Monday, January 17, 2011

I drove across Iowa this week. Twice.

Middle of January, time for Eric to go back to school. We left Saturday morning, picked up his friend in Sioux City, and the drive to Iowa City was largely uneventful. The strangest thing that happened was Eric managing to fog over the entire passenger window so badly I couldn't see the side mirror. When the fog started creeping on to the windshield, I had to take away his heat for a little bit. He wasn't too happy, but he lived.

I got Eric all dropped off and back on the road by about 5:30, texting my friend in Des Moines that I would be there by eight at the latest. Within 30 minutes, traffic on I80 was completely stopped. The weather was clear, so I had a wonderful view of how far back the traffic was stopped. Within 10 minutes, I couldn't see the end of the traffic. About 30 minutes after we first stopped, traffic began moving again. A few miles ahead of where I had been stopped, a semi was stopped in the left lane, which struck me as weird since blocking only one lane shouldn't completely stall traffic. No sooner had I turned on cruise control to set it then I had to stop again. After another five minutes, we moved forward a little, and I was by the flashing lights - two patrol cars and three or four fire trucks. I didn't see a wreck, so I think there was a fire near the interstate. I don't know for sure because Google News was no help. Once I was waved through, I took off to Des Moines, arriving right at eight, since I pad my arrival times due to stuff like this happening on the way back again.

Yesterday, I took off on a morning cold enough that the windows weren't frosted and my iPod went nuts. Before getting to Omaha I saw the car in front of me get pulled over by an unmarked police car and a rest area sign telling me it was -196. My GPS also managed to add 30 minutes to my arrival time all the way to Yankton (apparently Volin is now 40 minutes outside of town). I then proceeded to sit on the couch and read an entire book for the rest of the day.