Day Three - News Flash: Western Kansas is FLAT.

Woke up in Brother Chris's house and lounged around for a while, chatting and catching up and watching the dog obsess over the presence of a kitty behind the sun room couch.  

Hopeless.  We also finalized the decision to split up the drive to Colorado, and made plans to stop for the night in Burlington, CO just over the border.  Reservations booked, and people informed, John and Chris and I began moving the mahogany secretary downstairs from my brother's office.  In the process, we discovered some hidden drawers that Chris hadn't noticed before, and some very small items that had found their way to the small crannies of this old piece of furniture.  It used to be in regular use as my grandmother's desk.  We found some Boy Scout membership cards belonging to my uncles, an ancient band aid, a photo of our Grandpa Frank, some keys (including the one that locks the secretary), an most interestingly a many times folded and wadded up Bazooka Joe comic, no date.

After lunch and power naps, we packed up and left the kitties in peace.  Along our way that afternoon we passed a semi carrying two huge lengths of white material that looked like some bizarre experimental airplane wings.  Since we were close to the Cessna plant, where my brotha is an aerospace engineer incidentally, I figured that's what they were.  John posited that they were windmill arms.  Turns out he was right.

WIND FARM!  Taking advantage of the relentless Kansas wind, there is an enormous wind farm that stretches across the plains and fields.  Amazingly huge windmills gently spinning against the sky.  

Just after we got through gaping at the big ol' windmills, John and Punkus bonded in a very real way after the travel, extra treats and jouncing truck seat got to be too much for the girl and she decided that the best option would be to upchuck.  On John.  While he's driving.  Nice.  John handled it with grace and we pulled over for a quick clean up.  But they're closer now than they were before.  The rest of the afternoon pretty much looked like this....

We knew we were going to encounter some weather later on that evening, and the cloud formations were getting increasingly spectacular, especially out there were you can see for miles and miles on either side of I-70.  Towards the end of our day, about an hour from Burlington, we hit a rest stop and I was able to snag a photo.

After that stop, it got a little daunting.  South of I-70 one of the most spectacular lightning storms we have ever seen took up almost the entire horizon.  We saw several really incredible strikes and the light show itself was worth the sweaty palms on the steering wheel.  Fortunately, it all stayed south of us and we rolled into Burlington on schedule.  Piece of cake.  Then we all passed out.

Day Two - Blowing through Kansas

Woke up in Des Moines and got on the road mid-morning, hoping to get to Wichita and my brother's place by 4pm ish.  We struck south on I-35, stopping for some lunch outside Kansas City.  I dearly wished to visit a Sonic for the first time in years, and for those of you with Midwestern backgrounds you will understand my longing.  Grilled cheese and cherry limeade!  However, the Behemoth refused to enter its tiny parking lot/drive-in, so we had a mini-argument about where to eat.  Nice.  We argue about strange things when we do argue and ALWAYS in the car.  Maybe its the forced proximity, I don't know.  Afterwards, I took the wheel of Lady Behemoth and attempted to get us through a construction happy KC without driving me insane or running someone over.  Challenging, but we managed.  Then on to slicing through eastern Kansas on 35.  

Home.  Oh, this landscape.  It rings that great big gong in my heart that says, "You're here!  You're home now.  You made it.  Time to stop."  I always think of the people who preceded me in the family line, the great-greats and so on, and I wonder how this landscape spoke to them, what made them stop and build their lives in this place.  Why here?  I wish I could ask.  It makes me incredibly sad to just blow through it on our way, not to mention missing the family that we were passing by.  But we are on a mission.

We made it into Wichita and got to my brother's place by 5pm ish,  Hello, Chris and Lin!  

Punk immediately met the three cats, all of whom ran from her.  Fast.  The two tiger striped ones hid the entire time we were there.  Although Punk eventually found their hiding places, they refused to come out and confront her.  Shao He (Little Black), however, was a different story.  He was not taking any of her shit.  He routinely stood his ground and hissed and spat and made that awesome enraged noise that cats do deep in their throat.  Punk was very gentle with him and respectful of his pissed off space and just stared at him whilst wagging happily, as if to say, "You're a kitty!  Hooray!".  Hilarious.  

We ate my brother's awesome burgers and talked and laughed.  In addition to holding on to a piece of my grandmother's furniture for me, Chris has been holding on to a bunch of miscellaneous items of hers, waiting for me to go through them, mostly kitchen stuff.  The woman saved everything.  Very clearly where our pack rat gene comes from.  We decided on an awesome aluminum locking travel cake dome, some various bits and bobs, candlesticks and tumbled rocks from Colorado trips, and a set of two lidded baskets, one of which will become my sewing basket eventually.  I also selected a couple of her books, one of which was a small press illustrated nature poem, into which she pasted a prayer she wrote herself.  I am so cynical about religion that I often forget how important faith was to her.  I think it was written around the time of her husband's death in 1987, and prays for strength.  This is also around the time we moved back to Kansas, and I would walk to her townhouse after school and spend the rest of the afternoon playing gin rummy and double solitaire with her in the kitchen and watching Square One on PBS.  I miss her.

Day One - Meet The Behemoth!

Ladies and gents, allow me to introduce the umpteenth wonder of the world.....

THE BEHEMOTH.  This thing was HUGE.  We started out with a reservation for a 16 foot moving van which in both of our minds was going to be completely sufficient.  Then we picked it up.  And then we panicked a little.  To be fair, I mostly panicked and John had misgivings.  Thankfully, the moving place had the next size up available, a 22 foot monstrosity that runs on diesel and had us feeling like truckers who could crush puny cars in our wake.  Perfect.  The movers arrived on schedule after we hurriedly switched out the vans, and spent two and a half hours packing us up.  We had about 5 feet of space leftover at the back of the truck and everything else was packed to the rafters.  See us breathe huge sighs of relief.

After the truck was packed John navigated it over to All For Doggies and we retrieved a very happy to see us and relieved not have been left behind dog who squealed and leapt with excitement once she spotted us.  It took her an hour or so to get used to riding in the van, but once we were on the highway and cruising along she settled in and passed out.  

An uneventful trip to Des Moines for our first day.  John and I tried to call the truck by various names, the Conestoga, etc. that would go with our Manifest Destiny theme, but we just couldn't call it anything but The Behemoth.  Took us a little longer than we expected, but we didn't mind so much.  Stops for gas and then a longer one to eat our ham sandwiches at an I-80 rest stop.  We saw about what you'd expect along the way; loads of cows and fields, neat and orderly working farms and crumbling abandoned ones, including one so far gone that a full size tree had grown out of its grain silo, and the obligatory small, squashed mammals along the highway shoulder.  After about seven hours of driving we stopped for the night which required John to park The Behemoth in a hotel lot where our only option was to parallel park across five spaces.  For a guy with a week old driver's license he did an amazing job.  Punk slept on the king size bed with us, which she LOVED, and we all passed out as soon as we hit the bed.  

Phase One Complete.

We've landed in Wichita and are spending some really lovely time at my brother's place.  Punkus is behaving herself very nicely around the brotha's kitties, ecstatic about chasing them, thrilled when she finds one hiding from her and when one stays put and hisses and spits at her she just stares at it and wags.  Both John and I are frankly very surprised by this and well-pleased with her.  We've only spent one night here and we'll be heading on towards Colorado this afternoon.  We've found that the lead assed truck is moving much slower than anticipated, so we're breaking up the trail to Denver into two days instead of one as originally planned.  Once we're settled in Denver I'll post a bit more and some photos, too.  For all of you who made us road mixes, you are made entirely of awesome.  They are fantastic and we're enjoying each one.  ONWARD!

Firsties!!!

This'll be a short one, but I just wanted to share with you all (at least those of you who haven't been dragged to our upstairs bathroom) the view that we are leaving behind.

Insane.

Wilkommen!

SO. Hi there. As most, if not all, of you know if you have made your way here, this Saturday marks our departure from Chicago for a big ol' move to Portland, Oregon. Before we actually get to Portland we'll be travelling for about three weeks to Kansas, Colorado, Arizona and Washington DC to visit family and go to two different weddings. I thought it might be nice to keep ya'll up to date on our progress and post some photos as well, hence the creation of this addition to (ahem) the Blogosphere. We'll start posting later this week.

In the meantime, we'll have last days of work, last goodbyes, and lots and lots of packing to keep us very VERY busy.