So Happy Christ­mas to every­one out there in the land of David’s Blog. I’m cur­rently writ­ing this sit­ting in a cof­feeshop in the Sug­ar­house sec­tion of Salt Lake City, Utah. Oh my god, Dave, why are you in Utah for Christ­mas? Well, Tiny Tim, I’ll tell you. Tomor­row Andrew does the Olympic Fuck­ing Tri­als!! How crazy is that? It’s still kind of hard to com­pre­hend, but there it is. I drove out here from Austin, arriv­ing late at night on the 23rd. So yet another huge road­trip to write about. This one was a lit­tle smaller, being only about 1400 miles or so. The first day I got a late start, so I only made it to Lub­bock and spent the night there. Boy, Lub­bock is fuck­ing depress­ing. I just drove through, and damn. It’s really hard to believe Buddy Holly wrote such happy songs com­ing from there. I’d be expect­ing more Trent Reznor kind of shit. On my way out of Lub­bock, I:

a) went to the slow­est nas­ti­est What­taburger I’ve ever seen. Took like 20 min­utes, and they still screwed up my order, which was only one thing. How hard can it be people???

b) Saw a tum­ble­weed the size of a Ford Pinto. And this was in the mid­dle of town. I know what I’m talk­ing about. My Grandma used to drive a Pinto. I remem­ber her once telling me when I was about 12 that when I got my license I could have it. The look on my mother’s face was like “Not unless I’m dead first!!” I’ve seen a few tum­ble­weeds before, but not quite like this bad boy. I remem­ber Andrew telling me about the first time he saw a tum­ble­weed. He was dri­ving in Nebraska late at night, and it flew across the road and hit his wind­shield. He didn’t see it until it was on him, and he thought it was some kind of giant bug or some­thing, and freaked real good. But this tum­ble­weed was so big I had to take a pic­ture of it. So after it blew into a field, I pulled over and got a photo. I was too scared to get any closer than this:

c) stayed on Avenue Q, so of course I had to play the sound­track on my way out of town.

d) Saw a cot­ton field just out­side of town. I hadn’t ever seen one, so I had to stop and grab some cot­ton. Pretty neat for a Yan­kee like me.

So the sec­ond day I drove all the way from Lub­bock to Salt Lake. It was some­thing like 960 miles, which is a pretty good haul. I’m a seri­ous road trip fan, and I can do 700–800 miles easy. Any­thing over that is a lit­tle rough. I think my per­sonal best is 1119, and that was only because all the hotels were sold out, so I just kept going. Any­way, I drove from about 10:00am to 2:30am or so. It was a long one, espe­cially con­sid­er­ing the last 7 or 8 hours were in the mid­dle of nowhere Utah, on mostly back high­ways. I was out of Cell phone ser­vice just about the whole time, which really sucked because I was get­ting tired and really could of used some­one to talk to. But I had to make due with a audio­book of Stephen King short sto­ries, which is not always the best choice when you’re in the mid­dle of absolute noth­ing. There was one stretch where there’s only one gas sta­tion for some­thing like 120 miles. Of course this is the stretch that’s almost there, so I did it at like 1am, when it was really dark and I was really tired. And to make it worse, that one gas sta­tion had seri­ously nasty cof­fee. But that’s not actu­ally too bad, because if it’s really bad then the act of drink­ing it wakes you up as much as the caf­feine. I did get to drive through New Mex­ico all day, which I loved. I inher­ited my father’s love of the South­west, and it was a beau­ti­ful drive. I won­der if there’s a gene for that? Any­way, I drove right past some places I went on a road trip in 1998 that are some of my favorite places on the planet. Actu­ally, I’m not sure I can say that, because most of my expe­ri­ences on the planet are on this con­ti­nent, so I guess I should say that instead. Any­way, one was Mesa Verde, where I saw stuff like this:

And another was Arches National park, where I saw stuff like this:

I also drove through Moab, Utah, which is a very famous Moun­tain bik­ing town. I’ll have to get out there some­day before I’m too old. It’s really moun­tain bik­ing mecca. I also took my now tra­di­tional set of State line signs:

Any­way, there’s a huge crowd of peo­ple out here to see Andrew do his thing. Here’s the ros­ter, as far as I know.

My Par­ents and me.

My Sister-in-law Jess’s Parents.

My friend Alex, his wife Sarah, his sis­ter Sarah, His other sis­ter Eliz­a­beth, and his par­ents JP and Katy.

Andrew’s best friend Evan, his wife Susan and their two kids.

And then 3 friends of his from Col­orado who I don’t know. So that’s like 18 peo­ple here just to see this. Amaz­ing, huh? We had a real nice Christ­mas the other day. I made the whole fam­ily come over to my hotel room in the morn­ing where I cooked our tra­di­tional Christ­mas fam­ily break­fast (Eggs, Bacon, Cof­feecake). We then went over to Andrew’s and had a really good Christ­mas din­ner cooked by Jess. It came out really well. I felt a lit­tle bad for her, because it’s also her birth­day, and she spent most of the day cook­ing. But any­way, it did rock. I ate so much, I could barely walk. I felt like a weeble.

It’s hard to imag­ine what this must feel like for Andrew, as this has been his goal for 3 years now. I know he’s freak­ing out quite a bit, but is doing a good job of keep­ing it together. We’re all try­ing to make sure we stay out of his hair so he can focus, but yes­ter­day, he was like “I’m tired of focus­ing! I need to be dis­tracted!!” So I guess we’re all going to a sports bar tonight to watch the Jets and Patri­ots on mon­day night foot­ball.
Best line of the trip: When Andrew moved here, he bought me a Shirt from a local beer called Polygamy Porter. I saw some in the store the other day so I bought a six pack. I was invit­ing Alex to come down to my room tonight and have some, and he said “So what is it, a stout and three blondes?”
I almost wet my pants.