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Denver to Smith Center

Saturday, April 29

Carl and I went to breakfast while the rest of the Martins gathered strength for the day. They had been in Laramie the night before and didn’t get to bed until around 2 a.m.

When we returned to the house, everyone was in motion; Matthew was headed to the library to work on a paper, Seth was already deep into an on-line game. The boys agreed that we could use the Toshiba laptop in this grand experiment of reporting from the road. (see How this is being done for details.) Seth gathered up the cables and charger, and slid them into a backpack designed for just that job.

Meanwhile, Carl made space for me in the truck. The sleeper has a bunkbed (I had the upper), a closet on each side, a refrigerator and additional storage shelves and space. There is room for one of us to stand in the sleeper at a time. Yes, we could have both stood in the sleeper at the same time, but our relationship is not that close.

Most of what Carl took out of the truck was books. Not your usual paper and ink, but audio books. In the 600,000 miles he has driven this truck, he has worn out the tape player listening to books on tape. All kinds of books, but especially history. He has a new radio unit, but it takes CDs not tapes. We’re talking dozens and dozens of tapes. Heck, there were a couple dozen, maybe three dozen, still in the truck when he finished.

After he vacuumed, I moved in. One bag for clothes, one bag for toiletries, one bag for books, one backpack with the laptop in it, my sleeping bag and pillow. Each found its place.

We did a car shuffle so the Insight could be in the garage out of whatever weather might fall on Lakewood. A few days earlier it had been hail. I’m grateful for the thoughtfulness. The Insight spent the week sharing shelter with Seth’s restored Volkswagen Beetle. A rare opportunity.

After lunch, we said our farewells and headed down to the HVH headquarters. Carl and his rig are under contract with HVH. He likes the company because they are very flexible when it comes to which direction he goes and for how long. HVH owns several hundred trailers. HVH coordinates the loads and the routes. It contracts with owner-operators like Carl to haul the trailers.

We signed in at HVH headquarters. I signed away all my rights holding no one accountable for anything for the pleasure of taking a 4,200 mile, bun-numbing ride with my friend.

The trailer we would start our trip with was not on the premises. It was several miles away where we would pick it up on the way out of town. We passed the security guard’s scrutiny and Carl began the mating ritual between the truck and trailer.

He cranked the trailer up a few inches at the front so the truck hitch would slide easily into place. He backed the truck hitch under the trailer. The union made a comforting “thunk.” He cranked the dolly legs up into their highway position, plugged in the air and electrical lines, and checked the trailer brakes, running lights, turn signals and emergency flashers.

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This trailer had metal springs, not air springs. Carl promised a rough ride.

The trailer was loaded with 28,000 pounds of water beds and other furniture for a store in Champagne, Illinois, almost 1,000 miles to the east. It was expected Monday morning, about 40 hours from now.

We’d have to average only 25 mph to make it on time if we never stopped for meals, sleep, or calls of nature. Taking those into account, we’d have to average 50 mph while actually underway.

It would have been a lot easier if we hadn’t missed the first turnoff. Carl wanted to take Highway 36, but we had to take a piece of I-70 first. It was my fault. I was telling Carl some fascinating story when we went past the turnoff. I haven’t a clue what the story was now, but it must have been very good.

Carl is a great student of Pythagoras when it comes to mapping routes. He’s not a big fan of Interstates (too boring), so he looks for alternate routes that happen to be shorter. He is a happy man if he can travel the hypotenuse of the triangle rather than the legs. Highway 36 is just one of those hypotenuses. It skims along just south of the Nebraska-Kansas border and takes an arrow-straight shot at Decatur, Illinois. Most of it is a two-lane, rural road with few services for big rigs.

We took a nature break at Burlington, the home of the Kit Carson County Carousel. Frankly, I didn’t realize Kit Carson was big on carousels. We did not stop by to ride the painted ponies, though, so we were soon on the road again.

We turned off I-70 at Colby, Colorado. No stories this time. Both of us were intent on finding Colby. I-70 takes a turn to the south just at Colby and we didn’t want to go south. We wanted to go east and a little bit north. We found Highway 36 and made the turn that took us, inevitably, toward the middle of the U.S. of A.

Saturday night in Smith Center, Smith County, Kansas, population about 3,000 American farmers and their families. Young fellows playing on the gym set at the city park as the sun went farther and farther below the horizon and the mercury moved farther and farther down the thermometer. The wind is our constant companion, still blowing mostly out of the north.

The Taco Bell/Pizza Hut is one of three eating places in town. McDonald s is one of the others. Smith Center has a McDonald’s. The crowd was down at the Taco Bell/Pizza Hut.

We checked our population “facts” with a gal who was clearing burrito-stained wrappers and empty pizza boxes from tables. She wasn’t too sure, but she thought there were maybe 3,000 folks around. Growing fewer all the time, she said. There was a faint tinge of sadness in her eyes as she said so.

Two kids, 5 and 3, being watched by their grandparents while she worked her second job of the day. We didn’t get into job number one. She commutes 11 miles to work from a nearby where the big controversy is hog farms, massive hog farms, covering more and more farmland closer and closer to town and the increasingly intolerant noses that live there.

The big thing, well, sort of, is that Smith Center is about nine miles from the geographic center of the contiguous 48 states. The very navel of the U.S.A.

We found aa city park on the eastern edge of town and called it a day.

Smith Center to Champagne