 minutes
Total Stopped Time: 1 hour 23 minutes

I am not one to flush feelings to the whole world but this shouldn’t be any major secret to anyone. I’m stressed. I’m not, “Oh my god, I am going to fail my final,”-stressed. I’m more “the real world is bearing down upon me with force of a tsunami the size of Alaska”- stressed. Get the picture? It goes without saying that it is taking a toll on my body. I’ve been blaming it on allergies. Really though, who am I kidding? I have been closed in to an air-conditioned fishbowl since 9 AM. Get a grip, Gabe.

Today was quite the drive. We started in Davenport, IA after omelets at the hotel, at nine. We cruised along the Mississippi River for a bit. It went south, we kept going west. Interstate 80 is quite the highway. It rolls through the cornfields of Iowa (far more interesting than Indiana and Illinois), then flips you the bird as you get hopelessly dumped into Nebraska. Nebraska is big. Eight hours in one state was a little monotonous for me. Though it was interesting scenery, the Nebraska Prairie feels like an IMAX movie on repeat. Everywhere you look, you see the same vistas. Even the rest stops are the same. At almost every exit, there is a Flying J, Conoco, and Shell gas station. Nebraska has built an expertise in “Heartland Monotony”.

At about five o’clock (CST), we turned on NPR. It was standard NPR: Talk of the Nation, Fresh Air, and The Headlines were par for the course, but the local news was slightly different. The background noise that was NPR turned into a “this just in” news story. There is a TORNADO WARNING in effect for northwestern Nebraska. Well, I am a huge fan of tornadoes (sarcasm). Since the funnel that visited Binghamton about a decade a go, I have felt some lingering disdain for windy weather. Great, more stress. As we proceeded west, we were getting closer the weather. We were nearly hitting it head-on. We got on I-76 towards Denver, and veered about 10 miles south of the havoc. To our right (north) we could see a bank of clouds a half-gust from swallowing the rolling Colorado prairie in one gulp. Bolts of lightning decorated horizons to the left and right. We were driving into the hole of blue sky that seemed to be closing like a time portal in Back to the Future. When it finally closed it did so with the blackness of night, and rain the sounded like hail on the hood of the car. After some 20 minutes of treachery, we emerged into a parallel universe of blue sky that had us hurdling towards Denver.

Having arrived in Denver, well, Golden, CO, we unloaded out of the fishbowl and into a Hampton Inn with psychedelic carpet. The carpet is probably the most interesting thing in Golden, CO, save for an incredible view of mountains that I thought always had snow on them.

Dinner time.