Friday 6th July

The news from Nikki was rather minimal today. I was expecting this, however, since they had a seriously deadline to make. Day Three of Manifesting Destiny was spent with her foot glued to the floor of Kiyone to make it to Mike's parent's house in northern Utah (I can't remember the name of the town, offhand ^_^;). Because noone wants to spend a THIRD night looking for a somewhere where they insist on money before giving you a bed for the night.

But on the upside, Jett's little retention problem seems to be easing up. I just KNOW that's been on all your minds, thank you ^_-. All it takes is patience, a quiet secluded area, a portable catheter set and two pairs of strong hands...just kidding ;).

But back to the never-ending excitement of driving. By all accounts, the rest of Colorado was something of a disappointment. Ah well...as everyone knows, there are two seasons in Colorado - Winter and July. And Colorado just wears snow SO much better than heat. However, Wyoming was MUCH more exciting. Read that sentence and savour it carefully, because you almost NEVER see Wyoming and 'exciting' in the same phrase. Just as Kiyone had decided that she was cutting the precious airconditioning rather than see it go into meltdown from 2 days of solid use, the elements came to the rescue as Our Gang entered the Rockies just inside Wyoming. 5 minutes into the mountains, the temperature plummetted. And with a third of the car containing English blood, there was much rejoicing.

5 minutes after that, it began to rain. A tad freaky for mid-summer, but there you go. It will do the garden good, why complain?

5 minutes after THAT, Mother Nature decided she was bored and switched on a freakish hailstorm. There was less rejoicing. So there they were...crawling along with almost zero visibility, being assualted by angry white rocks of ice. On a slippery mountain road 7000+ feet above beach volleyball level. They were just beginning to wonder if they should start fashioning snow chains out of old sandwich crusts and jerry-rigging an emergency winching system called Make Mike Get Out and Push, the storm stopped.

An intense few minutes had by all, to be sure. But it's gotta beat being in Baton Rouge slowly dying of industrial haze inhalation or something REALLY sad...like having a heart attack while watching a PBS pledge drive.

After that, Wyoming turned back into Kansas with hills. Thankfully, that DIDN'T need to involve warping time and space and sending Kiyone actually BACK to Kansas. Otherwise that would HAVE to have involved like making some corny gag like 'Jett...I DO think we're in Kansas anymore..' and Nikki having to kill them both ;). However, they DID experience severe climate shock after the hail as the temperature soared again, dehydration actually set it...and Nikki's driving arm being exposed to so much sunburn it'll probably be like melanoma'd leather by the time they reach Portland. Which would suck, certainly, but it would accessorize well with her freaky deformed toenail (check your Daily Deformation listings for the full back story on that one ;).

Initial impressions of Utah are scant at the time of writing, since northen Utah is very mountainous and Nikki's remaining reserves of energy were carefully spent getting them to Mike's parents alive in the fading light. But they are apparently there for a few days (and they NEED it, imo..) before setting out for the final leg. She sounds a bit apprehensive at three days as the guest of her future inlaws, but I think she'll forget that and just be grateful to be not driving and not paying for her bed. Apparently, for initial highlights of Maison Chenoweth, we must again turn to Jett. Mr and Mrs Chenoweth's abode afforded Jett her very first encounter with *stairs*. After several anxious minutes coming to grips with this strange arrangement of TWO levels of ground bridged with a strange arrangement of little grounds, she had a wonderful time, spending a full ten minutes at least running up and down the stairs, utterly entranced. Dogs are SO cute ^_^. As to whether Jett is getting on with the Chenoweth's own dog, a yappy Maltese, remains to be revealed.

Nikki, Mike and Jett, in convoy with Mr and Mrs Chenoweth, who come bearing more neat furniture to help set up house(in my opinion, parents are never cooler than when they help set up house. You won't get more free stuff until your wedding day, so milk it for all it's worth!), are due in Beaverton, Oregon, on the evening of the 9th. As yet, she's still unsure of whether more updates will be forthcoming. But she's read my accounts here and seems to be enjoying them a lot, so if we're all lucky, that might induce her to write more :). You can all feel free to email her and ask how things are going to nudge her on, since she CAN still check email. :)

So we leave them now....to antagonize the local Mormons by trolling the streets swearing a blue streak and letting down bicycle tires. Some people have all the fun ;p