Sun Moon Stars Girl )-(

Welcome to my little place to vent…

Don’t worry, I’m not going to write a post on every boring thing that we did or that happens each day of this trip. I don’t have the time or energy to do all of that. I do, however, want to write about the first 24-hours of it. Of course it starts out with the frantic finishing of packing. Is this going to be confiscated it it’s in our carry-on? When is our ride going to be here? We need to eat, take out the trash, clean the dishes… Everything actually went very smoothly. We had plenty of time to get all the “last minute” stuff done, our ride arrived at the perfect time, despite the traffic on the 405 we still got the the airport in plenty of time. Check-in was a breeze. I almost don’t want to mention the hidden secret of the Long Beach Airport. It’s a tiny, tiny airport (yup, you gotta go outside and climb the stairs to board the plane), but it was so great in the crazed-airline travel days we’re living in. Security was a quick task (none of the Super Special Security Screens this year to almost make us miss our flight!), and the actual flight was great too. Jet Blue has a great airline, despite the fact that neither Kris nor I were able to truly sleep on the red-eye. We had the seats with “the most” legroom (in the exit aisle), but the seats did not recline that much. I swear that the seats used to recline WAY more. We also ended up sitting next to Kris’s old roommate Andrew, or at least someone who resembled Andrew so much we did almost think it was him (especially considering the flight went into Boston). Andrew had the window seat, which was bad because it’s the only place you can lean, but I guess it was also good that I had the aisle seat since I had to get up so many times to use the restroom.

So off the surreal flight to Boston (there was no mention of how far back we were in the queue to take off or land, the plane was suddenly in the air, and then suddenly on the ground) and into the cold. I changed out of my pjs while another woman waited for me to get out of the handicapped stall (I didn’t know she was out there!). The luggage check was quick, and then we followed signs to the rental cars. Ok, so not only was it now cold, but it was also sleeting. Yuck. We had to wait out in the drippy covered road for the Hertz bus. It took so long Kris went inside to call to make sure the bus was running. I was happy I had the umbrella handy once we got to the actual Hertz counter (also a nice smooth experience) and into the sleet to find the car. A Mazda 6 was not the car I’d envisioned us driving, but it’s what we got and it wasn’t too bad. All the Hertz cars have the “Never Lost” GPS thing inside, which we didn’t necessarily need, but was fun to play with. Got on the 93 and made a quick exit from Boston before the morning rush hour started. Our first stop was at Dunkin’ Donuts. I’ve missed it SO much (although not for the coffee, which I don’t really drink), but of course they’ve stopped making the stuff I wanted. All I ask is for a Vanilla Chai and a scone. No go. After several tries (and an irate New England Dunkies woman), I finally ended up with some breakfast sandwich and hot cocoa. Not really what I wanted. The next task was to get the rental car listed on my EZPass so we could use it to pay the tolls. It took a couple calls, but it eventually got worked out (and edit - made our whole trip even easier!). Kris drove around the area where he grew up to kill some time and show me some places we hadn’t gotten a chance to ever visit. It was so shocking to see the Dunkies on every street corner and drive down those narrow New England roads, made even narrower by the snow, once again. It makes me question if I’d really want to move back there - yay for California sun!

Our next stop was the Rockingham Mall in tax-free Salem, NH. Why shop in CA with the 10% sales tax on everything, when we’d have to find some place to pack it, and not be able to wrap it in advance anyway? We knew we’d need to kill a few hours (our flight got in at around 6 AM) anyway. It took a few extra stops, but we got about 90% of our Christmas shopping done. Time to head up to Maine and Kris’s family.

After much deliberation, Kris and I finally signed up to work at the Laughlin/Ramada Express Rally. It was a bit of a hearbreak not to actually drive in the event, but we figured we’d show our support and go out there to help with timing controls. Kris had signed up as a hopeful stage captain, both of us already having experience working events both this year and last (and Kris with more experience from ice racing and such), but with one stage unfortunately canceled, and so many other experienced people, this was not what happened.

We did have a good time, meeting some people uninitiated to the sport of rally, and other long-time workers. We caught up with a bunch of people (too many to list them all here) when we got there Thursday night, and re-discovered the lack of alarm clocks (or clocks at all) in the hotel rooms. I know it’s a casino, so they want you to lose all sense of time - I’m just glad I had my watch.

I’ll post an extra story on rallynotes on “How I ended up codriving at Ramada” on rallynotes.

On Friday, we worked the start and then turn-around finish of one of the new stages, Cane Springs. We found out there was a buffet up the road a bit, put on by Scott and Carrie Fischer. Their home is new to them, the old house of Dom Laughlin, the guy who established the town. It’s a HUGE, ENOURMOUS Ranch house, from what we saw of it - we mainly stayed in the nice warm kitchen where the food and hot cocoa was - but that was apparently the maid’s quarters back in the day. It was extremely nice of them to A) Let the rally use their roads, B) That they invited us all in not only for food, but also C) as a spectator location. I think it was unfortunate that the last part wasn’t used as much as it could have been, but the potential was exciting. As explaination - the end of stage 1/start of stage 6 basically went around their corral, easily viewable from several spots, namely their back porch, and they’d invited us all to come by their house anyway! Hopefully this is something that will be continue to be utilized in the future of this rally. We ended the day driving behind sweep down stage 6.

Saturday was an even earlier day, out to the Hualapai Nation down Route 66. I’m almost mad that we made this same portion of Route 66 a required drive for our initial move out west, since it is a place we’ve traversed many times now. How could we have known though? Well, this time it was start of stage 10 and finish 13, Black Canyon. This is apparently a very well-known stage, which has been snow and ice-covered in the past. It was pretty cold out there (happily I had brought my ski gear and layered), but NOT snowy. We lucked out with nice, sunny weather all weekend. The worst part of the day was an unfortunate “I have to go to the bathroom outdoors, but I’m a girl” incident, but again we had a good time. My hands were near frozen after writing all the stage times on the cards (since we had spent the previous evening timing in the car), but again it was great seeing everyone.

Sunday, got to “sleep in” a bit. Ended up codriving - see entry on rallynotes. Got back after both Kris and I almost falling asleep at the wheel (on seperate instances, and no, it was not dangerous, we were both able to find a convinient rest area to switch at). Then it was time to unpack and start re-packing for our Christmas vacation trip back East.