This country is too damn big. It’s unreasonable. Especially in this big middle part with the massive skies and the never-ending flat ribbons of road and the constant powerful cross-winds that make towing this heavy-ass Golden Eagle feel like going down a waterslide. What are we doing with this much country? I guess it’s nice to have the storage space but damn does it take a long time to drive across. Especially when one of us seems to have gotten food poisoning, or something similar that ended with David vomiting into a cheap motel toilet in the night, which sounded like someone dumping a metal garbage can full of chili into a the sucking maw of a hippo. Anyway, things are going great.
Before we left our Lebanon, Missouri motel, Otto and I did our tight five prop comedy bit that ended with me receiving mild burns to my earlobe:
That moment when @JasonTorchinsky uses a hairdryer as a phone and his son Otto turns it on. pic.twitter.com/586ZvtqDPc
— David Tracy (@davidntracy) December 28, 2022
We made it to Neosho, Missouri for lunch, which was kindly provided by our fellow motor-vehicle-word-sayer, Caleb Jacobs, truck-man at The Drive. It was fantastic! We even took a constitutional around the town square and enjoyed a bunch of Ozarkian goodness.
@davidntracy, @JasonTorchinsky, and his son Otto made time for lunch with me at my family’s restaurant today! Wish ‘em luck as they move David to LA. Not that they need luck, of course! They have each other ❤️ pic.twitter.com/wVuU2TMO0p
— Caleb Jacobs (@calebjacobs0611) December 29, 2022
Things took a turn sometime after lunch, though. David made the rookie mistake of eating what must have been a cubic meter of mashed potatoes, so all he wanted to do after that was sleep, which, as you experienced roadtrippers know, is not ideal for making good time.
We debated just rolling David into the ditch and moving boldly on without him, but we revived him, installed him in the Mustang, put a brick on the gas pedal, and pressed on.
It's going GREAT https://t.co/36R1GA5QYo pic.twitter.com/CDaiQbY8wy
— The Autopian (@the_autopian) December 28, 2022
A shocking amount of the remaining drive was on this interminable turnpike in Oklahoma, named, I believe, for Nathan Interminable, the man who invented the concept of never shutting the fuck up. It’s long and straight and has zero exits so if you have to pee, as Otto and I did, you have a choice of either soaking your pants in redolent urine or pulling onto the shoulder and ejecting steaming arcs of the foul liquid, which was the path we chose. I’m still not certain it was the better choice. [Ed Note: Pulling over on a small shoulder as cars zoomed by at 80 mph was sketchy, but this toll road just kept going with zero exits! -DT].
Who wants a crazy long highway with almost no exits? Not me. What if I forgot to get gas? Stupid.
Somewhere along the way, I noticed David driving slower and a little more, um, serpentine, so we stopped at a fun rest stop that arched over the road and had this fun hanging sculpture of an early Corvette:
At some point, David must have eaten something he either bought or found, or maybe something just crawled into his mouth; it’s not clear, but it was doing something to him, and when we stopped again for gas he was not looking well. At all. He was slumped over and looked miserable. I got him some Gatorade and elixirs and we made the call to find the next place to stop.
We got to the hotel and David complained of chills and aches, so I got some ibuprofen for him, which he refused to take until Otto told him to “stop being a child and take the pills.” Suitably chastised [Ed Note: And embarrassed. -DT], he took them, but then vomited everything up a bit later in a torrential gush of semi-digested ichor. Drained, he fell into a deep, dark slumber.
This morning, he must be feeling better because he woke up and immediately started eating from a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos that somehow found its way into his bed. I think that’s a good sign.
We’re gonna try for Santa Fe today, maybe farther. Wish us luck!
When you guys hit Santa Fe, turn south, go through ABQ towards Las Cruces, cut through Hatch, stop and get a green chile cheeseburger, go to Deming and take I-10.
Flagstaff has been getting snow the past two days.
Needs more thumbs up. You don’t want to be on I-40
“Lunch in Neosho, MO”. I found my 14,000 original mile 1985 Mustang GT there 18 months ago!
My son made that trip in a GT6+ switching drivers in motion in a day. I’m sure there was lots of roadside urination involved.
Thanks for assigning the journalism to Torch and for taking Otto along. Both big plusses!
I made the trip in a ’72 Spitfire going and a ’72 F100 coming 4 years later. Driving up to The Grand Canyon in the Spit and crossing the Golden Gate bridge in the van with a sloppy steering box were highlights…
With the faces Otto pulls, he could be the next Rowan Atkinson.
Love and good luck from another side of the planet (thumbs up emoji)
You’ve gotta move yourself and the Mustang, the movement
You own it, you better never let it go
You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to go.
This opportunity comes once in a lifetime
Blow…. chunks.
Hilarious torching of DT. What a good sport.
Antics, I want more antics.
Be safe…
Can I pre-order Otto’s book now?
“David made the rookie mistake of eating what must have been a cubic meter of mashed potatoes”
Came here for this. Did not leave disappointed.
Am I the only one making the connection between the food poisoning and Caleb Jacobs’ family restaurant in the Ozarks?
Poor David! The story was awesome though. Who knows what could have gotten into the potato bucket or the shower spaghetti… But I think everyone would feel better if you picked up a CO detector.
What’s that little R2 unit in the lower right corner of the last pic?
David’s dignity
Hi Guys, Sounds like the Road Trip is going as well as expected! The Trials & Tribulations of J.T & D. T ! Thinking maybe this could become a regular thing! Be glad to volunteer! But you could rotate the “ characters” ….see what I did there (?)..lol…among the staff, possibly invite guests from among your readers, after a proper screening etc..etc.. Possible video series. Would go viral imho..
Your stories are very much enjoyed and the reason I am a proud subscriber. Always wanted to be an Autopian! Just didn’t know it til you guys birthed the Autopian. Many thanks to The Main Man, Mercedes and the rest of the staff. Best Regards Y O S A
Ok. You guys have sucked me in. This whole sequence is like an episode of Batman from my youth. Invincible Batman and Robin battle THE Joker, THE Riddler, or THE Penquin but wind up tied up upside down over a vat of bubbling, always bubbling, acid. Cue the “Find out what happens next week, same time, same channel.” Well, just as I always showed up next week to find out what happens to the dynamic duo, I will return tomorrow for Day 4. My membership is set. PS- take the 10 out here. the 40 goes up through Flagstaff, beautiful place but COLD and snowy.
And there’s also the possibility of an exhaust leak upstream of the catalyst.
I’d think that’d have gotten to him in a much worse way earlier than that, though. We had an exhaust blowout ahead of the cat on our mostly-open 944 (no windows; just a windshield and a roof), and it still made our driver really dizzy in just a few laps.
Please, please, please come in immediately if you smell/suspect exhaust in the cabin! That can end way worse. We were lucky our driver was smart about it and didn’t try to tough it through.
Can’t ETA, but after looking at older comments, maybe it’s a possibility anyway? And maybe our leak was just a lot more severe given the whole blowout nature of the damage?
I like the idea of getting a carbon monoxide monitor for the ‘Stang just in case. Man, don’t mess around with that garbage.
I’ve got an aircooled Beetle and I always keep a carbon monoxide detector in it, way too easy to have exhaust leak into the cabin when using the heater.
Did you happen to get any recording of David blowing chunks? Doritos are always my go to after puking my guts up.
I smell an Autopian Membership perk…who wouldn’t want that as a text message notification sound? Maybe a ringtone? The possibilities are endless!
And that’s how you know this isn’t Top Gear. If it was Top Gear the other two would have abandoned the sleeping one and got on with the trip.
Abandoned him with a full camera crew and a support vehicle, but yes
Otto continues to be the breakout star in every appearance.
I hope David successfully expelled whatever he ingested and is recovered, long drives in that condition suuucckksss.
Otto kicks butt!
Santa Fe resident here. While I love that you might come through here, do this instead:
Assuming you are coming through on I-40, exit in Santa Rosa and head towards Las Cruces via Vaughn, Carrizozo, and Alamagordo. Get gas because there will be hours when it feels like you are the only people on the planet. It’s a very pretty drive though.
Vaughn: See what a town looks like just before it becomes a ghost town!
Carrizozo: Same thing, except there’s a cool lava flow west of town which might be the youngest lava flow in the continental US!
Alamagordo: Skip this too-expensive military town but see White Sands National Park. It is otherworldly. You can’t miss it.
Then follow I-10 to California. It’s just as boring as I-40 but you skip the bad winter weather. Also in Tucson you can do a quick car tour of Saguaro National Park and see the really big plane graveyard which is close by.
Come back to Santa Fe in the summer when it’s pretty and green. In winter everything is just different shades of brown.
Also, for breakfast go to any Blake’s Lotaburger (they’re all over the state) before 11 a.m. and get a #1 Breakfast Burrito with green chile sauce. Trust me on this. You will never have a better one.
If you have not been to Santa Fe, and you have a chance to go there, then you must go there. (I don’t make the rules!) Honestly though, I think Santa Fe at Christmas time is pretty damn magical, even if the landscape is “brown”. Besides, he’s moving to SoCal, so it will be brown 10 months out of the year anyway. (Right now is the not-brown season.)
Counterpoint: the roads in Santa Fe are narrow and overcrowded (at least in the cool historic part of town – built way before cars were a thing). Probably not the best idea to navigate them with a U-Haul and vehicles in tow. I think the I-10 route might be the better option here.
Sorry no place west of the mississippi river is a decent christmas trip on a road trip.
Someone NMs. Also, stop in at the Owl Cafe in San Antonio on the way past 380 for a legit green-chile cheeseburger. Pity y’all didn’t post up the itinerary a week ago or so, I could have tried to set y’all up a tour of the VLA.
left out the ‘if you take I25’ part. oops.
Man, I’m still kicking myself for not knowing that you could camp in White Sands National Park when I brought my 411 home. What an epic landscape.
For sure go to Blake’s.
I want to go to there
is there going to be a Las Vegas meetup when you roll through town?
Aw, man!! I refreshed the site at LEAST every 5 minutes looking for an update for a reader meet up in, finally in my neck of the woods.
I’m bummed it didn’t happen, but here’s hoping David survives this trip.
At least Otto is learning all kinds of life lessons on this trip…
Just based on this installment, I’m going to suggest that from here on out, Autopian just sends Jason on road trips to any random place with any random person and fill the site with his daily trip reports.
Very entertaining writing here. Torch is a national treasure.
Hopefully just a touch of food poisoning. Flu on a cross country drive would be an unexplored level of suck.
Assuming it isn’t carbon dioxide inhalation, food poisoning is a strong possibility, seeing as how he apparently felt a lot better the next morning, it’s often just a 24 hour thing.
Took me 10 hours to drive home to Delaware from Albany a few months ago due to a food poisoning incident at a work conference, eating at a restaurant everyone only told me retroactively to avoid. Had to stop at every damn gas station and rest stop on the way pack for you know what, and also pulled off and vomited on the shoulder of the NJ turnpike. Next day, felt totally fine, like it never even happened, and got back in the car to head to Pittsburgh for the weekend
So what you’re saying is David’s palms were sweaty, knees weak, arms were heavy? There was vomit on the dash already, shower spaghetti?
COTD, IMO
Haha! This is incredible.
This is fantastic.
Holy shit, you win the internet for today!!
If DT is as good at unpacking as he is packing, I’d suggest that you all are using the downtime when you take your breaks to at least set up his utilities for when you get to his (I’m assuming unfurnished) apartment. There is no way this has already been done, ha
Is it still a thing that California apartments don’t come with a refrigerator?
The lower 48 is about the size of Australia but with slightly less extreme population concentration.
Neosho and Eureka Springs were the nicest looking towns in the area. Sadly I was very familiar with I-44 since we drove to Tulsa from Joplin every couple of weeks for Indian food and micro brew.