Traveling with Vladimir

If you are thinking about writing an online travel diary while you drive across the U.S., you should not listen to the audiobook of Lolita in the car. Because Lolita is just the kind of thing that makes writing anything, ever again, seem like a tremendous waste of everyone's time. Try not to imagine Jeremy Irons reading your blog post out loud, and then try not to cringe at the toneless banality of your travelogue. Heck, we haven't even gotten to the part of the book where they go on their cross-country road trip! I'll probably just have to delete this post after we listen to that.

Working backwards: We are in Montrose, CO, where we watched Inception, which we thought was nifty. Bridget thinks Joseph Gordon-Leavitt looks too much like Heath Ledger. I say he picked up tips during the making of 10 Things I Hate About You. For dinner I think we had prepackaged Chex Mix. Things are getting a little fuzzy for us at this point in the trip. I think I drove for seven hours today; Bridget spent a while supine in the back of the station wagon, nursing an upset tummy after some Jerk Chicken Penne at Rasta Pasta in Colorado Springs. I saw some deer and I thought I saw moose antlers poking ominously out of a pond, unmoving. We peed on the side of the road. We passed the Smallest Jail in the US (not really, though) outside Ramah. Colorado didn't stop looking like Kansas until we'd gone 50 miles in.

Yesterday we stayed in a noxious motel in Oakley, KS that neither of us can remember the name of (we arrived in a total stupor at 1:20am, which was really 2:20am for us as we'd crossed a time zone earlier that day). We always, always seem to have a distorted view of how much lodgings will cost. Happened in India, Nepal, Kenya, so why not here? How much would you pay for a night in a place with a bathroom, an AC, a TV, and wi-fi? Not less than $50, I assure you. Even if it's infested with crickets. As they say in programming: that's not a bug-- it's a feature!

Day before that, I guess we were in Indiana. An Econolodge with disintegrating furniture.

I'm too tired to continue. Look for more later. Tomorrow should be a rest day in Ouray.