The truth was, this undertaking could have been even more daunting. Of course, at the time I was thinking "if" we got to Maine. Giving us their time and energy in this way was amazingly generous, and I planned to thank them four or five thousand times before we got to Maine. Some were friends others were readers of my novels whom I'd met only once or twice.
Our group included nine other people that volunteered for the trip, which was pretty remarkable. They were all rescue dogs, a small portion of the thousands that we have saved from the misery of the Los Angeles shelter system, but this trip was likely to make new demands on their endurance. The animals were the passengers we were transporting our dogs, all twenty-five of them, to our-and their-new home. In our case, three gas-fueled RV engines were our power source. But if the pioneers hadn't had the benefit of their horses, when we talk about going out west today, we'd mean Cleveland. They probably also provided food, but I'd just as soon not go there. Their animals represented the transportation itself the horsepower behind the vehicles was alive and breathing. Their animals were crucial to their trip, but ours were the very reason for our journey.
One thing we shared with our predecessors was the presence of plenty of animals. One of our group said that we actually had more computer power on board than astronaut Alan Shepard did when he first went into space, but I have no idea if that's true. Their communications went as far as their voices could carry we were loaded down with cell phones, BlackBerries, and iPads. Not that we were without our refreshment challenges for instance, we'd have to use a manual corkscrew for the wine. They had limited rations we had refrigerators full of food, and stoves and microwaves with which to cook it. They were going through uncharted territory we'd MapQuested the route and had three GPSs to make it foolproof. Of course, we didn't have many of the difficulties that the early pioneers had to endure. After all, this is the twenty-first century. We were eleven mostly intrepid travelers, closing the traditional exploration circle by heading east from Southern California to Maine. That's how I knew I was in for an ordeal. Someone once said that the difference between an ordeal and an adventure is attitude. We were going on a journey that I expected would end up somewhere between that of Lewis and Clark and that of the Donner Party.
0 kommentar(er)
