winter has come

we here in the seymour family truck appreciate wyoming. in this state, when there's icy snow ahead, they lower the speed limit to 65mph.

i'll post pictures tomorrow.

our new blue truck in portland!

it is autumn today

today is the first day of autumn. everywhere there are beautiful trees. it reminds me of when i met zack and sarah. it was a rainy day and the leaves on the trees were gold and red.
today is sunny. it still feels like summer. but the trees look like autumn.

gti

today is the first day of orientation for the new company. we got to seattle late last night. a very friendly and very talkative cab driver drove us to the hotel where GTI had sandwiches waiting for us and a nice room. zack and sarah were touched by the thoughtfulness (we sure were hungry!).

i stayed in the room while they went to class at 6am. the cleaning lady was a little surprised to see me. fortunately i speak spanish, and i assured her that it was okay for me to take a bath by myself, even though i am rather short.

this evening when zack and sarah got back they were talking about how nice everyone was.. and how competent. i had to look that word up. it means that they are good at what they do. zack said that people seem to really enjoy their work. i think that's important.

we have two more days of orientation. then on friday we get our new truck!

a new company

sarah and zack have decided to leave covenant and work for a company called gordon trucking. it's also called GTI. they say that gti is located near portland and that we'll be able to stop by home more often. they also say that we'll drive more miles and that the people there are really nice.

next week we'll turn in our truck and stay with sarah's dad in santa cruz for a week. then we'll go to the new company.

i'll post pictures of our new tractor when we get it. it's going to be blue.....

cooking with our engine

Zack and Sarah cooked an amazing steak dinner on their engine today.
We were swimming at the bottomless lakes near Roswell and afterward they wrapped up a big steak and some mushrooms and carrots and onions (with some seasonings and water) and stuck it in the engine. Then we drove to Odessa, Texas. It was a three hour drive.

Roswell, NM

Apparently, some aliens landed (or crashed) in Roswell, New Mexico. We got to drive through and see some of what they left behind...



(I'd never seen an alien before....)

bikes

Zack and Sarah bought mountain bikes while we were home. Zack used to mountain bike a lot. Sarah only biked on roads. They found a bike rack for a car that fits on the back of our truck. And then they found a bike for Sarah on Craigslist. Josh (Zack's brother) said Zack could take Zack's old bike (that Josh had been using). Then we drove through Moab, Utah and I got to ride in the backpack through this..



it was very beautiful..

goats

today we saw (and heard) lots of goats on the mountain. we were stopped for an hour or so because of an accident ahead of us. you can see the goats if you look closely.

hungry

sometimes i get hungry and i just can't help myself.....

LOUISIANA!!

we finally got to go to Lousiana!! We stopped at a little truck-stop 'mom'and'pop' diner and ate catfish and crab cakes. All of our vegetables were breaded and fried.. I guess that's how they cook in the 'South'..

funny signs in oklahoma

we saw these at a rest area..

sometimes..

Zack likes to take pictures of him pretending to eat Sarah..

north dakota storm

yes, that is snow blowing over an icy road. we saw lots of cars and trucks in the snowdrifts along the side of the interstate.

road closure

We're in Wyoming tonight. It's very cold and the wind is blowing the snow across the highway.

We just parked on a muddy hill just north of the interstate because they closed the roads heading east. That's the way we were going.

They have yellow lights that flash to tell you that the road is closed ahead. Then they have red lights at the last exit before the closure. These flash to tell you to exit the highway and turn around. So we did. Except that we didn't want to go all the way back to the last town we passed, so we pulled into this little muddy snowy hilly area. There was another truck here, facing the highway where he could see the red flashing lights. We thought that was a smart idea, so we parked near him.

Then another truck came.
Then four more.
Then all of a sudden there were about twenty of us. They all chose their own areas and made rows next to each other like it was a plan.

So now we're in the back of the truck, sitting on the bed. Sarah is cozy checking email. Zack is reading a book at the other end of the bed. They're playing footsies.

Trucks keep coming. They look like they're forming army regiments, all lined up. All waiting for those red lights to stop flashing and for the gates to open on the interstate, so we can drive all night to deliver our loads to warehouses all over the country and keep the stores stocked full of things people don't really need.

But people like to buy things to make themselves more comfortable. And that's not always bad, I guess. It just seems that sometimes they get caught up in all that comfort.. and end up comfort-ing their lives away.. forgetting why they're alive in the first place. Maybe they never knew.

I think I've been influenced a lot by Sarah and Zack. I never used to be so pensive. (That's my new favorite word: pensive....)

Anyway.. It's fun to watch the trucks come join our little make shift truck stop. There are about 40 trucks now. I wonder how long we'll be here......?

st. louis

we drove through st. louis, missouri one night and stopped to see the arch. it was freezing cold. we parked right on the bank of the mississippi river. zack skipped some rocks along the river's surface. then he wrote sarah a love note in the sand. they ate dinner at a casino that had all-you-can-eat crab legs in the buffet.

our new truck

we got our new truck on december 15th 2007. at first it smelled like smoke, so we spent the whole day cleaning it and making it like home. zack and sarah bought sheets for the bed and a little rug for the floor. they scrubbed all the surfaces and zack made sure the windshield was cleaner than new.

mcdonalds or starbucks?

where do you think we are?



(clue: look closely at zack's cup..)

christmas and beyond

we spent christmas with sarah's family. only half the family was there (her dad, dave & debbie and their kids, and liz and chris and their kids) but it sure was a houseful! they had fun playing on and in the truck.

then we got to stay with peter and ginger (et al) in indiana. peter is sarah's second brother.

the kids immediately turned the truck into a fort. it was amazing. =)

cold

last night it was very cold.
this is a bucket of windshield washing fluid.
yes, that's ice.