“I can kill you with my brain.” - River Tam, Firefly

By Lisa Fary

I should have watched The Road Warrior and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome before hitting the road for our cross-country move. Those movies are like a how-to guide for dealing with trouble on the road. Granted, we don’t live in a lawless, apocalyptic future just yet, but it could be helpful to ask yourself “What would Mad Max do?” when confronted with belligerent truck stop managers and cattle hauling truckers barreling down a West Virginia mountainside at 80mph.

Ten years ago, the idea of a cross-country road trip was awesome. Also ten years ago, taking a Greyhound on a cross-country trip seemed like a really good idea. Three days, two nights on a bus, carrying my own toilet paper in my backpack and seeing bus stations in such locales as Ft. Stockton, Texas and Rhinelander, Wisconsin? Sure! I was a 21 year old hippie - that was right up my tie-dye wearing alley.

Unfortunately, I’m not 21 anymore.

Now that I’m 31, the idea of a road trip, even in my own car, gives me thoughts like, “Ugh, that’s gonna kill my back.” I need a lot of coffee (and a lot of rest stops) and can’t sit too long in one position. Those conditions are not conducive to a road trip.

Neither is traveling with a cat, but we had delicate stuff that couldn’t go in the moving truck, so there I was, clutching the steering wheel as I drove through a giant, opaque dust storm with my cat wailing in the passenger seat.

And that was just the first day.

Ten things I learned along the way:

1. Dust storms make me feel like Buckaroo Bonzai (but without the oscillation overthruster or a band populated by Clancy Brown and Jeff Goldblum - so really, not much like Buckaroo Bonzai at all). Shortly after passing into New Mexico, a dust storm gathered on the horizon, along with road signs reading, “Dust Storms May Exist - Zero Visibility Possible.” As we got closer, the dust storm filled up my entire field of vision and swallowed up the moving truck driven by John. For miles, all I could see was opaque tan through the windows, the occasional ghostly headlight, and the back of the Budget moving truck looming vaguely in the haze ahead. I imagine that’s what driving across dimensions would be like.

2. Don’t trust the time estimates from Google Maps. Drives that were timed at eight hours, took ten or twelve to complete. Google Maps doesn’t account for rest stops, gas stops, or tolls. However, if you’re a Prius-driving cyborg who doesn’t need to eat, poop, or gas up every 300 miles, Google’s time estimates will work out perfectly.

3. St. Louis has the worst highway interchange I’ve ever seen. Not only it is poorly planned, it’s executed over the freaking Mississippi River. It’s particularly scary when it’s raining and the windshield wipers have dry rotted from lack of use (when it rained in Arizona, I just didn’t drive - no wipers necessary). I didn’t even realize I was on a bridge over the river until I was about halfway across. That’s safe.

4. Know how to change your wiper blades before buying new ones at a gas station. After driving through that St. Louis rain, I bought new wiper blades so I could, like, see while driving. I got one wiper off, then we couldn’t figure out how to get the new ones on.

5. Don’t stop at the Travel America off I-44 in Strafford, Missouri. There were no signs posted indicating that pets weren’t permitted, so we brought the cat carriers inside. John stood at the front with the cats for five or ten minutes while I ran to the ladies room - several employees at the register saw the cats. The manager waited until after we bought lunch to throw us out, swearing that no pets were permitted in any service business in the country whether it was posted or not. Which is not true, by the way - we had already had the cats inside other truck stops and we double-checked at the Phillips 66 truck stop across the street. Our cats were permitted there, so long as they stayed in their carriers. Guess which business got our $120 for gas? Phillips 66.

6. My cats are more hygienic than most people’s kids. I lost count of how many little fingers I saw go up noses and then all over ever surface in the gas station. If you buy something on the road, wipe it down with an anti-bacterial wipe before touching it.

7. There’s always a bigger cross. While driving across the Texas panhandle on I-40, we saw the “Largest Cross in the Western Hemisphere”, which was billed as a spiritual experience we’d never forget. Maybe we had to actually stop to have that kind of spiritual experience at the base of the 190 foot tall cross, because we immediately forgot about the cross when we encountered the “Scariest Gas Station in the Western Hemisphere” (also in Texas). However, we were reminded of the cross the next day when we drove by the actual largest cross in the western hemisphere in Effington, Illionois (198 feet tall), which we also promptly forgot about.

8. Gas stations aren’t just for Pop-Tarts and Vitamin Water. They’re also for used cowboy boots, old Christmas records, and drool. We initially stopped at the scariest gas station in the western hemisphere because I was thirsty, starving, and being a big baby about it. I stepped inside the station to find myself inside a moth ball smelling thrift store with a line of cowboy boots around the room and all manner of crap hanging from the ceiling. I pushed in a bit further until I found some food: my options were Little Debbies in yellowed packages or those peanut butter/ orange cracker package thingies. The owner, who was about six and a half feet tall, 100 pounds, and 107 years old wandered out from behind a stack of old clothes, glanced at me, and wandered out to the front window. Spittle ran down to his plaid shirt. I hid in the bathroom which, surprisingly, was free of any dismembered body parts.

9. A Road Warrior reality is on the horizon. The Road Warrior’s apocalyptic future was caused by oil shortages - the scariest gas station in the western hemisphere was just about out of gas and couldn’t afford to buy more. With oil prices being what they are, this is likely to start happening on a wider scale. Gas station owners can’t afford to buy more gas, so you can’t gas up. Get thee some leather pants, change your last name to Rockatansky, and start hoarding the juice because we’re having a Mad Max Christmas this year.

10. Oklahoma is really pretty. I’d never spent much time thinking about Oklahoma, but imagined it to be mostly barren, flat and wheat colored - basically an extension of Texas. The stretch around I-40 was gorgeous, all rolling green hills and towns with a lot of Route 66 pride. John and I decided that if we had to move West again, we wouldn’t mind living in Oklahoma. However, the gas-thirsty countryside will be a big draw for aspiring Lord Humungouses (Humungi?) and Auntie Entities in our coming energy apocalypse, so we’ll stay urban.

Now that I’ve sold my car, (and, of course, with gas costing what it does now) this was likely the last road trip we’ll take for a while, which, despite my whining, is disappointing. This road trip was purely purpose-driven, so we didn’t get to see things we otherwise would have stopped to see. Given the time (and lack of cats and a moving truck), I’d like to take Route 66 as far as I could. I’d like to stop at every wacko roadside attraction and eat in off-the-beaten-track diners along the way.

Maybe during the energy apocalypse I can trick out a pink Prius with spiked hubcaps and a bedazzled gunnery turret and hit the road for a real road trip.

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Lisa Fary’s early exposure to classic Battlestar Galactica in 1979 is largely responsible for her lifelong interest in science fiction and her childhood ambition of being an intergalactic space cowgirl. She thinks diagramming sentences is a fun alternative to Sudoku.