The plan was this:

Having given notice, sold off our furniture and many of our belongings and said good-bye to the staff at Draeger's, we would leave San Mateo early on Thursday, January 20th and drive all day to Phoenix, AZ. Two nights at Peter's parents' place in AZ, then hit the road again and reach Des Moines in 3 days.

We did leave Thursday morning, but it was after a hallucinatory all-nighter of packing and loading the truck and cleaning the apartment. Except for a short nap at a truck stop, Peter had no sleep, so we crashed at a motel in West Banning, CA after a good burger meal at a greasy spoon. We reached Phoenix just past noon on Friday, then set out on Sunday morning. The plan was to spend the night in Amarillo, TX, but since it was before 6 when it did, we decided to push on.

We had a disturbingly bad meal at an establishment called Zoo-Kini in a strip mall just outside of Amarillo, where the easterly winds brought in a stench of dozens of wretched penned-in cattle from the nearby processing plant. It seems that greasy spoons are not to be found near interstates anymore, having been forced out by scary corporate chains. Fueled by latte and Chantico from a passionately welcomed Starbucks*, we sped through Oklahoma City and crashed at a Day's Inn (much more beat-up than the one in West Banning).

The next day, we drove through Oklahoma and Missouri, and reached Des Moines before night fell on Monday, January 24th.

*Starbucks is not evil. Look at entities like Titan or Pepsi or News Corp., then explain to me how you can justify expending energy on beating up a company like Starbucks.

Found out that Starbucks is now selling real drinking chocolate (as opposed to cocoa, which is not my thing). It's quite good, and they've obviously put a lot of effort into designing the container -- a tiny saturated brown cup, delicately textured, with a streamlined black top in #6 plastic.