We decided to make day three a shorter day, only travelling 434 miles so we could rest a bit. The late nights were really starting to take their toll.  My dear son brought a cold along with him, and since all good children should share, my mother-in-law and wife caught the plague late in the day.  The minivan sounded like a TB ward with all the coughing.

Still…we were able to hit the hotel by around 9pm, which was an improvement, and Elk City was fairly good to us.

Day 4

Day 4 was brutal, but we needed to get east of St. Louis. 661 miles on the road, total of 13 hours with stops, etc.  Got my father-in-law hooked on 7th Son during the drive, which was worthwhile. It eas a pretty subdued day, just pushing on to make it to the destination.

We finally rolled in around 10:30pm, and once the kids were winding down, we prepared to hit the sack. Look! Mouse turds on the sheets!  After 40 minutes of calling and waiting, we were able to get fresh sheets and fall asleep.  By then, it was after midnight.

Today, we get to Cleveland. It’s another long day (607 miles), but it will be nice to collapse at a house instead of a hotel.  And tomorrow…we do NOTHING.

Thanks to everyone who have been tweeting to me while I’ve been on the road. It’s made the trip much more enjoyable.

We took 93 from Henderson and drove over Hoover Dam. Hoover Dam, while amazing on foot, was a pain because the traffic was at a crawl for miles before we finally hit it because…get this…no one controls the flow of traffic or pedestrians over the dam. No no…the pedestrians are not flowing over the dam, but they are going to the visitor center and taking pictures and, in general, slowing down traffic. I’m glad I don’t have to make that commute every day.

We stopped off in Flagstaff at 5pm for dinner at a Crackerbarrel, and while there we took the opportunity to revise our luggage strategy. When you have two cars jammed full of the things you could not live without, it makes fro a rough night when you need to move some of those items into the hotel.  The trick is to pack several people’s things into a single bag, so you’re not taking everyone’s bags up at night. Major savings when you roll into your hotel at…

…wait for it…

2:08 AM.

Losing an hour because of time zones is just awesome. Not.

Today’s plan is to take a slightly shorter day so we can reset our clocks. Normally, we like to be up and out by 8am.  Since we’ve been gitting in at 2am, that’s just not possible. The idea is that we go for around 434 to Elk City, OK today, and get there by dinnertime or slightly later. We let the kids go swimming, relax a little, and get to be early. The next day, we do Elk City to St. Louis, and the following day St. Louis to Cleveland.

Updates from to road to follow, if you follow me on Twitter: codeshaman is my nickname.

No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.
— Field Marshall Helmuth Carl Bernard von Moltke

The Plan

We leave Woodland Hills at 3pm, missing most of the rush hour traffic.  My wife will use the GPS, and I will use my G1 to navigate. We’ll wind up on Henderson, Nevada around 8pm. We’ll get to bed early, and be ready to continue to Grand Junction Colorado, taking the northern route through the Rockies.

The Reality

1. The landlord was late for the walkthrough on the apartment, so we lost a half an hour there.
2. Just as my father-in-law and I were mapping out our route we heard about the big storms they’ve been having in the mountains.  We check this out on my G1, only to have the hardware fail. Getting a new phone, we lose a half an hour.
3. We stop into AAA to get the skinny on what’s going on in the mountains.  It’s crowded. After 45 minutes, a very nice lady told us that, without getting chains for the tires, there’s no way we’re getting through the northern path. She gives is the option of the southern route, or going through Khazad-Dum, where Gimli’s cousin Balin will give is a kingly welcome. Having no Balrog repellent, we decide to go to Henderson and then plan for taking the I-40 across the southern route, blowing all other travel plans to hell.
4. Pee breaks, getting and extra key made for my car, coffee, updating my wife and mother-in-law in the other car. We discover that the GPS’s power cord as gone missing in the chaos. No worries, we have cellphones, and they’ll follow.
5. We leave Woodland Hills at…wait for it…5pm. Cue omnious traffic music.
6. We manage to skirt the majority of the trasffic by taking the 118 to the 210. But once we hit Pasadena, all bets are off. Traffic ensnares us.  It’s 7pm by the time we hit the I-15 north, heading toward Vegas.
7. We stop in Barstow for dinner.
8. We finally arrive in Henderson around 11:30pm.  Do we go to the hotel?  No…because like moths we are draw to the bright lights of the Las Vegas Strip. We decide to go and drive down the strip, so the kids (and we) can see it all.
9. We get to the hotel at 12:45am, only to find out they do not have a reservation for us. No, wait…there are TWO Hampton Inns in Henderson, and the one we are booked at is so new, it does not show on the battery-powered GPS, and the phone number is not in 411.  We get the info from the other Hampton Inn, and drive across the city.
10. We check in at 1am. Pulling up the bare minimum from the cars, we get settled and asleep by 2am.

So…the trip we’re we were taking…is not so much the trip we thought we were taking.

Today’s plan is to try to get as far as Albequerque, New Mexico. I can hear Fate laughing at me.

The Final Walkthrough from Christopher T. Miller on Vimeo.

(Yeah. I’m playing with the new Mino we got.)

Mahalo

I’m leaving Mahalo because we’re leaving L.A…not the other way around. It was a tough choice, but I believe it was the right one.  I’ve built a team I can be proud of at Mahalo, and I have every confidence that they’ll do great things in the future. The truth of the matter is that I cannot manage this excellent team from a distance. A Lead Developer needs to be on site, dealing with the day-to-day running of things.  I cannot do that if I’m moving, pure and simple. There’s no drama, no feud, nothing like that…everything is ending on good terms.

I’m going to miss the whole company, no doubt about it. These are good, hardworking people. They deserve to succeed. I cannot wait to see what they are going to do next.

Leaving Los Angeles

I’ve written a little bit about why we’re leaving L.A. in a previous post, but there’s more to it that just economics and schools. Los Angeles might as well be a different planet when you’re coming from the midwest.  There are many who have moved here and loved it, and I can see why they would. The difficulty for use was that we did it with a family.  If Cathy and I had moved out here when we re newly married, I think things might have gone differently.

Some friends here told us what they’d like most: to own a small house with a good sized yard in a good school system. They followed that up with, “but this is L.A.”  As time went by, I heard this from other people — they all wanted what we took for granted, what we gave up to move here. And many of them had given up on ever achieving it, because “this is L.A.”

We’re moving back to our families, our oldest friends, to neighborhoods that we love, schools we know we can trust, and places that we’ve loved for years. We took so much for granted…that won’t be happening again.

People will poke fun about leaving the Big City, but that’s fine with me. Cleveland is home, and always will be.

New Eyes

Some folks have asked me if this move is bittersweet. No…not really. I achieved what I wanted to achieve at Mahalo, and I learned what I needed to learn from L.A.  I’m coming away better for it. If I never left Cleveland, I would always wonder what would have happened if I had. It’s been costly, yes, but I feel I’ve gained far more than I’ve lost.

I’m looking forward to seeing home with new eyes. That alone will be amazing.

photo credit: Old Shoe Woman

Forgive me for not writing sooner. Things were crazy, exciting, and exhausting ever since New Mexico, and blogging fell completely off the radar.

So…looking back…

• We spent a night in Flagstaff, AZ, and met up with Evo Terra and his better half, Sheila, for some fabulous pizza. I want to say the name of the place was Fratelli’s. Good beer, good pizza, good company.
• On Saturday 8/23, we crossed the Mojave desert. It was everything that Evo led me to expect…dull, brown, and hot. At one point, there was the following exchange in the cab of the truck between myself and my daughter:
  

  Me: I spy something brown

  Her: The mountains.

  Me: Yep. Okay…I spy something brown.

  Her: The grass.

  Me: Yep. I spy something brown….

  You get the point. Amazingly, I had cellphone coverage almost all the way across the desert. This will come into play later…so wait for it.

• On Sunday 8/24, we unloaded the truck. Holeee Sheee-it. It was 105°F. Hottest day on record for the area. It took us eight hours, and would have taken longer except that my co-worker Suzy and her sister showed up to give us a hand. ¹ We collapsed at the end of the day, boxes piled everywhere, beds barely made.

The next three days (Mon-Wed) were a whirlwind.

• Bunkbeds were purchased and assembled for the kids.
• Picked up a refrigerator that arrived missing pieces, like the middle shelf and the little switch that turns on the interior light when the door is opened.
• Fought with AT&T about getting the phone hooked up. It was turned on on 8/22. but no one came out to check the line. We spent the weekend without a phoneline, and for some mysterious reason, we have NO cellphone coverage in the house. It’s like living in a Faraday Cage . When we explained to T-Moblie, they suggested we upgrade all our phones to Palm or Blackberry devices for $300 a piece. Not bloody likely. However, I did get to say, “So, you’re telling me that I can get stellar cellphone coverage in the middle of the Mojave Desert, but not in one of the largest metropolitan centers on the planet. Is that right?” Squirm, little call center people, squirm.
• Spent hours setting up my DSL connection. Tried to sign up on the AT&T DSL, had the process fail because of a server error and spend the next four hours trying to correct the problem. However, during the process I did get to a Level 2 Tech, which made me feel like I’d accomplished something.²
• Dish network failed to show up on Sunday when they were supposed to. They returned Monday and puttered around the house until telling us that because the way the building sits, we cannot get their service. Thanks for nothing, Dish. Back to cable for me, thanks.
• Bought a car which, amazingly, was pretty hassle free. it’s a little 2005 Nissan Senta, and it gets stellar gas mileage and gets me to work and home again. It also fits into our allegedly two car³ garage. Major bummer is the cost of auto insurance. When I say major, I mean MAJOR.
• Enrolled the kids at school. Buying school supplies, however, was like feeding time at the piranha pit. I have to admit, kind and courteous do not seem to sit anywhere in the Los Angeles Denizen’s vocabulary. People are, well, just frickin’ rude.

photo credit: offbeat14u

On Thursday, I went back to work, which was weird for other reasons. After working from home for a almost two years, I found that I was pretty nervous about heading in to the office. It felt like the first day on the job, even though I’d been working with everyone for a long time now. Different pressures, I suppose. However, my commute is STUNNING. I drive through a beautiful canyon down to the Pacific Coast Highway and in to Santa Monica. It’s around 40 minutes, and I just adore it.

So now it’s Labor Day weekend, and we’re organizing and getting things ready for the kids to start school this week. Wednesday is the big day. We’re off to Topanga Mall to buy school clothes, new shoes, and other things. Wish us luck. This might be my last transmission.

1. Thanks, Suzy!
2. I’d leveled up, after all.
3. Two cars, rounding up, as Kris put it.

photo credit: lumierefl

We’re here. All is finally settling down. Sorry for not blogging, but after three days crazed activity and some customer service calls, we only JUST for the phone/DSL working.

Lengthy post tomorrow to explain what’s been happening.

What a hole.

photo credit: bravofourthree

Holy cow…they have trees here.

That was my first thought when driving through the upper corner of Oklahoma. I know…it’s silly. The mental picture I’ve had of Oklahoma has always been one of dry grass, dust, and weatherbeaten farmhouses standing watch over herds of cattle.

I got the cattle part right. The rest I attribute to watching too many Westerns.

I’ve been holed up in the hotel room working for part of the week, but the last two nights my father-in-law has taken me out, showing me where he grew up, the farm where his family lived (now long gone), the schools he went to, the places he spent his time. Gave me a real perspective for how far he’s come since he left home.

That’s comforting to say the least.

Last night, we drove some of the backroads between Bartlesville, Ramona, and back to Dewey. I have never seen so much undeveloped land in my life. Green rolling hills, small copses of trees with cattle grazing in between them. One ranch we passed was about 5000 acres. I had a hard time wrapping my mind around someone owning so much land.

The wild horses, though…they took my breath away. I see now why they symbolize power and freedom to so many people. It was amazing to watch them run.

Tonight is our last night in Oklahoma. Tomorrow morning, we’re on the road again, headed for New Mexico.

Got through all of Half Share today while driving, and once again, I was loving the book. Half Share spends more time in the inner lives of the characters, and also on the interpersonal relationships. It was some of the most realistic writing I’ve read in a long time; Nathan Lowell captures the emotions of the moment exquisitely¹ . I’m very curious to know what’s waiting for me in Full Share, but I’m putting off listening until we are driving again.

We’re stopped in Bartlesville Oklahoma for a three day stop. This is where my father-in-law’s family lives, so we’re taking the opportunity to visit them and see the sights. I’m working during the days, but will be catching up with them after hours. We’ll be leaving Thursday morning for Tucumcari, New Mexico.

1. There is a seduction scene in the latter half of the book that took my breath away.