Thirty-Four Hours Later (Mexico to New Hampshire)

Patrick and I drove for what very well may have been forever. I haven’t added it all up yet. We crossed over 2,000 miles and drove through what must have been 400 different states. The last few hundred miles of which, it should be noted, were on small town country roads which are not particularly suitable for overladen U-Hauls with trailers attached. For all the talk of America being a patchwork of different and distinct communities and environments it all seemed to run together to me. Texas was dry and flat. In Arkansas trees began showing up. Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio were just more trees. And in New York mountains were added. And I guess in Vermont we started seeing signs warning of moose crossing, but we saw no meese. We had no schedule to start with and it quickly became evident that even winging it would require a fair amount of improvisation. The end string of events which we’ll call a plan consisted of a late start from San Antonio followed by a late arrival in Little Rock where we stayed at my good friend Trent’s family’s place. After waffles for dinner and waffles for breakfast we had another late start and decided, heck with sleep and time tables, let’s just drive until we puke. Or fall asleep and drive off a mountain pass, whatever the typical end result of driving more than humans were ever intended to drive. This led to dinner in Nashville that same day, a semi-delirious midnight drive through Ohio on my part, a completely unarousable period of sleep where I’m told Beeders drove through more of Ohio, lunch in some random Vermont town whose name I can no longer remember, and, finally, a reasonable arrival into Lebanon about 54 hours later. It is conceivable according to Google Maps that if we had driven continuously without eating, worn spaceman adult diapers, received inflight refueling by military aircraft, and somehow pole vaulted over all the mountain towns of New York and Vermont we could have done it in 34 hours, but I believe that has only been successfully completed once before by people far more industrious than us. Perhaps the Japanese. So all in all I got to say not bad. If there’s ever a national U-Haul racing circuit I think Patrick and I just very well may place. Maybe go semi-pro.

And now for a Beeder photo montage...

Pre-trip. Patrick wanted nothing but the finest of food on this adventure. So I took him to Rudy's. I think he liked it. Or we should never trust his thumbs up ever again.

Although the theme for this photo slide show adventure is "places Patrick ate," I felt we needed a picture of our crammed U-Haul + crammed MINI. In the sense that a MINI can be crammed at least.

First stop. The Czeck Stop! I was never truly a full convert to the cult of kolache during my time at Texas A&M (I will always love myself some donuts), but I did have to admit these kolaches were pretty great. And so I made Beeders eat some.

Beeders has kolache poisoning. He later gained 5 lbs and then woke up.

In the middle of Vermont. (I think I lost my picture at Coco's Italian restaurant in Nashville, the best restaurant.) This place had "spiedies" which were... I guess messy sandwiches? It was connected to a tire shop so they may just have been heavily sauced, bread wrapped vulcanized rubber scraps for all I know.

Lou's in Hanover. Good hamburgers. I approve. Patrick approves. Everybody approves.

First night in New Hampshire: Ramunto's Brick Oven Pizza! Made by robots in cast iron baking vaults. Although it was attached to a building made of brick, the only bricks actually in the joint were placed there by accident. Or as props. That said our super garlic pizza was pretty good.

Lastly: breakfast at Ace's Diner in Lebanon. The inside of this place was great, like a giant classic diner stereotype, and the food was tasty. Patrick on the other hand was not amused. Or just not happy that I was about to ship his butt off to Boston on a bus.

In the end the drive was long, but not too long. It was boring, but not too boring. The trailer amazingly never unhitched and the truck amazingly never exploded. Patrick forgave me for the bus ticket, and I think overall he had a reasonable time. He tells me such at least. He may just be saying that to practice his diplomacy as an aspiring ambassador, though. Perhaps he's secretly developing a covert nuclear weapons program. In either case, I appreciated his help and I'd be more than happy to provide him with fissile material should ever the need arise.

India Trip: Formal Dress with Sandals

FROM 1/2/08:

At 2:30 this afternoon I will be in the air on the first stage of a multistaged trip to India. Neat.

Although I am not generally one to show much in the way of emotion aside from an occasional goofy smile, I do feel that I'm getting there. Feeling it. A bit excited. A bit anxious. A lot unsure of what to expect. Even though I will only be by myself for a few days and only in Dubai, I have only been by myself abroad once before for a day in Berlin, and I imagine things are a wee bit different in the UAE. Well, actually, I imagine they're remarkably similar with just a different tongue, dress, and slightly different mannerisms, but the fear of the unknown nevertheless makes me contemplate otherwise. We'll see soon enough I suppose. If this turns out to be my second and only entry feel free to assume I've been abducted and am somewhere in Saudi Arabia or Yemen.

On a more scientific note, we will be conducting a short series of experiments while in India. Specifically, does doxycycline *really* make for good antimalarial chemoprophylaxis? The sample size will only be three, there will be no placebo control, and blinding is impossible, but I think we may be able to get a publication out of this. Our second clinical trial will unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately depending on your view of things, have an n = 1, but I am fairly confident it's a novel research question. We get to see if storing oral vaccines needing to be refrigerated instead briefly at room temperature will affect the quality of host immunity generated. The end point in this study will be whether or not Rachel gets typhoid or not. What fun science is!

And on a final note, amongst all the packing and running about preparing for this trip I was pleased to note that on the CMC site the expected dress is "formal" which consists of, "a short sleeved shirt, a pair of trousers, and sandals/shoes." Truly India is an enlightened nation to have finally cast off the oppressive rule of closed-toe footwear. I think I may like this place.