Back From 3 Days of Driving

Last Monday I flew to South Carolina to meet Dr Desert Flower, round up Nathan Junior, move him out of his old studio apartment, dispose of the salvaged 2000 V70, load everyone up in the rental car and trek for 3 days across the Eisenhower Interstate system to get back to the Sonora desert, where our son will be recuperating from his head and abdominal injuries for the next 5 weeks.  Through 3 days of traveling over 2300 miles of Red State American highways we 

• saw various billboards telling us how Obamacare & Pelosi are ruining America.  
• We read how women should not have any control over their reproductive rights, because a fetus has a beating heart (and should be a US citizen, capable of gun ownership) by the time it is 10 days old. 
• Found Budget Rental Car (with a COSTCO discount)  provided invaluable XM radio in our Hyundai Sonata.  There was also a aux input and USB port in the center counsel - very nice for a 3 day drive.
• We ate some delicious Texas steaks at really low prices.
• Paid exorbitantly for parking in down town New Orleans.
• Saw deer, skunk, squirrel, coyote, raccoon, and armadillo road kill (I did all the driving) but no live critters, except for a group of 5 raccoons at the Columbus Texas rest stop.
• Found Blackberry to have no 3G coverage in most of Central and Western Texas
• Found our Garmin was good at finding healthy, desirable places to eat AFTER we had passed them (like a Panera), but it was terrible at finding things that lay ahead of us on our interstate route
• Met Texans who epitomized Boomhower and Hank Hill.
• Smelled Beaumont, Houston, and El Paso (in that order) over a course of 2 days.
• Learned that I-10 in Louisiana and Texas is a tremendously dangerous high traffic route, with semi trucks hauling (just to name a few) molten sulfur (2448), anhydrous ammonia (1005), concentrated sulfuric acid (1830), hot tar (1999), diesel fuel (1993), hexaldehyde (1207), gasoline (1203) [salvaged my old 1996 "North American Emergency Response guidebook" that denoted all the placards from the Volvo], liquid nitrogen, liquid carbon dioxide, liquid oxygen, etc.
• Had great weather throughout, until we encountered a dust/rain/mud storm in Tucson.

It is good to be back now.  Thanks for all the phone consults, conversations, and well wishes.  Il faut voir.   So far.. so good.