Another night of turtle tracking, this time with a REAL LNT, meaning the both of us writing.

Turtle takes the wheel:

So this is it. Last night of funny towns, 400 mile drives, shitty foods, crappy hotels. I mean I don’t want to make FTTW feel like a blog, but fuck man, I crossed time zones, dealt with car accidents, broken parts, weird ass laws in weird ass states, loss of any kind of communication with anyone from FTTW except for Michele.

To the writers of FTTW - all I can say is you guys kept his going and I have to thank you all for getting my back and not giving the editors too much shit while I was away and unable to yell at you guys for missing deadlines. Actually, it was kinda nice to turn my mind off the site for a few hours and just make decisions about the site, questionable columns and new writers on the cell phone for about five minutes a day.

By the time most of you read this, I will be a Californian living in New York. Cause see, this is the last night on the road. I’ve been on the road a lot in my life, but never straight shot of isolation and hours to kill with nothing but the air blowing in my hair looking for the next Arby’s to stop at. Michele likes that shit so I usually buy something there then throw it away. I go into detail about how crappy this food is after taking one bite. Listening to her whimper about not having one of her favorite fast foods as I throw it away with the one sadistic pleasure I went out of my way to satisfy.

My god.

Arby’s is shit food.

A week ago, Michele said Late Night Typing is now a New York production.

That wasn’t exactly true.

And it's not exactly true now.

But in 330 miles it will be true.

Ill be back up to speed in about two days. Until then, Michele and I will be having some serious sex. -T

Michele paces:

By the time most of you read this, Turtle will be in NY. As I write, he's in a motel in some backwoods town called Brookville, PA, typing away his half of this post. He sets sail on I-80 tomorrow, headed for I-95, New York and Long Island. His new home.

I have to keep reminding myself of that. He's not coming for a vacation this time. He's coming home. Kinda cool, eh?

So if he's gonna tell you about his week, I'm gonna tell you about mine. Because I know he had to do all the work what with driving here and all, but damn if it wasn't stressful for me!

Really. Not only did I have to sit here every minute wondering where he was, if his car broke down, if he got abducted by corn children, if he made a wrong turn, if Large Marge got him, if he was lost, tired, hungry, turning back around to CA......but I had to do all this worrying (hey, it is very tiring and time consuming to worry all the time) while I was navigating Turtle's trip. Giving him directions, figuring out where he was going to stop and booking cheap motels for him in those cities, calling all of Nebraska and Iowa to find open service centers....for a time there I felt like I was his Chloe. Not that he was Jack. I mean, he's on his way here to settle down, he's not exactly out there tracking down a rogue president or saving the world from terrorists. Then again, Jack is good looking, smart, brave to the point of foolishness, fearless and never backs down from a challenge. So yea. Turtle is my Jack. I'm his Chloe. Minus the whole smart as fuck thing. That girl has got it going on. It's no wonder Turtle has this huge crush on her.

Where was I? Oh yea. My week.

Listen. When someone you love is traveling across the country on a wing and a prayer, it's natural to worry. The first few days and nights kind of sucked, especially that one night when my cell service went out. Again. I was driving in my car at 1am trying to help a lost Turtle get somewhere safe, trying to find an area around here where Verizon actually gives me more than half a bar, and I kept getting the "no service" thing and I'm in my car in the middle of the night yelling FUCK YOU VERIZON while imagining that Turtle was being held up by some Nebraska thugs. Do they even have thugs in Nebraska?

Once Turtle got into the groove of driving during the day and sleeping in a hotel - and not his car - at night, things got better. The days got shorter. The stress became less and less. We spent the nights on the phone watching Cash Cab together and talking about our plans for the future. Kinda nice.

I'm not going to bore you with the details of the rest of the week leading up to tonight. I'm not going to tell you how ridiculously, silly happy I was to finally have him in MY time zone. I'm not going to spend six paragraphs telling you about the anticipation, the anxiety, the nervousness, the stomach-jumping realization that my life, his life, my kids' lives, are about to have big changes. Good changes. God damn these butterflies, though.

The turtle is invading Long Island tomorrow. I'll probably never get him to saw "cawfee" instead of coffee, and he'll always be a Californian at heart, but I bet you all 20 bucks that I'll have him wearing a New York Islanders Jersey by the end of the hockey season. -M

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