IronFist
07-29-2002, 05:51 AM
Email: ironfistfaqs@hotmail.com
Yahoo Chess Name (newly created): tmo728 -- If you see me hanging around yahoo chess, challenge me.
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Journal Entry One -- July 28th, 2002
My Great Adventure
About two months ago my younger sister was moving to a city near Houston, Texas (From Utah, for those that don't know) to be a nanny. She got the phone call on Sunday to come as soon as possible. That same day I heard the news -- my parents wanted me to go with her and help her drive down to Texas safely. Even though I had no experience in long distance driving as being the driver, I was fine with that part. The part that I wasn't looking forward to was when I did get there, I had to live with that family for a whole week before I was to be flown home on a plane.
We started the drive on Monday morning and got there Tuesday night. We drove for 13 hours both days. The only hard part was in Oklahoma City. We got there in rush hour, and even though streets were packed and the streets were curvy, everyone was still driving at 80 miles an hour! Of course I missed my exit from i70 to i45 (I think that's the one, the one from Oklahoma City down to Dallas), so I had to get off the next exit and drive back. Other then that, all was well.
The family was an African American family with a mom, a 6 year old son, and two 3 year old twin girls. The Dad was in South Africa (for reasons that I never found out). The mom was some kind of Doctor that had weird hours which is why she needed a nanny to take care of the kids. She was very rich. Her six year old son owned tons of consoles and games, so I didn't feel that far away from home in that aspect. :) He thought he knew everything about video games (he kept on trying to stump me with video game questions, but I always knew the answers to them), so then I showed him my Neo Geo Pocket Color which shut him up pretty quick. :D He hadn't even ever heard of it. One of the 3 year old girls was afraid of me and always cried when I tried to pick her up. I found out later to my relief that she's afraid of all boys and not just me. *phew* I flew home on that Sunday (so I ended up staying there for only 4 full days).
My Great Adventure #2
A week later I found out that I had to help my older, married sister move from Salt Lake, Utah to Iowa City, Iowa. My younger brother and I helped her drive one car, and her husband and his brother drove the moving truck. They took i80 but we had to go do something before we left, so we took i70. We drove through Colorado stopping frequently so my sister could take care of her baby (nursing, changing diapers, shutting up, etc. :)) We took for granted(sp?) the beautiful roads in Colorado as we were driving through it.
The next day we got into Nebraska, or as we like to call it, "The state that's five times too big for its own good." (Sorry AlteredBeast ;)) There were only two memorable things in all 6+ hours of Nebraska. 1. The enormous cow farm on the side of the freeway about 50 miles into Nebraska. I'm telling you now, do not drive past this cow farm! It is by far the worst, strongest, most putrid smell on this planet. Not only is it bad, but it lasts for over a mile! Keep your windows rolled up! Not even driving past the Bud Weiser brewery in Dallas was close to this bad, and that stunk really bad! And 2. Finally getting to Omaha. After driving all day through the same old crap, it was nice to finally reach a city again. We got to Iowa City in two days total. Stay there for a day to help them move in, then drove home the next day. It took 18 hours of strait driving to get home, but we did it in one day.
My Great Adventure #3 -- the greatest of them all
Two months later, just two weeks before now, my whole family went on an adventure. After 12 years of living in the best place on earth, Highland, Utah, we moved. Where to you may ask? Good ol' Charleston,West Virginia! :eek: We of course took the long way, visiting my sister in Iowa City (and driving by that horrible cow farm that stunk even worse than before), then going down to West Virginia through Illinois and Kentucky. The part I hated most about that drive was the Illinois license plates. They suck. The name “Illinois” is written in horrible cursive. As I was driving through I thought to myself, “Man, there sure are a lot of people from Alberta, Canada driving through this state,” not realizing until later that the license plates said Illinois, not Alberta. :)
On the first day of driving something pretty cool happened. We ran out of gas. My dad was in the moving truck in front of us, and my older sister (a different one), was in the van behind us. My younger brother and I were driving in an old piece of junk pickup truck who’s gas gauge didn’t work so we had to use the odometer to know when to get gas. We pulled off to the side of the road as my dad drove away not knowing we had stopped. I walked back to tell my sister who had stopped behind me what had happened, then I got the idea to switch to the second gas tank. The second gas tank hasn’t been used for over 6 years because it has a hole in it. To my surprise, it actually worked. There was still some gas left in the tank after all this time, even with the hole. We drove about a mile and met up with my dad parked on the side of the road who had realized we weren’t behind him anymore. Then we drove off to the nearest gas station, which, because we were in Wyoming, wasn’t for another 10 miles. During this drive, we got caught up in a huge rainstorm. It was so bad that we couldn’t see the back lights on the car 15 feet ahead of us. Most of the cars had stopped along the side of the road to wait the storm out, be we decided to drive through it. After about 5 minutes of near-blind driving, we pulled off on an exit and got gas. The storm was so bad the electricity from the lighting screwed up the computers and gas pumps at the gas station. Fortunately we were eventually able to get the gas and go on our way again.
Charleston, West Virginia – Our Home Away From Home
We arrived in West Virginia after 3 days of driving. And to tell you the truth, I like it a lot. It’s a lot more humid here. It rains a lot more frequently, and pours down buckets and buckets of rain when it does rain. It’s completely green with trees. And now I finally have a reason to learn all of those eastern states. ;) The only thing I don’t like is how every house is built on a cliff. There isn’t too much flat land here because the whole state is in a mountain line – who’s name escapes me right now (darn 8th grade geography! Why can’t I remember you!) The roads are extremely curvy, which is just the opposite of how it was in Utah.
The good news about living here is that we finally have Cable internet (256k). Woohoo! It’s nice downloading a megabyte in 33 seconds when before it took me 10 minutes to do. :)
I went to church today and left with mixed feelings. Everyone in the ward is really nice, but it’s weird having only 1 ward in the capitol of a state when you’re used to having 20 or 30 in each stake, and multiple stakes in each city. There were only 8 boys total from the age group of 12 - 19! I’m used to there being 20 boys in the 16-19 age group alone. This will definitely take some getting used to. And there wasn’t even a Young Adults class, so I had to go to my parent’s class. Maybe next week I’ll go to the singles ward. I might fit in better there.
My dad volunteered me to help a guy fix and reshingle his whole roof, so I get to start that tomorrow. Um, woohoo?
The End
I have seen the country now. And to tell you the truth, it's all pretty much the same. Sure, you may not see enormous cow farms in Florida, or tall, jagged mountains in Nebraska, or a big beach in Utah, but the whole country is pretty much a lot of desolate land with relatively small cities sprinkled throughout. I am so sick of seeing the country that right now I would rather stay inside (and because I don't have a yard, only steep cliffs, I won't feel guilty for doing so and being lazy. :))
What, you’re still reading?! You are crazy!
Signing off, IronFist the slack jawed yokel, or IronFist the country bumpkin (name still in the working stages).
Questions and Comments send to my email address: ironfistfaqs@hotmail.com
Edit: wow, what a long post. I'll just think of this as something for me instead of something for you guys. That way I won't feel bad if nobody can make it half way through. ;)
Yahoo Chess Name (newly created): tmo728 -- If you see me hanging around yahoo chess, challenge me.
--------------------------------------------
Journal Entry One -- July 28th, 2002
My Great Adventure
About two months ago my younger sister was moving to a city near Houston, Texas (From Utah, for those that don't know) to be a nanny. She got the phone call on Sunday to come as soon as possible. That same day I heard the news -- my parents wanted me to go with her and help her drive down to Texas safely. Even though I had no experience in long distance driving as being the driver, I was fine with that part. The part that I wasn't looking forward to was when I did get there, I had to live with that family for a whole week before I was to be flown home on a plane.
We started the drive on Monday morning and got there Tuesday night. We drove for 13 hours both days. The only hard part was in Oklahoma City. We got there in rush hour, and even though streets were packed and the streets were curvy, everyone was still driving at 80 miles an hour! Of course I missed my exit from i70 to i45 (I think that's the one, the one from Oklahoma City down to Dallas), so I had to get off the next exit and drive back. Other then that, all was well.
The family was an African American family with a mom, a 6 year old son, and two 3 year old twin girls. The Dad was in South Africa (for reasons that I never found out). The mom was some kind of Doctor that had weird hours which is why she needed a nanny to take care of the kids. She was very rich. Her six year old son owned tons of consoles and games, so I didn't feel that far away from home in that aspect. :) He thought he knew everything about video games (he kept on trying to stump me with video game questions, but I always knew the answers to them), so then I showed him my Neo Geo Pocket Color which shut him up pretty quick. :D He hadn't even ever heard of it. One of the 3 year old girls was afraid of me and always cried when I tried to pick her up. I found out later to my relief that she's afraid of all boys and not just me. *phew* I flew home on that Sunday (so I ended up staying there for only 4 full days).
My Great Adventure #2
A week later I found out that I had to help my older, married sister move from Salt Lake, Utah to Iowa City, Iowa. My younger brother and I helped her drive one car, and her husband and his brother drove the moving truck. They took i80 but we had to go do something before we left, so we took i70. We drove through Colorado stopping frequently so my sister could take care of her baby (nursing, changing diapers, shutting up, etc. :)) We took for granted(sp?) the beautiful roads in Colorado as we were driving through it.
The next day we got into Nebraska, or as we like to call it, "The state that's five times too big for its own good." (Sorry AlteredBeast ;)) There were only two memorable things in all 6+ hours of Nebraska. 1. The enormous cow farm on the side of the freeway about 50 miles into Nebraska. I'm telling you now, do not drive past this cow farm! It is by far the worst, strongest, most putrid smell on this planet. Not only is it bad, but it lasts for over a mile! Keep your windows rolled up! Not even driving past the Bud Weiser brewery in Dallas was close to this bad, and that stunk really bad! And 2. Finally getting to Omaha. After driving all day through the same old crap, it was nice to finally reach a city again. We got to Iowa City in two days total. Stay there for a day to help them move in, then drove home the next day. It took 18 hours of strait driving to get home, but we did it in one day.
My Great Adventure #3 -- the greatest of them all
Two months later, just two weeks before now, my whole family went on an adventure. After 12 years of living in the best place on earth, Highland, Utah, we moved. Where to you may ask? Good ol' Charleston,West Virginia! :eek: We of course took the long way, visiting my sister in Iowa City (and driving by that horrible cow farm that stunk even worse than before), then going down to West Virginia through Illinois and Kentucky. The part I hated most about that drive was the Illinois license plates. They suck. The name “Illinois” is written in horrible cursive. As I was driving through I thought to myself, “Man, there sure are a lot of people from Alberta, Canada driving through this state,” not realizing until later that the license plates said Illinois, not Alberta. :)
On the first day of driving something pretty cool happened. We ran out of gas. My dad was in the moving truck in front of us, and my older sister (a different one), was in the van behind us. My younger brother and I were driving in an old piece of junk pickup truck who’s gas gauge didn’t work so we had to use the odometer to know when to get gas. We pulled off to the side of the road as my dad drove away not knowing we had stopped. I walked back to tell my sister who had stopped behind me what had happened, then I got the idea to switch to the second gas tank. The second gas tank hasn’t been used for over 6 years because it has a hole in it. To my surprise, it actually worked. There was still some gas left in the tank after all this time, even with the hole. We drove about a mile and met up with my dad parked on the side of the road who had realized we weren’t behind him anymore. Then we drove off to the nearest gas station, which, because we were in Wyoming, wasn’t for another 10 miles. During this drive, we got caught up in a huge rainstorm. It was so bad that we couldn’t see the back lights on the car 15 feet ahead of us. Most of the cars had stopped along the side of the road to wait the storm out, be we decided to drive through it. After about 5 minutes of near-blind driving, we pulled off on an exit and got gas. The storm was so bad the electricity from the lighting screwed up the computers and gas pumps at the gas station. Fortunately we were eventually able to get the gas and go on our way again.
Charleston, West Virginia – Our Home Away From Home
We arrived in West Virginia after 3 days of driving. And to tell you the truth, I like it a lot. It’s a lot more humid here. It rains a lot more frequently, and pours down buckets and buckets of rain when it does rain. It’s completely green with trees. And now I finally have a reason to learn all of those eastern states. ;) The only thing I don’t like is how every house is built on a cliff. There isn’t too much flat land here because the whole state is in a mountain line – who’s name escapes me right now (darn 8th grade geography! Why can’t I remember you!) The roads are extremely curvy, which is just the opposite of how it was in Utah.
The good news about living here is that we finally have Cable internet (256k). Woohoo! It’s nice downloading a megabyte in 33 seconds when before it took me 10 minutes to do. :)
I went to church today and left with mixed feelings. Everyone in the ward is really nice, but it’s weird having only 1 ward in the capitol of a state when you’re used to having 20 or 30 in each stake, and multiple stakes in each city. There were only 8 boys total from the age group of 12 - 19! I’m used to there being 20 boys in the 16-19 age group alone. This will definitely take some getting used to. And there wasn’t even a Young Adults class, so I had to go to my parent’s class. Maybe next week I’ll go to the singles ward. I might fit in better there.
My dad volunteered me to help a guy fix and reshingle his whole roof, so I get to start that tomorrow. Um, woohoo?
The End
I have seen the country now. And to tell you the truth, it's all pretty much the same. Sure, you may not see enormous cow farms in Florida, or tall, jagged mountains in Nebraska, or a big beach in Utah, but the whole country is pretty much a lot of desolate land with relatively small cities sprinkled throughout. I am so sick of seeing the country that right now I would rather stay inside (and because I don't have a yard, only steep cliffs, I won't feel guilty for doing so and being lazy. :))
What, you’re still reading?! You are crazy!
Signing off, IronFist the slack jawed yokel, or IronFist the country bumpkin (name still in the working stages).
Questions and Comments send to my email address: ironfistfaqs@hotmail.com
Edit: wow, what a long post. I'll just think of this as something for me instead of something for you guys. That way I won't feel bad if nobody can make it half way through. ;)