Not only am I taking too long to write these things, but my headlines are also exceeding the space they set aside for that part of the blog, so here's the genuine headline for this installment (and, I think you know what happens from there):

“No more (micro) waves,” “Getting stoned with the Presidents,” and, “I’m freezing, but I’m horny!”

If you would be so kind as to close your calendar, remove your watch, and refrain from looking at anything with the current date on it, we can just pretend that I am current on this blog. In fact, if you can wrap your imagination around today being, oh, let’s say, October 27th, that would make me about as punctual as my buddy Bob Wilber on my web log (that’s where “blog” comes from).

During our stay in Indy at the shop, Jason was allowed to pick the car for us to finish the season in. Good thing for the Top Fuel guys that he didn't pick that dragster... good thing for MTS and Valvoline he picked a nice body!

All right then, let’s go back about a week (work with me, I know that it really is more like 2 ½, but it’s just us buddies here): To say that we did some driving on this leg of the trip would be an understatement (why do they call it “one leg” of the trip? I get that the “first leg” should signify the trip “there,” and the “second leg” denotes the trip “back,” but if we stay with the anatomical analogy, wouldn’t that make the destination whatever is between the “legs?” Sounds a little offensive to me, but I digress). From Maryland we headed back to the DSR shop in Brownsburg (let’s call it 474 miles) to spend a day with the crew. Everyone was a bit demoralized after losing in round one to the No. 16 qualifier (no disrespect at all to the Smiths, we just felt we should have been able to capitalize on qualifying No. 1), so I thought seeing my charming face would cheer all the guys right up, and boy did that work! In typical Beckman fashion, we arrived in Indy late Monday night and then departed REALLY late Tuesday night.

We did some soul-searching before we left Indy, trying to maximize our “vacation” time and not just be in a hurry to get home, as we so often are. We may have been subconsciously influenced by the fact that there was SO MUCH to do at the new house that another few days away would keep us from having to face the inevitable organizing that awaited. We decided that, even though the weather was turning cold, we would take the northern route and try our best to be good tourists, safe drivers, and amongst the leaders in family trips to state capitol buildings. The tricky part was trying to coordinate our driving time with the hours of operation of these destinations. If I was a State Legislator, I’d proclaim that all State House employees work midnight to 8 a.m., but I realize that might not be the most popular choice. So, we plotted our course on the map, used our little Ferdinand (get it... “Magellan’s” first name was Ferdinand... and we have a Magellan GPS unit), and used some “calculated guesswork” (there’s an oxymoron) before setting out. We even used the Blackberry to check weather reports in a few areas, as getting snowed in didn’t sound like too much fun.

Three hundred and sixteen miles later we were officially crossing Wisconsin’s State House off our list and feeling hungry for more. Our next stop would be the lovely town of Minneapolis, Minn., for another Capitol. That’s when I noticed a major problem: Seems as though the great State of Minnesota — land where my maternal grandfather was raised on a farm with his seven siblings — had decided to move its capital over to the sister city of St. Paul (which I believe is named after someone named Paul who played for the New Orleans football team). Sure, all you who are familiar with the facts are going to tell me that the capitol has NEVER been in Minneapolis (which means “City of Lakes,” as opposed to “Los Angeles,” which means, “City of Flakes”), but keep in mind that I’m the guy that still thinks he’s up to date with this blog! Nonetheless (which is a bizarre way to cram three words together), we kept our composure (as opposed to Mozart’s employers, who kept their composer... very clever!), enjoyed ourselves on one of our rare guided tours, and filed an anonymous complaint regarding the place being moved and us not receiving the memo. We also aren’t sure if that’s real gold on the statues and centerpiece on the roof, or if Rustoleum has a new product that just looks real. No matter, we’ll have our samples analyzed by the FBI soon (after they catch all the conspirators in the government plot for 9/11) and get back to you.

If I’m sounding more and more conspiratorial, I’m beginning to convince myself that the government has been dealing me a raw hand (that’s a weird metaphor) lately. For instance, us losing in round one of Richmond... c’mon, somebody from the CIA, wearing BVD’s and OP’s, must have removed some VHT in order to screw up our ET, or I’ll be an SOB! Okay, maybe we just had too much clutch in it, but there’s other events that will make you a believer: What are the chances that our front heater, our convection/microwave oven, AND our sewer hose (perhaps I shouldn’t mention “sewer” and “oven” in the same sentence) all would “take a dump” (again, maybe not the best use of wording in the same sentence with “sewer hose”) within two days of one another? Yep, seems the instant that the outside temperature went below 40, our front thermostat decided to take the rest of the year off. Even two trips to Walmart for a small, ceramic heater proved fruitless (not that fruit has anything to do with trying to heat the RV); the first one sucked the batteries dry and then seized, and the second, even smaller unit, still was too large a drain electrically to be able to use without the generator running. The Mighty W-Mart did provide me with the latest in sewer hose technology: 20’ of heavy-duty, 15-mil (I have no idea what that even means, but it sounds good) thick, quick-disconnect equipped (who the hell needs a sewer hose that disconnects quickly... I REALLY take my time maneuvering that “holder of evil” on and off!) super-duty poop chute. It’s so damn nice I still haven’t been able to bring myself to open up the package, but I digress, again. Being without a microwave isn’t necessarily the end of the world, but our RV has no oven, as it is part of the micro unit. So, unless you can cook it on the stove-top, you eat it cold. Our temporary solution to that was to hit up the local Best Buy and fork (another clever metaphor) over some cold (okay, Jack, enough with the word games!) cash for a cheapie microwave unit to get us by.

After all of this, we gathered up our possessions, looked over our shoulders for unmarked cars, glanced skyward for signs of those black helicopters, and high-tailed it to our next capital city: North Dakota; 452 miles later, we were there. This was one of the trickier parts of our tour: In order to make it to Vegas without risking tardiness, we really had to hit BOTH of the Dakota capitols on this Friday. Though seeing two cities spread out by 210 miles wouldn’t be a Herculean feat (not to be confused with Herculean feet... totally different deal) by most folk’s standards, consider that we have to park the RV at the nearest Walmart, unload the PT to take to the State Houses, reload, and tow down the road to the next destination, which eats up lots of time. Okay, I suppose I should be entirely forthcoming and mention that we’re not exactly up at the “crack of dawn.”

If you live in North Dakota, please skip this paragraph... (Are they all gone? Okay, here we go:) That Capitol sucks! Not quite as bad as the one in New Mexico (if you live in NM, kindly disregard the previous sentence), and maybe a push with the one in Honolulu (you Hawaiians shouldn’t be offended, the Queen’s castle is just dandy, and you have great surf), this building was erected during the Great Depression (boy, there’s an oxymoron!) and looks like a typical, old office building. It reminds me of those two old man characters from the Muppets who were always heckling from the balcony of the show’s theatre: 75 years old... and nasty! Anyway, we need to welcome back our North Dakota readers and move on.

After thoroughly enjoying the beautiful sights in Bismarck, we headed on down towards South Dakota to see Pierre. No, Pierre isn’t a French pawnbroker who sells heaters and microwaves, that is the name of the capital city. Quite fortuitously for us, this Capitol is open 365 days a year, and is open ’til 7p.m. and later... just my style! It was also interesting to me how different the security is at the various State Houses. Jersey wanted to do a body-cavity search (not really, I just volunteered) and you had to be escorted (by a building guide, not some cheap call-girl) the entire time. South Dakota basically was a “serve-yourself” event, with one guard doing random patrols. If you live in South Dakota, please continue to read this paragraph, and my apologies to your cousins from the north: Your Capitol rocks! Nice building, nice architecture, nice interior, nice grounds, nice job! The difference between the two Dakotas really was similar to the opening lines from A Tale of Two Cities (you’ll have to look it up; my fingers are starting to get sore).

One of the common themes of this trip was wheel-time, those countless hours spent mesmerized by the road, freeing up your mind to reminisce, ponder, philosophize, and stare at the bugs stuck to the windshield. One particular night I found it startling that I now am 43. Quite literally, it seems as though the last 17 years have just flown by, providing sometimes little more than photos to catalog what should be hundreds of thousands of memories. I thought back to grade school and the following academic years, and they seem like someone else’s life to me. I thought of my early years of racing, which SHOULD be only eight or nine years ago, yet, hard as it is for me to believe, have passed by more than two decades. What the hell happened? Geez, were the adults exactly “on the money” when they told us kids how fast the time would go!

You know, I just re-read my last paragraph and wondered why I used “17” years, and it just hit like a ton of bricks: That is how long ago my mother died, and I suppose that hit me harder than I could ever have imagined. I think sometimes we “tune out” to some extent in order to deal with the loss of loved ones, and, though it mitigates the hurt, it also dulls the present to some extent. See what being on the road too long can do to your senses? Okay, I’m back, and I’ll leave the major pondering to the likes of Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates (not to be confused with Larry, Mo, and Curly OR Emerson, Lake, and Powell).

Once we completed our climactic “Capitol Tour ’09,” we needed some sort of fix to keep from withdrawals, and there’s no one that says, “Hey, we’re getting high up here,” like George, Tom, Ted, and Abraham (not to be confused with John, Paul, George, and Ringo, OR Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Laura. Oops, substitute “John” for “Laura” if you weren’t a soap opera fan). I hadn’t been to Mt. Rushmore since I was about 3 or 4 (which, according to my perception is really only about 23 years ago), and I was amazed at how little our four Presidents had aged in that time. Sure, Abe’s beard is getting a little long, and Teddy could use some contemporary Oakleys, but this sight is an absolute must in your tourist travels.

Being as that we had begun this Saturday at a decent hour, we were able to continue down the road in the PT and partake of another significant landmark: Crazy Horse. This unfinished mountain carving is more than 60 years old and still a long way from finished, but it is impressive. We’ll check back in another 20 or so and see how much it has progressed.

While heading back towards the RV, which we left in Rapid City in the Black Hills, we found we still had ample sunlight and a decent balance on our American Express, so we took Jason through Bear Town USA, a stay-in-your-car ride through various animal habitations. We saw wolves, bears, mountain lions, rams (not the football players from St. Louis), and poop from a White Buffalo (not to be confused with white Buffalo poop). It was very cool (the tour, not the poop).

We packed up that evening and headed west... and south. It poured down rain, yet we still made it pretty far into Wyoming before it was time to stop for the night. Apparently we found the only rest stop that doesn’t want tired motorists to sleep there, but we did anyway as the next stop was too far for my tired eyes to make. It got into the 20s that night, and the front of the motorhome was cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey. Lest you think that saying is a sophomoric attempt at gonad humor, it actually refers to a device (known as a “monkey”) installed on the deck of old wooden warships to hold cannon balls. When the temperature was extremely cold, the brass would contract more than the steel of the cannon balls, and they would roll off. What a great explanation of that phrase’s origin, but it still could be more hyperbole than fact! Fortunately, the cranky caretaker knocked on the door bright and early the next morning to tell us that we couldn’t sleep there and we had to go. Funny, we already had slept there, and why did we then have to leave? The part he said that did make me get up, suit up, and start up was that the coming snow storm was threatening road closures, and we’d better get over to I-25 post haste if we didn’t want to be stuck. Good enough for me!

Never ones to overlook experience as a guide, we always learn from our past mistakes and do our best not to repeat them. Having already been to the Cheyenne capitol two times due to either an innocent screw-up on our part, a warp in the space-time continuum, or another government conspiracy, we weren’t fooled this time and just kept on trucking... and honking. Yeah, there’s an interesting story around that “horny” tag on the title:

Winding through the Wyoming mountains is a breathtaking experience... when there’s enough visibility. We were getting a little concerned as the snow began to fall in the higher elevations, as we still had more climbing to do, and the forecast wasn’t exactly “crystal clear” (and you can use both meanings of that phrase). Suddenly the horns went off, and, since I usually drive with no hands on the wheel, it couldn’t have been caused by me. Just as suddenly the noise stopped, and we chuckled a bit and drove on. Horns on... off... on... off... on... off — that’s pretty much the best explanation I can provide of what clearly was a CIA/FBI co-conspiracy to piss off everyone driving within a mile of us. Fortunately there weren’t many hardy enough to travel on this day, but those air horns can be plenty annoying, especially when they continually blare for 45 seconds. At the next pull-out we stopped to check out the problem. The air ran out in the reservoir tank before I could troubleshoot the problem, and I didn’t want to take the steering wheel apart, as it contains all the cruise and wiper controls and I didn’t want to cause any other problems. Armed with my $19.95 Walmart toolkit, it didn’t take long for me to disconnect the power wire from the circuit breaker inside the generator control panel. Did I mention that it was outside, it was snowing, and I was freezing my “monkey” off? I couldn’t wait to get back into the RV and feel the warmth of the... oh, the heater’s broken... I forgot! (Going down the road we did have the dash heat and were able to run the generator, use the rear roof heater, and get some comfort up front, so it wasn’t too bad).

Aside from some of these small issues, the trip was a breeze. We even took our little man to a Chuck E. Cheese (not to be confused with Craze E. Horse) so he could unwind and enjoy some kid time. He was such a trooper most of the trip that we wanted to reward him. Further down the road in Utah, Fillmore to be exact, we detoured over to see the original Utah Territorial Capitol. Brigham Young (not to be confused with 49ers QB Steve Young) had some grandiose designs for his land, which was originally going to be called “Deseret” (not to be confused with the Neil Diamond song, “Desiree.” Did you know that the Mormons even had their own alphabet, consisting of 38 letters in its final form?).

By the time we rolled into Vegas, we had done enough sightseeing to last us until next year. Some days we drove less than 200 miles and spent lots of time just walking around. Other days it was 700-plus tics of the odometer and all I saw were white lines and asphalt. With a couple of days until the Vegas race begins, we have some repair work to do, some poker to play (for charity), some planes to see, and.. .heck, that would spoil the next blog.

Stay tuned!