Shawn's Blog #8

November 22, 2012


3:00am Ive listened to 3OH!3 a hundred times, I've consumed all of the Monsters i bought AND a 5 hour energy i found in the glove box, sleep is setting in, I started to get that 1 eye sleep thing going on and decide I better stop driving before I end up in a ditch. I found a rest area, checked the time and made a rough estimation of how long I could pass out for and still make my flight... only 1 hour. I get my 1 hour of sleep and start driving, I feel great! like I just slept for 8 hours!

I get to the airport at 5am, park the car and hurry inside, technically I should have been there 2 hours early being an international flight and all... wasn't in the cards, sleep was more important, once inside I find myself in a massive line at customs.. great, this is why your supposed to be there 2 hours early. I must have looked like a drug addicted when I'm loading all my stuff onto the X-ray machine, I'm sweating and my hands are all twitchy from lac of sleep, I must not have raised too much suspicion they let me through. I just make my gate 5 minutes before boarding, jump into my seat, use my previous experience with seat belts, buckle up and pass right out even before they teach you how to use the seat belt. I know! I'm SMRT! unfortunately, the flight from Edmonton to Seattle was only like an hour long and didn't provide me with much rest! The one hour layover gave me enough time to get some breakfast before boarding my next flight to Minneapolis.

Not much to report on the flight, I slept from take off till landing, finally some solid rest! I landed at 2:30pm, picked up my luggage and grabbed a cab to the self storage place we had stashed the truck and trailer for the past couple of weeks. Now I get to play the waiting game because Kris' flight doesn't arrive till 9pm. I figured the best way to kill some time was go hang out at the Mall Of America, but when I arrived there everything was closed.. oh yea.. US Thanksgiving.. damn, The movie theatre was open though and I decided to kill 3hours of my wait watching SkyFall the new Bond movie.

Well finally I get the txt from Kris that he's landed, I started heading over to the airport, but what terminal? Kris doesn't know and I just passed the terminal 2 exit, ok terminal 1 it is! I'm circling the terminal 1 pick up when he txts me "TERMINAL 2" REALLY?? back out to the interstate and over to terminal 2, I find Kris with what looks like enough luggage to be ALL of his belongings. Haha

Off to Duluth we go! After resolving some dodgey directions supplied to us by our ever so accurate APPLE MAPS, ... APPLE if your reading this, entering the interstate then crossing 5 lanes to an exit on the OTHER side within 50 meters is NOT acceptable as directions! As we continue north weather starts to become an issue, snow then hard pack ice on the highway. I still haven't installed that new front driveshaft yet...

We arrive in North Branch, MN the same place we had attended HayDays and stored the sled, I think its probably a good idea to install that front shaft, after some more swear words and laying on my back under a running truck in a blizzard i get the shaft on and join Kris inside the warm truck, at this point I'm feeling light headed from being upside down under the truck and suggest Kris continue with the driving duties. The highways just get worse and worse but at least we have 4x4 now! Our top speed was somewhere in the 30 MPH range.

By the time we reach Duluth its around 1:30am and we're both completed drained of energy, we set up the generator and start to get some heat pumping in the trailer, time to TRY and sleep, the trailer never really warmed up, the wind was blowing so hard it must have just kept sucking all the heat right out. I remember waking up probably around 3am and hearing the generator running and thinking I should go refuel it, but my body disagreed and I just fell back asleep.