Family Album - Strontium

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Slack Key Lullaby by Ledward Kaapana

Life -  

Strontium 

 This was Strontium, my second Honda Element. A gorgeous shade of green, I really loved that rig. (Look how little Pooka is in that photo!)

He took up all over the west, from barren stretches of Eastern Montana to the sopping wet beaches of Oregon and Washington. We set up a pretty effective camping method inside of him and I just plain loved the color.

Pretty? Nah. Organized? Not really. Cozy? Awww yeah!

Sadly, Strontium met his end on a fateful trip to Leavenworth, Washington, where he was t-boned by a truck that I misjudged the speed of as I pulled out of a driveway. (On my best buddy's wedding day. With him in the car with me. And I was supposed to be the minister that day.)

We miss ya, Strontium!

We've since purchased a new Element, number three, Stormalong, which is a vivid orange-red.

The ROUS FAMILY -   

 

 

 

Day Two - Cross Country Cage Caravan

Day two dawned cold. Dawned cold! (Haha Lame Punnery) We all slept well, lulled to sleep by the gentle rumblings of the nearby semis generators, though the lights of the rest stop were a bit intrusive. We'll likely make curtains for the E our next modification. I've made makeshift ones a couple of times before but they've always been kind of half-assed and shabby or unwieldy.

We were meeting our Uncle Steve in North Dakota for lunch, so we got a move on pretty quickly, watching the road fly under our wheels. It was smooth and flat and cold.

Now, Uncle Steve likes to talk big, in fact he's the biggest talker I know, so I was pretty excited to see this mystical wonderland he speaks of, this Northern gem of the United States.

It looked a lot like Eastern Montana except flatter.

Of course, we did not visit in the optimal time of year, as Uncle Steve explained, on the way to lunch, in the summer, ND turns green and pleasantly temperate. Children come out to frolic, birds sing and the accordion players take to the gazebo in the park, all with the charmingly rural backdrop of the coal trains, trailers full of ebony chugging slowly along.

I could see what he was talking about, the little town where he lives does have a lot of character, but that particular day, it was cold and windy, and frankly, I was already tired of driving, not even half way into the trip.

Lunch was superb. We had the choice of Traditional German Cuisine (I don't like it, said Steve.) or their favorite Chinese food place. We left our cats in the house and the boys steaming up the windows in Stormalong, and rode with Uncle Steve and the family to the Rice Bowl, a local place located in the upstairs of the library, which I thought was awesome.

The Rice Bowl had some of the best Chinese food I've ever had, especially their sweet and sour chicken, which had a thin and super-crispy breading that nearly melted in your mouth. The food was supplemented with stories about Lindsay's grandfather, a hilarious and good natured old fellow.

Boueyed up by the food and conversation, we plowed on, driving straight through the state, stopping only for potty breaks and gasoline.

Speaking of which, we got pretty good gas mileage, averaging around 20 mpg on the trip, though it was amazing how quickly it still ate away at our finances. Apart from gas, we stayed pretty thrifty throughout, only buying the occasional snack or treat, some excellent chocolate covered toffee, some Wisconsin cheese curds, things like that.

There isn't much else to say about the trip apart from breakfast the next day, where we met our friend Sarah. She chose a place along our route, outside of St. Paul and we met her and her charge, a young girl she nannys for.  Apparently, we've managed to develop a reputation amongst our friends for being notoriously picky about food places. Sarah was actually worried that we wouldn't like the place she chose and she put quite a lot of thought into it. She didn't need to worry, the restaurant was amazing. Linz ordered a foot wide caramel roll and I got an order of amazing chicken fried steak.

We chatted for a while, said our goodbyes, cleaned up the gallon of water the dogs spilled on the floor of the car (Thank god for Elements!) and kept driving.

And kep driving.

And kept driving.

Sleep became the enemy keeping us from ending the trip at home, so I only napped for an hour or so every once in a while, climbing back with the boys and zonking out for a few. I ate sunflower seeds to stay busy and listened to comedy routines on the complimentary xm radio that came with the new car (The only reason I could really see paying for radio like that - on long trips, it is nice to have the variety.)

I hated driving the toll roads through the last few states, absolutely despised them. I'll probably rant about them in a later post all of their own, but we ended paying $70+ in tolls and avoiding a large number of appealing attractions and diversions because we couldn't leave the road without paying more than if we stuck to the road.

I stopped caring about anything but getting done with the trip, and we finally got home on March 28th, at around 2am.

And that's about it. Not many awesome insights or anything this time around, not a lot of pleasure, frankly. But it was worth it. Having our pets home was worth all of it!

It Begins

The next day, we got up bright and early, if slightly disoriented from being back in Idaho. After a bit of packing a re-arranging, we hit the bank for our loan and swung by Lindsay's parent's house to drop off their car (Which my mom borrowed for the trip to Salt Lake while hers was in the shop)

Our new car was in Idaho Falls, about 40 minutes to the north, in a town that gets all the good stores. So we stopped in at the Barnes and Noble so that I could try out my nook in the store. Nothing too thrilling, but I did get a free copy of Alice's Adventures In Wonderland and chatted with an employee who had some great hints for searching the nook store. For instance, you can type in "0.00 history" to bring up a list of all of the history related free books for download. This is a cool thing.

I also discussed the cracked button issue with him, and he said most of the store's nooks, as well as the employee's personal ones have cracked as well. He actually likes his cracked, it makes the button pushing easier, and he was pretty sure that the next one would crack too. That is probably very true, but man, it sandpapers my chicken that it's something I'll just have to accept. Maybe I'll have to get a silicone sleeve for it that will hide the button from view. But then I wouldn't be able to fit the nook in my back pocket!

Smith Honda had a shiny new Citrus Fire Metallic Element parked out front waiting for me. Very cool. I was iffy about the color at first, I'm used to cooler colors like greens, but the paint is interesting, kind of an autumny blood orange that changes colors in the light. I liked it.

Naturally, thanks to the Honda dealer in Poky, I didn't have the paperwork filled out here, so we hit a nearby fish and chicken place for lunch while the salesman finished my papers. Then, a few signatures later and Lindsay and I pulled out of the lot in our new car. Easy, fun and no shadiness.

This is our third element, we bought it in the third month and when we got in, the trip meter was at 33.3 miles. Third time had better be the charm!

I christened this vessel Captain Stormalong, after a New England Tall Tale about a giant ship captain (Kind of a Paul Bunyan of the Atlantic) and in honor of it, the first song we played in him was "Old Cape Cod" a remake of it by a group called the Puppini Sisters, three lovely young ladies who sing in an olde timey way with a suicide girls twist. Coincidentally, Old Cape Cod also happened to be the third track on the CD... Spooky!

The rest of the day was spent getting ready to leave. Our plans for the E consisted of removing the back seats and installing a sleeping/storage platform that Rich (My father in law) had built for us based loosely on some plans from the internet. It turned out really great, though we did have to make a few simple changes. Essentially, what we did was create a platform out of wood and pipes that allows us to stash all of our stuff under it and have a mattress and sleeping stuff above it. When we are driving, the mattress folds under to the shorter length and is nice and kooshy for the pets to ride on and at night, we slide the seats forward and lay the seat backs flat, flush against the platform. Once we unroll the mattress the rest of the way, this creates a full size bed in the back, with enough sleeping room at the front by the steering area for the dogs to sleep.

Then my wife went to work, cramming a shocking amount of stuff into that little 4x4x1' storage hold. I was shocked, frankly.

We spent the remainder of the evening with family, eating dinner with both sides of parents and stopping in to visit a few friends. That night, we added a few touches to the car and headed to bed.

The first day of the trip started out pretty decent. We left town at 11:11am, fully loaded. Cats on harnesses and leashes, dogs getting used to the new back platform... and we headed East! Well... North really.

The pets adjusted to the first day of driving pretty well. Ludo, of course, just settled right in, chewing on rawhide and looking out the window at the back of the car. He loved how the raised platform allowed him to lie down and look out the windows. Pooka was a bit fidgety, whining a little and shifting around a lot. We had some pills that would make him drowsy and help with nausea that we were probably going to have to use eventually. The cats... Were very good. They crawled around a bit, exploring things, getting tangled up, wanting to sit on my lap, getting stepped on by Pooka... But other than that, they were great! They looked out the window a bit and eventually decided they liked riding on the floor under Lindsay's feet.

That night, we grabbed some fast food at a Taco Johns, eating it in the car next to a school while we watched TV on Lindsay's laptop. (With the sound piped through the a/v jack in Stormalong, which made the theme song to Big Bang Theory pretty impressive!)

The conversion to sleeping mode took a bit of work, it was the first time we'd tried it and doing it in the dark at a truck stop just outside of Billings Montana was tricky, but once we settled in, everyone slept quite well.

1 Element, 2 Dogs, 2 Cats, 3000 Miles, Ugh.

I knew this was gonna be a pain in the rear, but man... That was a long trip. I have a lot to say about it, and this blog will probably only cover the basics. Then I'll make little separate observations about the details of the trip later, thus avoiding the dreaded Serial Effect that most of my trips have, but still allowing me to ramble and rant like I usually do. That said, this will still have to be a couple of installments... ha!

Unlike most of our road trips, this trip was not that fun for the most part. Last week, my wife and I left Maine, where we have been slowly building our new lives, and returned to Idaho to pick up something was missing from it, our pets. We have 4; a black cat named Clover, a Siamese named Sassafras and two dogs, a Great Pyrenees named Pooka and Ludo, a Newfoundland/Retriever.

We love these guys and it's been hard being away from them for so long, so it would be good to have them here with us. Getting them here though would prove to be a challenge.

First off, we had to buy a car, and not just any, my third Element. We started talking with a friend that worked for the local Honda dealer in Pocatello. He's a great guy and I love him and his wife, but we've had problems with the dealer before, so we were wary. We needed to get this purchase taken care of before we arrived - We only had about 36 hours in town before we had to leave for Maine again, and we didn't have time for silly Car Dealer crap or delays.

It went smoothly for a while, but then things derailed. They got the car but could never give me an official, final price, so I had to get the loan without a total. They did tell me that a certain price would be sufficient, so that's what I asked for and received from my bank. Two days later, the paperwork arrived in the mail, with a price of $3,000 more than my loan, and a down payment.

Needless to say, we were not amused. I spent the next days trying to get an answer for what was going on and they kept coming back with different excuses. The papers were wrong, don't worry - Oh, well, just hold on and we'll fix it.... Hmm, seems there was a mistake, but your loan still isn't enough... We don't need a down, let me see what I can do...


Finally, I got ahold of the finance guy, Brett. Who, incidentally, was the reason we walked on an Element a few years ago. He admitted that they hadn't been up front about the pricing and they should have gotten the total finalized a long time ago, but that it wasn't his fault. I should have known better than to buy a car like that. Then, he said that he would not apologize for the confusion. He admitted they were wrong, but would not apologize. Grr. The money wasn't that big of a deal, I could adjust my loan, but this pissed me off. A simple sorry and I would have kept up with them.

Instead, I told Brett to shove it and walked. I felt bad because they'd shipped in the car from Montana, and I truly don't feel that it was our salesman's fault, but I wouldn't stand for that. We called a dealer in nearby Idaho Falls, and they happily sold us a new Element for $2000 less than the local dealer said was the lowest they could go.

Of course, afterwards, I got all sorts of calls from other people in the Pocatello Honda asking us to come back. Bah to them.

Anyway, that figured out, we headed to the airport. I was kind of looking forward to this flight. Previously, I've always had tons of luggage and this time I was flying light, just my coat and nook. Well, apparently, I also looked like I was carrying something else, because not only did I get frisked at the security point, I also got frisked a second time at the gate, as did Lindsay... I must look shady.

The flights were long and boring and full up, so we didn't get to pick our seats, though I sat next to a cool musician out of LA the first leg, a chatty Scottsman the second and my wife the third. I read the most part of two books on the flight and had to demonstrate the nook to a few folks that seemed fascinated by it. Lindsay, meanwhile, sat next to some grumpy old men and a excessively friendly flight attendant. In Salt Lake, when we finally landed, we met my mom and brother for dinner at the charming and delicious Old Spaghetti Factory in downtown Trolley Square in SLC. I've always loved this place. I don't even like pasta, but their food is pretty reasonable and the decor is fabulous there. We met Lindsay's sisters and brother there and had a very nice meal.


Then the highlight of the trip, seeing our pets for the first time in two months. They were ecstatic to see us and by the time we went to bed, it was well after 1am Mountain time, which was a LONG time from the 6am Eastern when we got up....

The next day was going to be busy!

House For Sale Part I

About 4 years ago, while I was heading to my graveyard shift down Reserve Road in Missoula, I stopped at a light. I was eating a hot pocket and as I lifted it to my mouth to take a bite, I looked in my rear view mirror in time to see a red sports car slam into the back of my Honda Element. It turned out that the driver, a young girl, had been bent over in her seat, trying to reach her cell phone that she'd dropped, and hit me going over 50MPH, never touching the brakes. She hit hard enough to push me into 4 vehicles ahead of me. Amazingly, I walked away shaken, covered in pepperoni, and with some gnarly bumps on my calves where they'd kicked up into the dash, but otherwise safe. My Element was totalled. When she hit, she hit hard enough to bend the frame of the car, buckling it up into my seat, breaking it, and forcing it to recline. She crushed over a foot in the back and roughly 8 inches in the front of my car, and shattered all of the windows. Somehow, when she struck me, the change I had in a pocket by the steering wheel flew up and back towards me, then up and forward to land on the dash. Surprisingly, my airbag never deployed. Quite frankly, to this day, I'm amazed I walked away from the accident, and will forever trust in Honda Element's ability to protect me. The lady in front of me was hurt badly, and ended up in the emergency room overnight, the girl that hit us, miraculously only hurt her index finger. Looking at her car, she should have been dead. Luckily, she happened to sit up right before she hit me, so the airbag helped her. When I had my wife call my work to let them know I wouldn't be in that night, the Store Manager told me I had to be there, and couldn't call off. This was one of many reasons we had to get far enough away from that store that she couldn't follow me on her broom.

At any rate, the accident gave us a little bit of money, that we decided would be best spent on a home, rather than a new car, Lindsay was going to be heading back to Missoula for school and wouldn't need her car, so we bought a house in Pocatello, and I drove the Avocado Dreamboat until about a year ago, when we needed to buy a new Element.

We got into a house at a good time, rates were decent, and they were approving pretty much anyone. We qualified for a $225,000 house, but set our own limit of $100k, so that payments would be reasonable. We got together with our very dear friend and advisor Gordon Wilks, owner of Gate City Realty, and father to our current Realtor, Jared, and he agreed to help us find a place. At the time, while we looked, we were living in the attic bedroom in the In-Law's house, a far from ideal situation, so we were pretty anxious to get out of there. However, we took our time finding the right place, partially because we loved looking at houses! It was great fun to head out with Gordon, and see what he would recommend. He has a great sense of humor, and was really good at spotting what we liked about places (Sunrooms, big basements, fenced yards, lots of space...) and narrowing the field to eliminate things we didn't (Low ceilings, bad neighborhoods, houses that were 3/4 garage, frosting cups labeled "Spit" in marker...) After about a week, we found a place we really liked, and put in a bid. Unfortunately, someone else did too, and we lost. We muscled on, and kept looking, going out on our days off with him, and searching the Internet the rest of the time.

One day, we were cruising around the West side of Pocatello, looking at a friend's place that she was selling, and we drove past a road called Rosewood Avenue. Lindsay commented on how much she liked the name, and how she'd like to live on a street with a pretty name. Less than 5 minutes later, Gordon calls us, and tells us to meet him on the corner of Rosewood and Foothill, where a house was just listed for sale! We looked at the place, a 3 bedroom on the corner, and liked it a lot. It had a big fenced yard, a nice family room, and a big kitchen. We told Gordon that we liked it enough to bid on it, and we managed to beat everyone else in. We finally owned our own house!

Of course, there was a lot of work to do....