Day Two
After finishing the initial leg of the journey—Grand Junction to Denver—with little difficulty, and having enjoyed a nice dinner with Dayna, Emery, and the Guse, we retire to our room at the Comfort Inn Wheat Ridge (right across the parking lot from the Affordable Inn Wheat Ridge, where people seemed to be having a hell of a lot more fun than at our place...maybe because it was so affordable there). We get the kids tucked in, decide not to have shots of Patron, and crash. I think I'm asleep several minutes prior to actually laying down, my body responsible for transporting me across the room and into the bed. This is good. We'll be well-rested for day two.
Good thing we are.
Day two starts by swinging by Dayna's and Emery's house to pick up Cleo, who'd spent the night there (as our hotel didn't allow pets, a glaring omission in essential criteria for lodging committed by the idiot who made the reservations—me) and to drop off the crib that has been the somnabulistic home to all three of my children and will now serve the same function for little MacGeigevurglar Jr. This is quite interesting, because in a very clear yet hard to describe way I get the chance to see her pregnancy become more real to her right before my very eyes. She notices me noticing this. We joke about it and put the crib behind the little electronic keyboard she has in a spare room. I tell her, “y'know, this is now the Keyboard of Denial. Every time you play, and that crib is right behind it, you can pretend it's not there at all. It'll be great practice for mothering a teenager.” She agrees, and adds a plan to simply play the thing with her eyes closed-- “It's more soulful anyway,” she deadpans.
I lead Cleo into the dinosaur truck's cab with me and we're off. We've got a half tank of gas, the weather is perfect, and we're prepped for one of the more arduous days of the journey in terms of both the length of the drive (450 miles) and the utter lack of anything interesting to look at in eastern Colorado and western Kansas. Traffic out of Denver is a piece of cake. Next stop: Limon? Burlington? Colby, Kansas? All is well.
About 20 miles short of Limon I check the fuel gauge. It's dropped precipitously, from its previous status at half a tank to slightly over an eighth. Well, the choice has been made for me. No problem. I'll pull over in Limon, we'll grab some gas and fast food, and hit the road again. No sooner do I formulate this little plan, though, that the dinosaur truck bites me. The friendly little velociraptor on its side isn't so friendly after all, or HE WOULD HAVE TOLD ME THAT IN THIS GODDAMN TRUCK AN EIGHTH OF A TANK ON THE GAUGE ACTUALLY MEANS EMPTY. No “low fuel” light. Nothing. Instead, as I climb to the top of a low rise (no such thing as an actual hill out there, see) and approach the exit to Cedar Point the thing just sputters a couple of times...and dies. Two things strike me immediately:
1. Aw, shit.
2. Cedar Point does not exist. There's nothing at this exit at all, especially not any sort of human civilization. And there sure as hell isn't an amusement park.
J pulls up behind me, and the conversation as I march back to the Mercury and shout through the open window goes something like this:
J: What's up?
R: What's up? I'll TELL you what's up. You wanna know what's up? Goddamnit. GodDAMNIT.
J: What? What?
R: The fucking truck is out of fucking gas! It read an eighth of a tank and NOW IT'S OUT OF FUCKING GAS GODDAMNIT GODDAMNIT!
J: (calmly) Okay. We'll get some gas.
R: DO YOU BELIEVE THIS? I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS! GODDAMNIT!
J: (again, calmly) Okay. I'll be right back. Can you keep Harper with you? She's been feeling sick and it would help her to be out of the car.
R: NO! THERE'S NO ROOM IN THE TRUCK! CLEO TAKES UP THE WHOLE...GODDAMNIT! FUCKING TRUCK! AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!
J (with forced calm this time) Okay. I'll be right back.
And off she goes. I bide my time in the truck by playing “Need for Speed” on my iPod, texting a great deal of profanity to Samara about my situation (she's good about trying to talk me off the ledge, writing things like “well, what's a road trip without a little car trouble, eh?”), and fending off an anxiety attack. 40 minutes later J returns—with what I had feared. A two-gallon tank of gasoline. By this time, I've restored some perspective and have decided to cut back on the “goddamnits” so I meet her calmly, cooly:
R: That's all they had?
J: What do you mean? It's two gallons. Limon's only eight miles ahead. You'll be fine.
R: Maybe.
J: What do you mean, “maybe?”
R: This godda—this truck has apparently been getting about five miles per gallon. Hopefully I make it.
J: (extra calmly, extra forced) And if you don't, we'll do this again.
R: Yep.
I return to the dinosaur truck with the gas container, and after a few minutes of fighting with it (and losing, as I am now covered in gasoline) I start the truck and am on my way. About five miles into the trip, I see a road sign. Limon—8 miles. Aw, crap. She duped me! It's not eight miles from where we were...it's eight miles from here! I'm screwed! But the dinosaur truck and I lumber on down I-70, fifty miles an hour and hoping for nine miles per gallon.
Finally, after what seems like forever, I see the sign: Limon—1 mile. I'm gonna make it. Amazing! I slide into the exit lane and up the ramp. I crest the hill, glide through the stop sign and turn right towards the gas station now only a hundred feet from me. But the raptor isn't finished with me yet.
The truck sputters and stalls.
Oh, HELL no. Not this time, I think. I assess: do I have enough forward momentum to coast into the place? Could I actually reach gasoline using nothing but gravity and my keen steering skills? And my assessment reveals to me that this is in fact possible. I point the truck down the slight decline and pick up speed. Turning right into the station, I see two possible choices for filling up. There's a dock of two gas pumps on the right, empty. Then there's a single pump on the left. Also empty. I decide that while I can probably reach either, the one on the left is a slam dunk. I drift silently into the lane, finally laughing about my misadventures of the morning and crowing to myself about how cool I am to have pulled this off. I come to a stop and hop out of the cab. I walk (jauntily, if I do say so myself) around to the side of the truck so I can fill 'er up. I reach for the pump's handle.
Diesel.
The dinosaur truck takes unleaded. Of course. Of course. I have two perfectly good options, and I choose the one that's no help to me whatsoever. Brilliant. I walk over to J and the kids in the Mercury and tell her to go ahead and grab a table at the Denny's down the street, 'cause this might be a while.
Which it is. I refill the two-gallon container and put the gas into the truck. I drive the truck all of thirty feet to the unleaded-dispensing lane that I SHOULD HAVE CHOSEN IN THE FIRST PLACE and, finally, mercifully begin pumping real quantities of gas into the sixty-gallon tank. At $74.00 the thing stops automatically. Oh, I've seen this before...there's a cap on most credit cards for gasoline. No biggie, I'll just replace the nozzle and start another transaction.
Please see cashier.
Aw, goddamnit. The “goddamnits” are back now, if you hadn't noticed. I walk inside, where a man whom I am sure was the human inspiration for the computer-rendered Theodore the Chipmunk explains to me what I already know about why I can't get any more gas. He tries to run the card inside, where it's declined. Finally, I hand him a bunch of actual American money and proceed—finally!--to fill the truck with precious petrol. After an hour at Denny's—where Liam, continuing his foray into the world of tube-shaped meats, discovers breakfast sausage and eats about 12 of them—we hit the road.
The rest of the day? Uneventful. Blissfully uneventful. We pull into Salina, Kansas a little before 9PM and meet our dear friend Marilyn, who will be giving Cleo a new (and better, we think) home with a slew of other Golden Retrievers. The kids don't seem to grasp the finality of giving her away, which is good. Cleo and I share a moment in the truck before we pull in to the hotel parking lot to find Marilyn. I tell her I love her and also apologize for not being a better master. I mean this.
We hang with Marilyn for 15 minutes or so, the kids running around with Cleo and subsequently becoming mesmerized with some foam blocks that Marilyn gives them which have letters, numbers, and English and Spanish words on them. Clever girl, you are, Marilyn Rook. A perfect distraction. We load Cleo into Marilyn's car, and they drive off into the dusk and back to Enid, Oklahoma.
We check in and grab some dinner at Legends—the hotel's “sports bar and grill” which has the most arbitrary wall art imaginable (a six-inch by eight-inch photo of Ichiro is positioned next to a four-foot by six-foot photo of...Audrey Hepburn) but awfully good wings and huge beers. Exhausted, we crawl back to the room and get ready for bed. Again, I'm asleep standing up.
Oh...but tonight, I opt for the Patron.
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