Still in Utah
Travel time: 8
hours
Distance covered: 381.4 miles
Current location: 41º 12' N 112º 1' W (okay, that's Ogden, UT. We're in Layton - a.k.a. Butt Fuck Utah)
Current time and temperature: 11:42pm • 21ºF (the freeze is on!)
Distance covered: 381.4 miles
Current location: 41º 12' N 112º 1' W (okay, that's Ogden, UT. We're in Layton - a.k.a. Butt Fuck Utah)
Current time and temperature: 11:42pm • 21ºF (the freeze is on!)
After my blog entry this morning, I got a call from
the moving company telling me Canadian customs wouldn't honour the power of
attorney letter (already knew that), that the truck would have to be off-loaded
into a bonded warehouse (knew that, too), and that we would have to hire another
moving company to move our stuff from Edmonton to Spruce Grove. Okay, I didn't
know THAT! I flipped and basically said that customs had nothing to do with
anything - that our contract is from Oxnard to Spruce Grove not Oxnard to
Edmonton and if they wanted to start talking about breach of contract... Well
after going around in circles for half an hour followed by three call backs,
they agreed to take it all the way. I friggin' hope they don't screw
us!
The driving today was mellow and smooth. The kids were amazing - hardly a noise almost the entire way. I spent a lot of the drive shooting video with my cell phone. It occurred to me that I could stick the little 15 second clips into Final Cut Pro and cut them together into something more worthwhile than a 15 second clip. By the end of the day, I'd shot 42 clips - over 10 minutes of footage! Unfortunately, the .3p2 format kinda flips FCP out, and it outputs the finished files all wrong. I messed with it for a little bit but couldn't figure it out. Unfortunately, I'm too tired now to bother. Expect a video, possibly, over the next week if I can sort something out. (Maybe iMovie!)
So we stopped in Provo to get the van "winterised". 90 minutes and $200 later, we were on the road again. Tonight will be the big test, though - below freezing. I started feeling the cold a bit today, but I guess I probably should - I'm still just wearing jeans and a shirt. By the end of the day, I had to pull out my heavy jacket.
Utah's a weird place. The Jiffy Lube was fairly busy and the clientele consisted of two absolutely gorgeous, young blonde girls (there separately still supporting the theory that hot chicks are never seen together - only with ugly chicks) and a whole slew of guys who looked like they might be clinically retarded - not total fuckwits, just kinda dull and slow-looking. I suspect the Jiffy Lube employees themselves must have been shipped in from "corporate" - perfectly normal people as far as I could tell, although there was that one guy who kept staring at me from the oil drainage dungeon underneath the cars. He could've been a local.
There's just a strange, wholesome, I'm-on-speed-but-you-can't-tell kind of Swiss thing going on here... like the kids all have a suicide pact and none of the adults can pull their eyes off the all-you-can-eat-buffet or the gold cherubs in their front lawns for long enough to notice... and then there are the Mormon temples all over the place. Layton itself is downright bizarre. For those Californians reading this, just imagine the hills of Palos Verdes with the oil refineries of Long Beach Photoshopped into the foreground. I kid you not - when the 215 (a ring road that splits off south of Salt Lake) rejoins the 15, that's what you've got - gorgeous hillside houses overlooking an exterior shot from "Blade Runner".
We'll be well-out of Utah tomorrow, though - it's only 67 miles to the border with Idaho - and we'll probably make it into Montana - only another 194 miles. If we could make it to Butte, that'd be a 400 mile day. After that, it's on to Canada. I've already started getting nervous about Canadian customs and how much duty I might have to pay on my gear. I haven't had a chance to itemise it all and print up a list... and having to come up with around $8,500 for the movers... well, you know what I'm saying... the cost of this move is spiralling out of hand. To cap everything off, Wendy now has a horrible, full-blown cold. Mine was mild - I'm usually lucky like that, though.
So the weather forecast for Butte tomorrow is a high of 24/low of 2 with a 50% chance of snow showers. Now THAT'S cold... and it's only going to get colder. Maybe I'll break out the longjohns tomorrow.
Here are a few pictures from the day. I figured I'd stop resizing them and just post them. Shouldn't take much longer to download.
We had breakfast here in St. George. Why is the focus at golf-themed restaurants never on the food?
You know Utah, you might not have the sun and sand, but you've sure got L.A. beat in the smog department! I had no idea.
In fact, I DID ask about their winterization services.
They look like us, and they sound like us... but you know, they're just not like us. Can anyone spot the weirdness, here? I thought 85 was only fit for lawnmowers and weedwhackers.
The driving today was mellow and smooth. The kids were amazing - hardly a noise almost the entire way. I spent a lot of the drive shooting video with my cell phone. It occurred to me that I could stick the little 15 second clips into Final Cut Pro and cut them together into something more worthwhile than a 15 second clip. By the end of the day, I'd shot 42 clips - over 10 minutes of footage! Unfortunately, the .3p2 format kinda flips FCP out, and it outputs the finished files all wrong. I messed with it for a little bit but couldn't figure it out. Unfortunately, I'm too tired now to bother. Expect a video, possibly, over the next week if I can sort something out. (Maybe iMovie!)
So we stopped in Provo to get the van "winterised". 90 minutes and $200 later, we were on the road again. Tonight will be the big test, though - below freezing. I started feeling the cold a bit today, but I guess I probably should - I'm still just wearing jeans and a shirt. By the end of the day, I had to pull out my heavy jacket.
Utah's a weird place. The Jiffy Lube was fairly busy and the clientele consisted of two absolutely gorgeous, young blonde girls (there separately still supporting the theory that hot chicks are never seen together - only with ugly chicks) and a whole slew of guys who looked like they might be clinically retarded - not total fuckwits, just kinda dull and slow-looking. I suspect the Jiffy Lube employees themselves must have been shipped in from "corporate" - perfectly normal people as far as I could tell, although there was that one guy who kept staring at me from the oil drainage dungeon underneath the cars. He could've been a local.
There's just a strange, wholesome, I'm-on-speed-but-you-can't-tell kind of Swiss thing going on here... like the kids all have a suicide pact and none of the adults can pull their eyes off the all-you-can-eat-buffet or the gold cherubs in their front lawns for long enough to notice... and then there are the Mormon temples all over the place. Layton itself is downright bizarre. For those Californians reading this, just imagine the hills of Palos Verdes with the oil refineries of Long Beach Photoshopped into the foreground. I kid you not - when the 215 (a ring road that splits off south of Salt Lake) rejoins the 15, that's what you've got - gorgeous hillside houses overlooking an exterior shot from "Blade Runner".
We'll be well-out of Utah tomorrow, though - it's only 67 miles to the border with Idaho - and we'll probably make it into Montana - only another 194 miles. If we could make it to Butte, that'd be a 400 mile day. After that, it's on to Canada. I've already started getting nervous about Canadian customs and how much duty I might have to pay on my gear. I haven't had a chance to itemise it all and print up a list... and having to come up with around $8,500 for the movers... well, you know what I'm saying... the cost of this move is spiralling out of hand. To cap everything off, Wendy now has a horrible, full-blown cold. Mine was mild - I'm usually lucky like that, though.
So the weather forecast for Butte tomorrow is a high of 24/low of 2 with a 50% chance of snow showers. Now THAT'S cold... and it's only going to get colder. Maybe I'll break out the longjohns tomorrow.
Here are a few pictures from the day. I figured I'd stop resizing them and just post them. Shouldn't take much longer to download.
We had breakfast here in St. George. Why is the focus at golf-themed restaurants never on the food?
You know Utah, you might not have the sun and sand, but you've sure got L.A. beat in the smog department! I had no idea.
In fact, I DID ask about their winterization services.
They look like us, and they sound like us... but you know, they're just not like us. Can anyone spot the weirdness, here? I thought 85 was only fit for lawnmowers and weedwhackers.
Posted: Tue - December 13, 2005 at 12:12 AM
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Published On: Dec 13, 2005 01:09 AM
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Published On: Dec 13, 2005 01:09 AM