2006-12-12 - 1:52 p.m.
The Oregon Trail, Day Two: Saturday, December 2
8:35 a.m. - Kelly tells us that in order to convince her parents to let her get her ears pierced at the age of 10, one year earlier than her older sister had them pierced, she used the following argument: since women are born with all the eggs they will ever have, she and her older sister came from the same egg pool and thus are the same age. Since it's not her fault that her sister's egg was dropped and inseminated before her, she shouldn't be punished for merely being born a full year after Laura since they are technically the same egg age. Her mother bought the argument and gave her permission.
9:00 a.m. - We leave Champaign for Grand Island, NE.
11:10 a.m. - In the midst of playing MASH, the fortune telling game, the icy road cuases us to spin around and slide in a ditch.
11:20 a.m. - "Oh, we're just 10 feet off the road in a ditch!" - Kelly, enormously cheerful on the phone with the AAA guy.
11:27 a.m. - Three people have stopped to help us so far, which is great even though we have AAA on the way. God bless America.
11:31 a.m. - While waiting for the two truck, we eat brownies. The fact that our crash in the ditch is bookended by MASH and brownies is enormously amusing to us.
11:47 a.m. "That could have been me. I could have been Jake Gyllenhaal." - Kelly.
11:55 a.m. - A police officer stops to help us. He will not eat the brownies we offer him because he doesn't "eat anything between lunch and dinner."
12:05 p.m. - The tow truck driver appears and the sheriff yells at him, "Hey, where's Billy Bob?"
12:08 p.m. - When a semi drives by really fast through the ice while the towing guy is pulling the car out, the police officer starts waving the driver down like crazy and screaming, "SLOW DOWN, YOU ASSHOLE! Boy, I'd love to shoot that son of a bitch."
12:10 p.m. - We pull away safely back on the road.
12:11 p.m. - The car won't stop shaking when we drive fast. We are worried.
1:30 p.m. - We pull over at a gas station and the truckers tell Kelly very emphatically that it's "snow packed in the tires." They tell us to drive really fast to knock the snow off.
1:31 p.m. - We pull away and there is no shake! Again, God bless the USA.
1:47 p.m. - As we drive through Hannibal, Missouri we see ads for "Mark Twain Caves" and "Injun Joe Campgrounds."
4:40 p.m. - We pear is so overripe that it tastes like pear cream; I throw it out the window.
9:05 p.m. - While in Nebraska: "As nice as the people've been around here, these are the states I associate with serial killers" - Kelly.
9:30 p.m. - Grand Island, NE, our stop for the evening. Kelly sees a building that looks like a ski lodge, thinks it's Motel 6 and exclaims, "Yes! We get to stay in a chateau! Chauteau 6 (pronounched "sees", a la francais)."
9:56 p.m. - We decide to eat at Grandma Max's restaurant, the building shaped like a chateau, which was "voted America's #1 Truck Stop!"
9:58 p.m. - There are child life-sized porcelain dolls everywhere in this restaurant.
10:00 p.m. - When Kelly orders a "Black and White" shake and the waitress has no idea what that means, Kelly says to me, "Well, I guess that only flies in the East."
