Rufus The Doofus

This is is our view for the next couple of days through the flyover states. We’re going to end up west of Des Moines later tonight. We’ve gone through Indiana and Illinois already today and it’s a little before 5pm.

I can see why these states are called “flyovers”, I know I wish we could fly over them. Boring. The only excitement is the tractor trailers loaded with cows headed off to the slaughterhouse with urine and feces flowing from the trailer’s corrugated steel sides. Yes, it’s that exiting.

The weather was crappy until we got west of Chicago. It’s warm and sunny now in Iowa City. The tinted windows are a nice benefit for the dog’s comfort. Here they are in action:

The oil pressure problems appear to be fixed now with the switch to 20w50 synthetic oil. It’s a big relief. We’re still burning through one quart every 300 miles but I think that’s primarily due to the higher engine speeds of freeway driving.

We’re going to keep at it until we’re too exhausted to continue and then find a dog friendly hotel. Maybe we’ll cut the trip from Ohio to Moab down to two days instead of three if we’re lucky. I may have to invoke the magical Power of the Dew (Mountain Dew) in order to keep up the pace. My wife has been driving since Joilet, IL where we filled up on B11 biodiesel. I was able to catch some sleep for about 30 minutes before the road switched to being too rough for sleeping.

I captured a video with the digital camera that conveys the experience of driving an old diesel Land Cruiser on the highway in middle America. (BTW, this was not recorded on the new video camera. It was recorded on the old digital camera.) I am still waiting for the upload to YouTube to finish. I’ll have to post it later.

Tags:   bj42 · west tripNo Comments