MOTION SICKNESS

I'm currently at a hotel in Shreveport, Louisiana, bootlegging their wireless internet to post something I wrote in the car yesterday on road trip day 1. There will be more later once I get to Austin and have real internet and have the ability to post pictures. Plenty of good ones on their way, including vultures with wingspans as wide as my car and asians spotted in Little Rock.

1:52, January 2nd.

I don't really have anything to write about yet, I just pulled out the laptop because I need a distraction: my dad decided that during his current 'leg' of the drive he is going to try to make up more time than I did going from Springfield, Ill., to St. Louis. 'I just dropped another minute,' he interjects. I was able to shed 20-plus minutes of our trip over the course of about 100 miles: averaging 85 mph will do that. His doing 85 mph, however, is going to make me sick now that we're in Missouri and, if we're not climbing a hill we are barreling down the opposing side, frequently flipping back-and-forth between 450 and 650 feet above sea level. Unfortunately, I left my Dramamine--motion sickness pills--in the trunk; I'll have to remember to pick them up at the next rest stop. I'm sure he wouldn't be happy if I suggested we stop sooner rather than later, though; it will throw off his time.

Here in Missouri, I have the dirtiest car on the road. They obviously didn't experience the blizzard-like conditions that northern Illinois did on New Year's Eve. I tried to clean my car off but now, after a couple hundred miles on I-55--part of the drive on which we saw a dozen abandoned cars in the snow banks on the sides of the road or tipped and left in a ditch--the salt has stained my black ride white. As soon as we get to some warmer weather, I'm treating this thing to an automatic car wash somewhere; it's 13 degrees where we are now. Probably 13 degrees warmer than home is.

'Ack, my ears are popping.' 'Are they really? My ears haven't popped yet.' Great, dad, hit the accelerator and lets take this next hill a little faster.