I plan to post something significant about my last times in Santa Clarita, the going away party, my new place, life in Dallas, and seminary. But that is for a later time. This will be the official road trip recap. We quickly learned that the governor on our Penske was set at 90mph. We learned this from reading the manual. I promise. To end the suspense, the rooster made it to the beautiful city of Ludlow, California. It was there that he breathed his last, however as you can see in the picture his legs were still firmly attached to the roof when we arrived in Grapevine. The strange part is, about 15 minutes before he left us, we herd a very loud, very distinctive rooster clucking sound coming from above us. Apparently he didn’t approve of the harsh hand that life dealt him.

In this next picture, you can see the ridiculous price we paid for gas in Needles, CA. You know how sometimes if you have a big car the pump shuts off before your tank is full because you hit a certain dollar amount? Well that happened here – only it didn’t shut off until $100. And we didn’t get our full tank. However, I was VERY happy to pay the exorbitant price. Why you ask? Good question. To finish Jeff’s first leg of driving, we ran out of gas in the no man’s land before Needles. This is the hard part to believe – we coasted over 8 miles to the gas station. Go ahead and read that again. Yes, 8 miles. It was crazy, and we have video to prove it. It was mostly down hill, but at one incline we got down to 2mph and almost stopped, but by God’s grace and some creative body momentum, we made it to the next downhill and onto the home of the $3.29 gas.

The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful – we stopped for dinner and Starbucks in Flagstaff, then drove through the snow all night in New Mexico, then had breakfast at Cracker Barrel in Amarillo before heading down deep in the heart of Texas. That last leg of the trip was pretty fun, we shouted country music lyrics as we drove through the small towns of north Texas, and I had my first encounter with the Texas State Troopers. Which is not the same as the Texas Rangers, and they don’t like it when you call them “Walker”. I got off with a warning though, and honestly I was surprised I even got pulled over because I was only doing about 4 mph over the speed limit. Hopefully this is not a sign of things to come.

The last few days have been pretty crazy getting everything unpacked and the house set up. Our new place is sweet, I’ll post some pictures for everyone (and by everyone I mostly mean mom) to ogle this weekend. Monday night I got to go out to dinner with all the Zellers and my friend Chris Pryor, then last night I had dinner with the Ochoas. I’m already so thankful for the friends the Lord has provided me here. It was really tough moving to Alabama without knowing anybody, and I’m glad I don’t have to go through that whole ordeal again.

A little car news – my Nova is officially sold as of Monday night. I got a price I’m happy with, but I’m really going to miss working on that car. Good times. But now on to new things. Speaking of new things, I went and looked at this car today. I think it may be mine sometime next week. I’ll keep you posted. I’d better get to bed, my first day of school activity is tomorrow. It’s test day. From 9 to 3:30. Should be fun.