Onward!

Monday, March 17, 2008: 2:40pm pacific time.

Last night, before going to bed, we played one game of Oregon Trail, assuming that its happenings would predict the future of our trip. First of all, we forgot to buy food. That wasn’t good. Fortunately, we shot multiple buffalo and were able to get by on meager portions. Almost immediately, Robbie became sick with measles. This was followed a few days later by a bout of cholera and a broken arm. Otherwise, the party fared well until the Big Blue River Crossing. While floating across, we lost control and crashed, losing all of our party (including Bisous) except April, who died shortly after. Our epitaph reads, “Here lies April. This does not bode well...”

This morning, Robbie woke up not feeling well. We can only hope it’s not cholera. After packing the cars, we set off for the east coast. These are the day’s highlights so far.
• Border Patrol stopped us for a routine time-wasting. Luckily, we had let our Mexican friends jump out a mile before.
• We made a stop in “El Centro” (which is Spanish for ‘The Centro’). Therein, we had In-n-Out burgers one more time, because they are just too good. This time we’re serious, though. Last time.
• We have made great progress in our license plate search, having found 14 states, and a few Mexican plates.
• Jess writes, “Who knew that the desert was so green? Apparently cheese is not the only thing happy cows produce” after we went through a particularly manure-smelling section of road.
• If we had to assign a song to this section of the trip, it would be “Is there anybody out there?” by Pink Floyd. We think the answer is ‘no’ because we’ve seen no civilized life for 40 miles or so.
• However, we did see the largest cow farm we’ve ever laid eyes on. There must have been about 5,000 cows: a great score for ‘War of the Cows.’
• We made a stop in Dateland, which is exactly what it sounds. It consisted (from what we could see) of a gas station and a small market that sold dates and date shakes.

We’re back on the road, and still in the desert. Hopefully we see some life-forms soon. Till next time!