K9

When I'm on a long drive my number one goal is to make it unmemorable. I'm all for excitement, just not while I'm driving on the freeway. If I could go this whole road trip without one second of freeway driving making it to my long term memory I'd consider that a raving success. Unfortunately I failed to achieve that goal today on my drive from Dallas to Albuquerque.

The freeway west of Dallas is wide open and in the middle of nowhere, like the majority of freeways I've been driving on. Unlike most of the freeways I've been driving on though, this one would occasionally go through some random small town and have it's speed limit absurdly reduced. It was in one of those small towns with an absurdly low speed limit that I got pulled over for "speeding."

It's worth mentioning that I played darts last night in Dallas. The fact that I won the game of cricket isn't relevant so I won't mention it, but the fact that I had to checkout the darts with my driver's license is. When I eventually left the bar my friend Casey was still playing, so I didn't think to go turn the darts back in and get my license back. In fact I didn't even realize that my license wasn't in my wallet until today when I was about three hours outside of Dallas. No big deal though, I thought, as long as I don't get pulled over today.

The police officer explained that the speed limit in the area is reduced to 35, so my excessive speed of 39 was the reason he pulled me over. That seemed strange though, since at 39 mph I was one of the slowest cars on the road. In fact I distinctly remember a semi-truck passing me when I noticed the squad car behind me, which led me to believe that there was no possible way he'd pull me over for my speed.

He didn't make a big deal out of taking my passport instead of my driver's license, and explained that he'd just let me off with a warning. He asked me to join him in his squad car while he wrote me up for my warning. I wasn't sure what to make of sitting in the front seat of his squad car while he wrote me up. He asked me for details about where I was going and where I was coming from, and I'm sure my story of driving from New York to Seattle by way of Dallas in a rental car from New Jersey with plates from Massachusetts wasn't what he was expecting.

He explained that the highway we were on was used for drug smuggling and that part of his job was to look for smugglers. He asked me if I had any drugs, weapons, or large quantities of cash in my vehicle. I told him I did not. Then he asked me if I would mind if he looked around in the car. I really wasn't sure what to make of that question. First and foremost, I certainly didn't want him to search my car. I was in the middle of a 12+ hour drive and the last thing I wanted was to be delayed while a law enforcement officer rifled through my carefully packed personal belongings. The aspect of that question I had trouble making sense of was what the consequences of my response would be. If I said yes, then I figured he would search my car with my consent. If I said no, then I figured he would search my car without my consent. I decided that if he was going to search my car it was going to have to be without my consent, and told him as much.

I was expecting his demeanor to turn aggressive in an attempt to get consent out of me, but he took it surprisingly well. Turns out that's because, as I suspected, it really didn't matter what I said. He cheerfully explained that he'd just have a drug sniffing dog do a quick check of the exterior of my car, and if the dog didn't signal anything that I'd be on my way. If the dog did signal though, he'd have "probable cause" (a term he used multiple times) to search my car without my consent. He asked me to take Grizzly out of the car and wait with him over in the shade while the K9 did the search. I went to the car and retrieved my cell phone, a bottle of water, and Grizzly.

The dog did the search and, to everybody's amazement I'm sure, it signaled. I have no idea what it even means that the dog "signaled," but I have a strange feeling my ignorance isn't something that they minded. Two officers asked me for my keys and a third told me that Grizzly and I could wait in the back of one of the squad cars since it was over 100 degrees out. While there I called my dad, which was the reason that I had retrieved my cell phone. I explained the situation, and my dad's basic response was that the cops sounded like douchebags and that they'd likely leave me alone once they realized that I didn't have anything of interest in my car.

When I was in Iraq I spent a couple of months working at a vehicle checkpoint (VCP). I'm not an expert on vehicle searches, but I've done a few and can at least notice when the're being done completely incorrectly. First thing that struck me was that they had obtained "probable cause" because their drug sniffing dog had "signaled," and yet the dog wasn't present for the actual search. Call me unorthodox, but if a dog signaled at something in a vehicle that I was searching, I'd want the dog to help me find what it was signaling at. Second thing I noticed was that the dog had apparently "signaled" at the back seat behind the driver's seat, but the officers were going through my dirty underwear in the trunk was well as the front passenger's seat on the complete other side of the vehicle. The third thing I noticed, which was by far the biggest blunder on their part, was that during this entire process they never searched my person. Even when, after he had told me that he planed to search my car for drugs, I went to the car and put things in my pockets (my cell phone and the water bottle) I wasn't as much as patted down.

Eventually they concluded the search and told me that I was free to go. I was glad I didn't end up with a BS ticket for doing four over the speed limit, but I was still pretty disturbed about the entire situation. These police officers had just pulled over an innocent person and performed an invasive search without consent or a warrant, all because they got "probable cause" from their dog. I'm really curious, how often does the dog not signal? For that matter, did the dog even signal? From my perspective, the dog's signal seemed to be a foregone conclusion before the dog had even arrived. Bringing out the dog seemed like it was just a minor formality for the sake of bypassing that pesky fourth amendment of the constitution. I really wonder how often they say, "well the dog didn't signal so we don't have 'probable cause,' I guess you can just leave!" I have a strange feeling the number of times that has happened is approximately 0, and that the police dog "signal" rate is approximately 100%, making the entire process a farce. In reality I probably got pulled over for being a young (and smart and handsome) guy driving through a small town in Texas with east coast license plates.

Nashville

Nashville was interesting in that it was the first stop on my road trip where I had an entire day to myself. I wasn't really sure what to do. I realized that I had put a lot of time and effort into planning the stops on my road trip but hadn't even considered what I would do at those stops. I just assumed that I'd get there and kinda figure it out. So there we were, grizzly and I, figuring it out.

"Damn hot" was a little ambitious

First I decided to investigate something called "hot chicken." Apparently it's a local Nashville thing which is similar to buffalo chicken, only different. I went to a place called Hattie B's Hot Chicken and ordered the hottest hot chicken on the hot chicken menu, or at least I tried to. I ordered the "damn hot" chicken, and in retrospect I'm glad I didn't see that there was one level hotter, a level called "shut the cluck up." The damn hot was apparently made with seasoning that contains ghost peppers and caused me to break out into a nice sweat while eating it. While I was sitting there sweating profusely a nice couple sat down at the table and chatted with me. I told them I had come from New York and they said something along the lines of, "I bet strangers don't just come up and talk with you when you're in New York City!" They were trying to make some kind of statement about southern hospitality so I just smiled and nodded, but in reality strangers would talk to me all the time in New York. More than I wanted, even. I think it was a combination of them holding the misconception that everybody in New York is cold and aloof and also not fully realizing that strangers can come up and talk to people for reasons other than warm hospitality. Something they would learn quickly if they ever visited the city, I'm sure.

Grizzly demanding to be bathed

After drying the sweat off of myself I decided that Grizzly had been spending too much time in the car and hotel rooms so I found a nearby dog park to take him to. The park was huge but it didn't take long for grizzly to find the only small patch of mud in the whole park and lay himself down in it. I didn't really bring any dog cleaning supplies with me either, so when I got back to the hotel room I tried to give him a bath in the shower. It quickly devolved into me just taking a shower with grizzly, almost exactly as depicted in this family guy clip. Except that in the clip the guys dog isn't so short that he has to hold him up to the shower head to rinse him.

For dinner I stopped over at a place called Peg leg Porker, which was coincidentally in the middle of having TV show filmed there. Some lucky people got interviewed while eating but I guess I didn't make the cut. I ate my ribs on my own while jealously watching other people eat with television cameras and boom mics in their faces. Maybe I'll be in the background in one of the shots though, I can only hope. The ribs were awesome too, and I think it was the first time I've had "dry" ribs. "Dry" just means that the ribs have a thick crust of seasoning instead of barbecue sauce, and you get to add your own sauce while you're eating them. At least that's what it means in my case, as I slathered them with a thick coating of hot sauce before ingestion. You can probably tell from my pictures that I'm not all that creative about picking sides. In my defense, both times I ordered I asked the employee what they recommended for the sides and both times they said beans and mac and cheese. Totally not my fault!

Exhaustion

In the doggy play area at the boarding facility

I picked up Grizzly from the dog boarding facility and he was super excited to see me. I loaded him up in the car and we headed out toward Indianapolis. Once on the road, I had a sudden realization of how much sleep I had missed over the last few nights. At Kevin's place I slept on a couch and didn't sleep more than about 5 hours each night. At the cabin in Shawano I slept on a pull out in the living room near the kitchen. That meant that each night I was the last person to go to sleep and the first person to wake up; I ended up sleeping about 4 hours each night. If it takes seven hours of sleep for me to be fully rested, then on my eight hour drive from Shawano to Indianapolis I was ten hours behind on my sleep. And boy did I notice. I ended up drinking two cups of coffee, a large diet coke, and two monster energy drinks to keep myself awake. I figured that tachycardia and anxiety are safer than exhaustion and drowsiness when I'm behind the wheel. When I got to the hotel in Indianapolis I took two benadryl and slept for about thirteen hours. From now on I'm going to make a point of being rested before my long drives.

The 4th

In my uncle's Cessna

I had an eventful independence day. It started with a quick flight in my uncle Rob's new Cessna. He took me and my grandma around he lake and over the cabin. However, much to my chagrin, the flight was strictly loop and barrel-roll free. I did manage to get a decent selfie out of it though.

After our flight it was off to the Shawano gun club for some shooting. My firearms are all still back in California, lonely and early awaiting my return, but luckily my uncles came well prepared. In all I think I ended up shooting three AR-15s, two chambered for .308 and one .223, and two ruger 10/22s. In addition to a standard paper target range, the Shawano gun club also has a steel silhouette range. There's something satisfying about the sound of a bullet striking a steel target that you just don't get out of paper target shooting.

My uncle's .308 AR-15

Then we hit up the fireworks store. Oh, the fireworks store. I've always known that California got the short end of the stick when it came to legal fireworks, but I had no idea to what extent. On the 4th of July in California, you can basically choose between fountains and snakes for your home fireworks display. In Wisconsin you can, and should, walk into a fireworks store and walk out with several dynamite sticks worth of straight up explosives. I hypothesize that if a Wisconsin fireworks store were suddenly teleported to California, everybody in it would go to prison for at least a decade. We grabbed a few mortars (the classic shooting/exploding type), and I grabbed a smattering of everything else that's illegal in California.

A couple of firecrackers I picked up

It turns out that our cabin neighbor has an unhealthy obsession with fireworks shows. When we got back with our meager collection of small, yet thoroughly California-illegal fireworks, we noticed him unloading cases of beer from a van to a boat. But upon closer inspection they weren't cases of beer at all, they were cases of mortar fireworks. Our neighbor had apparently rented a platform boat, bought an entire van-load of mortars that were the size of 30-racks, and even commissioned the construction of a wooden firework rack for holding everything neatly in place on the boat. Once we started our fireworks out on the dock we were completely overshadowed by our neighbors constant barrage of professional-strength firework mortars, which rained down a steady stream of debris on us. All in all though, between the bottle rockets, roman candles, firecrackers, and mortars, I think I got my fill of explosives for a while.

Leaving Chicago

Outdoor concert. With beer.

I worked all day so I didn't get a chance to do the architecture boat tour that I was looking forward to. Instead, when Kevin got back from his rotation he showed me around Millennium Park where we saw a bunch of strange head statues, a crazy looking amphitheater, and a large shinny coffee bean thing.

After the park we took an Uber to a burger place called Kuma's Corner, which is apparently Yelp's most reviewed spot in Chicago. I got a burger which contained, among other things, sliced pork tenderloin, jalapeno pineapple salsa, and habanero sauce. I couldn't fathom what that mix of ingredients would taste like but it turned out to be delicious. So delicious that I didn't even get a chance to take a picture for the blog, it was gone in a matter of (very messy) seconds. If you're ever there, make sure you also get the fried pickles. The food was great but I'm actually really surprised it's so popular because the ambiance seemed kind of...niche. The whole place is death metal themed, with blaring music, band posters, and the items on the menu named after metal bands. Which was fine with me, I'm just surprised that they've got such a large following with what seems like a pretty esoteric theme. Also Uber's seem to be much cheaper in Chicago. I didn't actually note the rates to compare them to New York, but I was really surprised that we rode for almost ten minutes and ended up with a fare of around $5.

Jen and Grizzly

This morning I awoke from my burger coma, cranked out a bit more work on my provisional patent applicaion, and hit the road toward Shawano, Wisconsin. Along the way I picked up my sister Jennifer, who had the privilege of being sandwiched between a dog fur covered passenger seat and the source of the dog fur himself for a three hour drive. Unfortunately, due to some family cabin legislature, Grizzly is canem non grata at the cabin. So instead of the cabin I brought Grizzly to a doggy day care/boarding center a few miles away. I've never boarded Grizzly before so I wasn't really sure what to expect. They had a confusing menu of different package deals for how many walks and how much play time the dog will get, so I opted for the most expensive package called "The Ritz." Then I asked the receptionist if I could pay extra for even more walks and play time and successfully convinced her to upgrade grizzly to an unprecedented, "Double Ritz" package. The employees all seemed completely enamored with Grizzly so I assume he'll get plenty of attention.

A large, mostly controlled, fire in front of the cabin

Of course upon arrival to the cabin, I was greeted with severe disappointment that I didn't have Grizzly with me.

Pizza

From left to right: Pizza, Kevin, Beer

The drive from Cleveland to Chicago was seven hours but it felt like a breeze. I guess the fact that it only took half as long as yesterday's drive made it feel easy.

I met up with Kevin and we went out for some Chicago style deep dish pizza, which was amazing. Turns out it makes an excellent breakfast too; I'm eating the leftovers right now. New York pizza was great but I've always liked deep dish, and the one time I got Chicago style deep dish in New York it wasn't very good.

Grizzly in a smaller big city

I'm in Chicago until tomorrow but it turns out I won't be able to do much tourism today; I just found out that the pitch I submitted to MIT Bitcomp was selected as one of the first round winners. That means that they're going to release our pitch publicly so we need to crank out a provisional patent today in order to avoid "prior art" conflicts. So that's what I'll be doing today, so much for the architectural boat tour.

Navigation

Grizzly all seat belted in and ready to go

I just finished what was hopefully the longest drive of the summer. I planned my road trip so that all of my drives are under eight hours according to Google maps. Of course those estimates don't account for stops or traffic, but I figured my longest drive even after accounting for everything shouldn't be more than ten hours. Unfortunately my very first drive proved me wrong. After living car-less in Manhattan for the last ~10 months, I rented a car and got behind the wheel for the first time in quite a while. And drove for fourteen god-damn-mother-fucking hours straight.

The car I ended up with is a Nissan Altima. Which I wouldn't have thought of as a "full-size" car previously, but it ended up fitting everything pretty well. I also ended up getting grizzly a doggy seat belt, which turned out to be a great use of $4. One side clips into his harness and the other straight into the seat belt slot; now he can lean his head out the window while I'm driving and I don't have to worry that he'll make a jump for it. My cellphone is getting old since I'm waiting to get to Microsoft to get a Windows phone, so I decided to get a Garmin to do my navigating. Funny thing is that apparently Garmin hasn't figured out how to detect or avoid traffic yet. I found that out the hard way when I ended up stuck behind a fatal car accident for four hours.

This is Waze telling me to get comfortable

While I was stuck in traffic I decided to download the Waze app to see
what the heck was going on. Something I apparently should have done beforehand, since there wasn't much it could do for me at that point. Turns out that at around 3pm I was stuck behind 13 miles of traffic that had been stopped due to an accident that happened at 1pm.

After a couple of hours of sitting at a dead stop traffic started moving again but it was stop and go, moving around 5 mph. Slow enough to not make any real progress but just fast enough that I couldn't stop and get out of the car or use my phone. Eventually I decided to ask Waze to navigate for me to see if it could find a path around the traffic. Unfortunately, as good at Waze is at reporting traffic, it isn't actually that good at navigating around it. It just told me to get back on the highway, which was closed. The whole reason I was off the highway was because I was being detoured. Apparently Waze just noticed that there were no cars on the highway but didn't realize why, and attempted to navigate me back onto it. Instead I looked around on my GPS and found a street parallel to the highway a little ways out and decided to make a break for it. As soon as I got to an intersection I broke away from the traffic and headed to the parallel street. Apparently I was the only person who thought of that idea, because the road was pretty much empty. It was a small, 35mph street but I was able to bypass a few

This was my view for a couple of hours

of miles of traffic with it.

Eventually, after what was possibly the most boring and painful drive through the entire state of Pennsylvania, I made it to Cleveland. Well, Willoughby to be exact. My destination was a Red Roof Inn, which I checked into at 1am (my GPS had initially estimated an 8:30pm arrival). I'm not sure what goes on in the greater Cleveland area, all I know is that their Red Roof Inns come equipped with what appears to be bullet-proof glass between the guests and the receptionist. I'm definitely not staying here any longer than I need to. Next I'll be off to Chicago to visit my good friend Kevin, who I haven't seen in a while since he's been away at Medical school.