Bloomington, Indiana
Written in the kitchen of Lisa’s studio apartment at 6:30am while Debra and Lisa sleep
Miles today: 638
Total miles: 638
Number of states: 6
Number of McDonald’s stops: 2
Today’s route: Great Falls, VA -> Cumberland, MD -> Wheeling, WV -> Columbus OH -> Indianapolis, IN -> Bloomington

Indiana is flat. Flat like the Netherlands. Except if you kick a hole in a wall of dirt in the Netherlands you’ll put the entire country under water. No such risk in Indiana. But they might make favorite son John Cougar Mellencamp sing at you.

We arrived in Bloomington at just past 9:00pm last night with 638 miles under our belt. Lisa walked us to an Irish pub, the Irish Lion, where we ate dinner and each drank a pint of Newcastle Brown Ale. It was our waiter’s first night on the job and, while we ate, his trainer had him sampling the pub’s various beers. By the end of our dinner he was smiling a lot, and when he picked up our signed credit card receipt he pointed to some stacks of pint glasses and said he had been sampling beers from each. There were six stacks of pint glasses.

Some notes from the road:

Mile 0 ~ 8:47am: Debra had a hard time leaving the house. Sitting in the Jeep in the driveway, looking at our house and pulling away was really tough. It was our first house and when we bought it, it was just another vinyl-sided box in Northern Virginia. All the walls were off-white and, after about four months of living there, Debra hated the place. Then we put in hardwood floors, painted all the walls, hung French Doors, remodeled the powder room and made a whole host of other changes and over time it became home - our home. And over 28 combined years (ye gods!) of time living in Virginia, we’d both put down roots with people that we cared very much for. Combined together, leaving the house and leaving friends made a pretty potent emotional cocktail and pulling out of the driveway was difficult to do. In fact, we only got as far as the Bloom grocery store around the corner before I pulled over and we talked things through and I reminded Debra that we have friends and family in California, too, all of whom love us and are waiting for us. That conversation helped and we managed to drive away from the neighborhood. But it was with a knot in the gut.

We drove through Cumberland, Maryland, on I-68, and I explained to Debra that the Cumberland Gap was where the early pioneers broke through the Appalachians and into the wild lands of what is now Ohio. I think it was round about there that Davey Crockett killed him a bar when he was only three. (I think only my parents and other readers over the age of 50 will get that reference - and that’s no typo on “bar”. :: ::)

Mile 150: Crossed the Eastern Continental Divide. From now until we cross the other continental divide in Colorado, all water will flow to the Mississippi and out to the Gulf of Mexico, as opposed to the Atlantic, where the water flows on the eatern side of the divide.

We stopped at a McDonald’s in Cumberland to use the restrooms. In the men’s room they were playing Duran Duran and, as a result, the next hundred miles of Appalachia were driven while humming Hungry Like a Wolf.

Mile 166: We passed under an overpass, across which ran Pig’s Ear Road. I thought of Tiffany Taylor, who grew up in Cheeks, Texas, where they have a road called Burrito King Boulevard (seriously!) and another road called Pig Nut Road. So, Pig Nut Road, meet Pig’s Ear Road.

Mile 176 ~ 12:40pm: We passed into West-by-God Virginia.

Mile 220 ~ 1:41pm: We passed into Pennsylvania. At this point I was in the midst of three consecutive conference calls, trying to assist with an email migration while struggling to keep a decent signal and wondering when the grey, brown and leafless trees in the Appalachians would bloom and turn green.

Mile 500 ~ 6:50pm: We stopped for gas in Lewisburg, Ohio. On the wall in the men’s room, above the urinals, were two gun metal grey vending machines selling condoms, which one can buy by dropping fifty cents into a slot and turning a knob - like a gumball machine but with rubbers. Anyway, pretty standard truck stop stuff. Except this one made me laugh. “EAR PLUGS NOT INCLUDED” it said above a cartoon drawing of an…hmmm…how do you say in your country? an ecstatic blond woman. Below the cartoon the sales pitch continued: “If she’s a moaner it will make her scream! If she’s a screamer it will get you arrested!”

Wow! I thought. All that…for just fifty cents!

So I dropped in my money and the machine ate my quarter.