One more semester down...too many to go.

Well, grades for last semester came out. Josh and I both did really well. My lowest grade was a B+, which with 19 credit hours I am happy about. Josh also got good grades, and even a better grade than he expected in one class because of his well written final paper.

"We're Goin' to Jackson"

Sorry it took me so long to post again; things have been pretty busy at work for me. Here’s how our drive out to Jackson went:

After three days, 32 hours of driving, a blizzard, a broken windshield wiper, a car break in, and a tornado we finally made it to Jackson, Mississippi.

            We finally got on the road from Utah at about 5:00. Our goal was to make it to Denver that night, which was eight or nine hours. The trip was going fine; we hit some rain after about six hours. The rain wasn’t so bad, but it quickly turned into slush and then very heavy snow and wind. We had a stressful hour or so of driving before we stopped to take a break. When we pulled over for some food Josh looked up the weather on his phone and found out that it was only going to get worse the farther east we went. Our GPS found an alternate route to Denver that took us immediately south on a two lane highway. That road ended up adding more miles on our drive, but it got us out of the bad weather quickly which was well worth the extra miles. We ended up making it to Denver around 2:30am; we found an inexpensive hotel near the airport and crashed for the night.

            The next day after a quick not so breakfast, breakfast at KFC we got back on the road. Our goal was to make it to Tulsa Oklahoma, about 12 hours. The drive was fairly uneventful for the first few hours, but once we got into Kansas we hit some patches of really heavy rain. It would be raining for five or ten miles and then sunny for a bit, then rain again. At the start of another rain storm Josh’s windshield wiper broke off. We were in the middle of nowhere (that’s all Kansas is anyway, right?) but we pulled off on the next exit to ask at the gas station where we could but a windshield wiper. We got lucky here because the gas station had a car shop attached. We were also lucky enough that they had the right size for Josh’s car; they only had few in stock. We got back on the road and the rest of the day was filled with the very repetitive landscape of Kansas and Northern Oklahoma.

            Before we left Denver we had used the free wireless internet at the hotel to help us find an inexpensive hotel in Tulsa. We ended up at Tulsa In and Suites; it was right off the freeway so we thought it would be convenient. It turns out that this hotel was the dirtiest hotels I have ever been in. Josh even had to fix the lock on the room door when we got into the room. By avoiding the bathroom as much as possible and covering the bed with our own bedding we managed to get a few hours of sleep.

            The next morning I headed out to the cars to start packing up our stuff and Josh went to check out. Unfortunately once I got to our cars I saw broken glass near Josh’s. I just stood there frozen thinking about everything that was packed in that car. Since his car was bigger we could fit all of our expensive stuff in it better, like both our computers with monitors, our flat screen TV, DVD player, and more. I just stood there until Josh came back from checking out and asked what was wrong. I tried to tell him, but I think I mostly just pointed in the direction of his car. After closer inspection we discovered that the passenger window of his car had been broken, but all that was taken was what was in Josh’s glove box: his brand new GPS and his MP3 player. We actually got extremely lucky considering that there was thousands of dollars worth of stuff in that car. We think the thief had half a brain because if he would have unlocked the door from the inside it would have set off the alarm. While it was a relief that more wasn’t taken it didn’t really help our stress level at the time.

We went back into the hotel to see if they had a security camera and a phone book to report it to the police. Of course the person working at the counter could care less about what happened; she didn’t even really seem surprised. Almost like this was a regular thing. She did give us a phone book and after a long hold with the police they told me car robberies were reported online only…

Our next step was to get Josh’s window replaced, we still needed to make it to Jackson that day. Rather than deal with the hotel staff we pulled out my laptop and leeched off a nearby hotel’s wireless internet. I called a few places and finally found a Safelite that could do the repair right away, as long as we came to them. Once we got there they said it could be anywhere from 45 minutes to two hours. We decided to kill some time, and find a local Starbucks or McDonalds with wireless internet and file a police report. After we finished we had nothing else to do except go back and wait for the window to be finished.  As it turns out, whatever the person used to break the window hit the window frame as well and bent it. The repair guy was able to bend it back enough to get the window in, but whenever we roll it up and down there’s a horrible grinding noise. Most likely we’ll have to get that fixed sometime. Which means more money lost because it’s not looking like insurance will cover any of this; we don’t think we’ll reach our deductible. Item taken from the vehicle are not covered by our policy, so we’ll most likely be just below or barely over it.

Well that was our drive, I probably missed some parts, but I think I got most of it. It was an adventure to say the least, let’s hope that our drive back to Utah at the end of the summer is less eventful.

PS. Please disregard my grammar errors, I typed this up pretty quickly and I am too lazy to read through it again.