So last week, after 20 days of waiting for a shipping company to pick up the car that I won on eBay, I decided to stop waiting and to go fly to Kansas City and drive the car back myself. I thought that maybe Dustin, Mitch, or my sister could come along. But understandably, I did it on extremely short notice and they all had school or work to attend to.
So I went alone. The scariest thing I can remember is getting off the airplane in Missouri thinking, "I'm here all by myself. Nobody here knows me and if something happens to me, I wouldn't know where to turn to."
I realized at that point that I didn't even know how to get to the Audi that I had won. I was at the airport, but the address of where the car was located was about an hour from the airport.
So I hailed a taxi and had a pretty nice conversation with the friendly driver. In fact, everyone I came across during the trip (which was pretty much at the airports, gas stations, or fast food restaurants) was extremely friendly. I think they all thought I was a loner 16-year old because every single person called me "child" or "honey."
Anyway, I started in Missouri, rode a taxi to Kansas to pickup my car, then drove through Colorado, part of Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Oregon, and then ended up in Washington. The totals for the trip, 28 hours and 14 minutes (including a 1-hour break at a rest stop, 6 trips to a gas station and 3 fast food joints) and I logged 1,888 miles from start to finish. And for those of you who are curious, my Audi S4 averaged over 25 miles per gallon (26 in the flat states).
Some of the cool things I came across... Kansas had some nasty rain and lightning storms. East Denver is really as boring as the South Park kids make it seem. Wyoming has some cool mountain ranges, kind of a mix between mountains and desert. I paid a total of 5 tolls, but 3 of them came on a 20 mile stretch of road in Colorado near their airport.
Would I do it again? Probably if my dog or a copilot came along and I wasn't in such a hurry. Some of the views I saw I wanted to stop and enjoy, but couldn't. I even saw a sign that said "Yellowstone, next right." I would have loved to go there.
