Salaygoos Salaymah

Brad Penny is having a Cy Young kind of year. He will be pitching against Bonds tomorrow night. It’s a record-breaking situation for Bonds, and it’s a must-win for LA with Padres and D-Backs breathing down their necks. SJZ picked the perfect game for us to attend. I hope Penny is perfect too.

We have arrived at cousin/mission house-mate Josh Zollinger’s house. He has a phenomenal home with a phenomenal little family. We’ll say more when they actually get home!

So Barry Bonds is also headed for Dodger Stadium Tuesday night.  If he hits one more home-run, he will tie Hank Aaron.  If he hits two, he will break the record.  We will be there. I hope they skunk him.  I’d rather have him get the record in San Diego later in the week since Padres fans REALLY hate him.  They will give the moment all the drama it deserves - booing probably.  Actually, I imagine they would soak up the historical aspect of it and give it a standing O.  Anyhoo, it will make Tuesday night a bit more tense.  With a couple of losses to Colorado this week, the Dodgers need wins to stay in front in NL West.  So we should be seeing some good baseball.  Last I read, the Dodgers’ best pitchers had minor injuries, so I don’t know who we’ll see on the mound.  But it should be good baseball no matter.

(SJZ’s Grandpa Morales was a Dodgers fan, and he took SJZ to her first games way back in the day.  This will be our fourth year in a row, and third time for the MTN2 and OMN.  It will be HEN’s first, unless he can’t break the fever.  Yvonne offered to watch him and maybe that’s the best idea.  We’ll post pics of the boys with the field in the background.)

Last minute, we decided we want to see the Pacific Ocean  too.  We try and see one Dodgers game per year, and we thought we missed our chance when we didn’t make it up to Toronto earlier in Road Trip 2007.  But we have a few days of no schedule, so off to CA to see the Dodgers and the ocean.

First stop is in Las Vegas at the Henriod’s house.  We just barely missed the girls, but Joel is an excellent host.  They have a new home and it’s awesome.  The boys played on a jungle gym in the back yard.  We watched HD tv.  And HEN developed a fever.  It dropped a bit in the night, but not because he slept it off.  SJZ is a bit tired and back in bed.  But we will leave shortly for the coast.  Death Valley in July-August is not my favorite task, but our car has been a champ all summer.  We should be fine.

BY THE NUMBERS

6397.9 miles

$488.68 in gas

$124.45 in tolls

16 states

26 days

1 cop

0 tickets

48 emergency roadside bathroom breaks (including three number 2’s)

11 U-turns (not including MA)

innumerable U-turns (including MA)

2 mission companions visited

Too many cousins to count

1 LSMSA friend visited

2 Nashville families visited (including Haglund cousins)

3 museums, 1 aquarium, 0 souvenirs

16 podcasts (This American Life, PTI and Radio West)

3.2 Books on Tape (Wicked turned out to be too naughty)

10 different beds (including 4 airmattresses and 1 sofa bed)

4 NBA Finals read (not seen . . . poor Matt . . . poor LeBron)

1 haircut

1 suit tailored

1 $12 Kennebunkport lobster roll

2 rain storms

50 toes in the Atlantic Ocean

LOST

one tub of laundry soap and fabric sheets

Sara’s glasses

Matt’s glasses

Owen’s fingernail

flip-flops

6 green binkies

Sam B’s phone number

the letter R (in MA)

one pair of pants

one 5T shirt

our way

FOUND

5 green binkies

flip-flops

Ipswich, finally.

Matt’s glasses

2 cicada carcasses on the car floor

our way

RUINED

one pack of “go fish” cards

16 crayola twistables

one hand held fan

one set of head phones

one road atlas

one swedish aspen and the side yard lawn

First a word on Colorful Colorado… I have long held that the Utah-Colorado border along I-70 needs no sign; you can tell it’s Colorado by the sudden rush of richer colors on the mountains. The state is aptly named. We came in from Nebraska on the eastern edge, and without having ingested any hallucinogens, I can honestly say that the state is suddenly colorful on the eastern side as well. It’s grasslands, just like Nebraska and Kansas, but there must have been ten different shades from blue to gold. Small yellow flowers line the freeway waving at us like townspeople at a parade. The land is no longer rolling, but more rigid now, like choppy seas. The sky is large in eastern Colorado. I imagine the ghosts of Arapaho and Cheyenne chasing the ghosts of bison. It is hard for me not to romanticize this place. I was born here.

We have lost Sam’s phone number, so we don’t really have anywhere to go. I tell SJZ I think we should just get a motel in Denver. About two minutes later I say we should just go to Boulder and get a Motel. Two minutes later, I change back to Denver. SJZ doesn’t care. We go to Boulder and get a Motel.

I have many childhood memories of Boulder, especially the Pearl Street pedestrian mall where STEVE’S ICE CREAM was stationed in the ’80s. Dad would bring me up (or Jack and me), get us a mixin and then let us run down to the kite store. Or he’d ask us to go count customers at Haagen Daz and return and report. We saw lots of street performers, some as dull as homeless hippies strumming crappy guitars, some as flamboyent (literally) as fire-eaters, jugglers, break dancers, and magicians. We climbed the boulders embedded in the mall and contemplated the irony of playing on boulders in Boulder. My grandfather was a soda jerk during his sojurn at CU (engineering), and his father (if memory serves) was a barber in town.

SJZ is getting all this in her ear as we stroll through the heat in the early afternoon. We park on the end opposite Steve’s and walk down to it, then back with a long stop at Old Chicago Pizza and a short stop at the water fountain. We contemplate the “homogenization of culture” when we come to the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory and realize that even if the shops along Pearl are not the same shops as are on Park City’s Main Street, they are essentially the same: galleries, restaurants and bars, tourist kitsch, treats, real estate companies, etc. It’s a smaller version, but the same phenomenon as Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, Boston’s Newbury, Honolulu’s beach strip and NYC’s Time Square all having the same Virgin Records, Saks 5th Avenue, an Apple Store, and all the other same old same old shopping places you can see in the Southtowne Mall in Sandy, Utah. Pearl Street is special to me, though. I feel like I grew up here.

We drive to Denver in traffic that is just as bad as Chicago’s. We found Sam’s number, called and confirmed our reservations. We stop and take pictures of my old house in what is now Centennial. Then on to Parker, where Sam lives.

They have boys that mirror image our own: 6 year old, 4 year old, 1 year old. They treat us to fine Mexican faire. We wish we were neighbors with Sam and Lenita and their boys. It never occurred to me in the heap of bricks down in Vila Quintino that one day Elder Bell and I would be taking pictures of our 3rd children on a sofa in Colorado. Strange the way life goes. Abram (6) treats us to a violin concert before bed. We are anxious to get home, or we might stay a week with the Bells. When we drive away in the morning, MTN2 and OMN are both in tears at not wanting to leave. For much of the Trip, OMN has been weepy at night time about wanting to just go home. Now we are on the way and he is weepy about not getting to stay.

We are on i-70 headed west, headed home.

Goates-in-laws live in Des Moines. We played some yard games, put the kids down and then the real fun began: Playstation Guitar Hero. It was pretty intense. Nathan is a prodigy. Valerie, less so. SJZ was busy making fun of everyone, so she never even tried it. And I was good at the songs I knew (Unsung, More than a Feeling, War Pigs, etc.) and terrible at the ones I didn’t (don’t recall their names either). The most useful comment of the night was from SJZ, who said sarcastically, “too bad we didn’t have this game in graduate school.” I think it was about 1:45 am when she said that.

Before we got to Des Moines, we toured the University of Iowa campus in Iowa City. GORGEOUS. Cool buildings, new buildings, old buildings, lots of greenery and water. We took pictures in front of the Dey House, where Brady Udall got his MFA.

The next day of driving was our longest. Des Moines to Boulder, CO. We broke out the DVD players. SJZ listened to the book on tape of Wicked. We had already listened to a book called “Millions” which was really good.

I love Chicago.  I loved Sandburg’s poem about it before I ever went there:

It’s such a vibrant poem but it’s not pretentious or romantic or at all.  I look at the skyline (OMN calls it a “building collection” as he did NYC as well.  MTN2 vehemently disputes this term saying there is no such thing as a building collection.  I intervene and say, “it’s right there MTN2.  If that’s not a building collection, then what is it?”  He says, “That’s what I call a CITY!”  Inside I agree.  OMN says, “that’s what I call a building collection!”  And now it goes around again, only ten decibels louder) and I am proud of this city.  Of course, I have nothing to do with it other than that I like it.

We made a beeline for the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and took pictures of the tracker pipe organ I helped build a few years ago.  It’s in a beautiful sanctuary.  I wasn’t able to hear it and that made me sad.

Then Paul and Sally hosted us (sans Haglund children who were off on church excursions) again, and did so enthusiastically, which we appreciated.  The five of us are two handfuls.  We were well-fed, well-rested, and well-chatted.  We’d like to be neighbors with P&S.  The next day we went to the Science and Industry Museum (incredible) and upon our return, P&S watched the boys while we went out to a movie.  Oceans 13 is as good as any 3rd sequel can be (which is to say not great), but the music is so good.

We love Chicago.  Stacker of wheat.  Tool Maker.  Fierce as a dog.

Nathan, Valerie, Audrey and Marian are our old (aging…) buddies from our Nashville days. We adore them. They don’t hate us. We stayed at their house in Shippensburg, PA where Daddy Goate is a professor of Filthy Lucre. They live in an old home on Main Street. It has a huge yard with a swing set. Their girls embraced (metaphorically) our boys. We stayed up late like college kids talking about marriage, religion, music, bikes, miniatures, raising children, good ice cream vs. bad ice cream, etc. Mostly we just rested and took some days off the road. I will try to put their blog links on this page for anyone who wants to know more about them.

When it was time to get back on the road, they came with us (on their way towards Idaho.) We stayed in Toledo again. They stayed in Bowling Green with my old host family from Natchitoches, the Mathis Family. [They didn't know - way back in 1994 - that being my host family meant hosting my friends too...13 years later... They were fun to see. Michelle is about nine feet tall; Keller - eight or nine years old (sorry, I didn't remember that detail) - is big enough to lift my car over his head. It was late and we didn't get a great chance to catch up entirely, but I hope we carved the Nagel brain ripples a little deeper.]

In the am, we had left a bag in Goates’ car, so we met up again and leapfrogged our way out to Chicago. They went on to Omaha. We planned to meet again in Des Moines before crossing Nebraska together.

Audrey is beautiful and intelligent and growing up into a sweet young lady. She likes country music, which makes her smarter than her dad.

Marian is milk chocolate (Swiss) and needs to be gobbled up.

We went to the Hershey’s Chocolate World somewhere in Pennsylvania. It’s definitely a kid-friendly place. You get on these sleighs that take you through a factory mock-up and talk about how they make their famous chocolate. There are singing cows throughout, if that gives you an idea of the aesthetic. This was great for the boys (OMN, especially, seems willing to buy-in to whatever the event is. MTN2 is pretty cynical, on the other hand.) For SJZ and MTN, it was frustrating because we became suddenly VERY interested in how the chocolate is made and we wanted to see the real factory. SJZ loves loves loves those old Sesame Street/Mr. Rogers visit-the-factory kind of thing…but this one was no more than entertainment. I kept waiting for the cows to say, “next is the paraffin-wax stage where perfectly good cocoa treats are infused with candle wax to make them cheaper and last longer on Safeway shelves and taste like crap compared to even the worst european chocolates.” (On the other hand, a Hershey’s kiss from last year’s Halloween is better than anything you can buy in Brazil.)

Coming soon - our udderly fabulous days with the Goates and an in-depth analyses of “Standard of Living” and “marital arrangements.” We can only post things at rest stops, so the blog is getting a little choppy. Stay tuned, though.