Preface

Many people have had the opportunity to drive across the country. While growing up, I always relied on plane travel to get from place to place, usually flying from Portland, Oregon to Chicago, Illinois or Cincinnati, Ohio to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to visit grandparents, or flying from Portland, Oregon to San Francisco, California to Atlanta, Georgia. The longest car trip I ever made while growing up was either from Corvallis, Oregon to Pleasington, California, or north to Vancouver, British Columbia, lasting about 10 hours one way. Today I embark on a road trip that will take me from Salt Lake City, Utah all the way to Frackville, Pennsylvania. The reason for this needs a small back story.

I have been friends with Carlin Simmons since the 7^th grade. He and I have gone on many adventures together, including but not limited to driving 16 hours in a day to get a half-dead vehicle from what almost ended up being Canada, as well as a two-day, 28 hour drive to and from Corvallis to Provo, Utah to not attend his wedding. Thus, it was natural for Carlin to ask me to join him on a trip to Boston from Salt Lake City to help relocate his family for an impending internship.

The situation was that Carlin had accept a position as an accounting intern in Boston. He decided it would be best to relocate his family there for the duration of the internship. He needs a car for the position, which means he must drive, but his child is too small to spend that amount of time in a car, thus his wife and the kid are to fly to Boston. Not wanting to drive alone, Carlin invites me, as well as our friend Kevin Costa, to join on this adventure.

Simply put, we are driving across the country. On a more complicated level, we are driving to Denver, Colorado, Storm Lake, Iowa, someplace in the Rust Belt (either Chicago, Indianapolis, or Pittsburgh), Baltimore, Maryland, and then Frackville, Pennsylvania. Carlin and Kevin will subsequently continue on to Boston from there after taking a small vacation back down in Washington, D.C.

Journey to the Great Salt Lake

Despite the aforementioned plan of travel, the journey actually began with me having to get from Phoenix to Salt Lake City. This could easily be achieved with a plane ride, which sounds simple enough, but no journey is worth taking unless you plan on having some excitement, as mildly humorous as it may be.

I was taken to the airport after getting lunch with my roommate. Apparently, on his way back to the apartment, he was routed through some random part of Tempe because no one seems to be able to plan out the road construction in the area. I made my way to stand in line at the Southwest Airlines baggage check, where there was a guy stationed to tell people by loudly repeating himself that there were two lines: one for checking baggage and getting a boarding pass, and the other for doing everything else. Inevitably so, the two women in front of me stood in line for about 10 minutes before they realized that they could not purchase any tickets from the “baggage check and boarding pass only” line. The discussion that ensued from that was hilarious before the Southwest agent at the end of the line firmly but politely said, “please leave.”

At the security checkpoint, the only exciting thing I saw was the woman that almost accidentally let her small baby go through the x-ray machine in its baby chair (no joke!).

The plane was 10 minutes late, which is not a big deal at all, but I’m pretty sure that 80% of the people scheduled to be on the flight with me started freaking out like their spleen had just been forcibly removed. We were waiting for the flight crew that was delayed coming in from another flight. I watched them sprint onto the flight, and about 3 minutes later we started boarding, which was a very fast turnaround. Unknown to us, the flight crew was not ready to receive passengers yet.

Southwest does not have assigned seating. You get to board based on how early you check in during a 24-hour window. My boarding number was B-26, which meant I was in the last half of people boarding, and thus had to sit all the way in the back by the window (the aisle is almost always preferred for people that are over 6 feet tall like myself). I did get a very cool – yet illegal – photo of the Grand Canyon from the air, though!

Grand Canyon from an Airplane Window

Remember how I said the flight crew was not ready to receive passengers yet? Yeah, they seemed to still be frantically running around the plane 45 minutes into the flight trying to take care of things that usually would have been done prior to boarding. As a result, the inflight beverage service came about 25 minutes before the flight was suppose to land. Again, this was NOT a big deal, but some people sure thought it was. The funny thing about this was that they handed me my drink, and literally as soon as I touched the cup, the pilot announced that we were going to be landing soon and that the flight attendants would be moving through the cabin to pick up all remaining trash. About 10 seconds later, my drink that I had taken a single sip from was taken from me and thrown into a trash bag.

Because of the cloud cover in Salt Lake City, the landing was quite bumpy. A young woman sitting not far from me started clawing at her seat and crying as we descended to the ground. I attempted to get the woman sitting closer to her to tell her we would be fine, but this woman apparently only spoke Brooklynese and would only respond to me with a loud and abrasive “WHAT!?!” I eventually gave up, and the poor girl cried herself to the ground. Actual touchdown was just as bumpy as the descent as we landed on a runway that appeared to be made of gravel. Welcome to Salt Lake City!

I was collected outside the airport by Carlin and his wife, Ashley, and we made our way to Lehi where the two were leaving their furniture until after the internship. Ashley graciously cut my hair, which was out of control by this point, and I was shown to my room: a master bedroom with a super creepy room for the toilet and a bed that was harder than granite. Perfect way to begin this adventure.