Travel Day One, South Bend Indiana!

Our first day of travel yesterday was a solid 12 hours. We ended the day in South Bend, Indiana. Home of Notre Dame University. Which we did not see, by the way. At least not more than driving by it in a rush to get to our hotel and unload the kids directly into the pool to burn off 12 hours of pent-up energy. And, between you and me, I thought Notre Dame was in Boston. Don’t kill me, Notre Dame fans. My friend Andrea is already flinching and planning to strangle me upon my return, I assure you. She tries her best to tolerate my all over lack of all sports knowledge, but it has to be wearing on her. My ignorance can be astounding.

The twelve hours in the truck was successful on two levels. The first is two-sided, however. I chose the music, so I decided I would ”educate” the kids. And you can translate that education in this case translates in the 13 year old mind to torture. Apparently, the kids had no idea that I listened to anything at all prior to country music. I know that generally kids think you had no semblance of a life before they came along, so when I began to refer to a song that came out when I was a kid, or in junior high, they began to look very baffled. And a little appalled. So the set list yesterday included Rage Against the Machine, who I saw live and may have let it slip that I ended up topless (I still had a bra on at least!) at the end of that show. When I turned to look at them, I saw three open mouths. Wait… topless? I guess I was a little more wild than they have given me credit for. But I snuck in The Cure, Social Distortion, Tool, Ani DiFranco, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings. Thanks Goodness for Sirius Radio, I have such a great time with it. It’s like a time warp.



And my second success, other than breaking the kids spirit, was that I drove the truck for the first time with the travel trailer attached. Now this may not seem like a big deal to any one at all but me, but it’s a huge truck, an F350 King Ranch, and it’s a long trailer (35ft). So all in all, I’d say 45 feet maybe. And not to mention wide. I'm fairly certain that if boyfriend didn’t have a blinding migraine, he would have kept driving. But I guess he weighed the options between a girlfriend with no experience pulling 45 feet behind her on a major highway and a blinding migraine with which he would have crashed, I seemed like the better bet. But only by a hair. He was supposed to give me a lesson prior to leaving, but it never seemed to work out so we skipped, which turned out to be a splendid idea. Just splendid. Sarcasm much? However, I'm happy to report that everything is still in one piece. Me included. It got a little dicey when overpasses came up, or a huge semi pulled aside. I thought it would be a great idea to have a sign on the back of the trailer that said “Woman Driver” and then those male truck drivers would have given me all the space I needed. But then boyfriend would have gotten sympathetic nods from the truck drivers, who would just be wondering what was ailing him so badly that he let me drive. Can’t have that. But I held my own, and only got slightly lectured about speeding (a whopping 4 miles an hour over what he was doing!). But the truck is a diesel, and with a diesel it’s not about speed it’s about torque….and that’s all I got before my attention span went completely dark. Today it’s off to lovely Crab Orchard Nebraska. Stay with me!