Day 5

Marysville. MI

The Highway in Michigan

Paw Paw, MI

North Liberty, IA

I woke up this morning at 7:30 and I realized that this was the last day; the last day of driving. If we didn’t make it to Montreal today, we would miss our Great Aunt’s funeral. And the thought of missing the funeral brought tears to my eyes. I had been holding my sadness in during the trip, just focusing on driving east, but now as I rolled out of bed and got dressed, I realized that it was likely that Luc and I weren’t going to make it, that after her death, we wouldn’t be able to mourn her with our family around us – and that idea I just couldn’t bear; I missed her so much. I thought about the possibility of not making it to Montreal in time as I packed the tent up. When the tent was all rolled up, I decided that I needed to stop thinking about that terrible possibility and just focus on the drive, as I had been able to do for the rest of the trip.

I packed the tent in the car and Luc and I drove to get breakfast at the Denny’s in Cedar Rapids, both ordering a Harvest Oatmeal Breakfast totaling out to $12. A half hour into the day’s driving at 8:30, the car started sputtering and Luc had to pull off to the side of the highway near North Liberty, Iowa. He looked at the gas meter and realized we were completely out of gas. We had just filled up the tank and shouldn’t have been out of gas, so we hadn’t checked our gas when we got in the car this morning – someone must have stolen our gas while we were sleeping. I wanted to scream – now our chances of getting to Montreal on time were even less; I could already imagine the looks on my family’s faces when they realized we wouldn’t be there for the funeral. A tear escaped my eyes and began to roll down my cheek, but I wiped it away and set my mind to fixing the problem as quickly as possible.

After looking at the GPS on Luc’s phone, we realized that there was a gas station only 100 meters away called the Kum & Go Gas Station. The two of us walked all the way down to the gas station – in the frigid air with clothes that weren’t warm enough to keep us comfortable – buy a plastic two-gallon gas container for $12 as well as the gas to fill it and walk back to the car. We dumped the gas into the tank and tried to start the Chevy. The car rumbled to life, and we drove it back down to the gas station. We filled it up with the total coming down to $56.

Frustrated that we had now lost an hour of our time to drive for the day as well as valuable money, I tried to force myself to think as positively as possible – at least we were back on the road again, driving down the highway. I looked out the window at the gorgeous trees lining the highway and the juxtaposition of the hard, grey concrete with what looked like a thriving forest next to it; something as man-made as it gets, and something so full with natural beauty that it takes your breath away.

After driving for hours, we stopped in Paw Paw Missouri to get gas and lunch. We bought gas at the Paw Paw BP for $56 and stopped at the Subway for two $5 foot longs – one to split for lunch, and one to split for dinner. We got back on the road again, and I realized there was no way we were going to make it. It was already 4:30 and we still had 723 more miles to drive. I couldn't have been more upset. I looked out the window at a broken down farmhouse along the road. Its windows were cracked and its paint had clearly seen better days – it was peeling badly and its color had faded to a dull yellow, no longer the bright yellow it had once been. The house’s shingles were at odd angles, letting the elements destroy whatever was left of the roof. The rain would eventually destroy what was left inside of the house and what had once been something to take pride in would have become a terribly destroyed building that only made the observer feel some sort of sadness. This house had become empty and unimportant, because for some reason, the people who owned it had stopped caring, they had left it, and now it was rotting away. As we drove by it, I turned my head so I could watch the house disappear into the distance as we sped across the highway. I watched it become a toy house, and then a speck, and then nothing at all.

At the end of the day, we were in Marysville, Michigan, still nine and a half hours away from Montreal. We booked a room at the Motel Six for $64. Defeated, I trudged up to our room. I lay down on the bed, still in my clothes and cried. I cried for the Great Aunt I had lost and the funeral I would miss and the drive I had gone through only to fail miserably. I cried mostly for my absolute and total failure. And then I wiped the tears off my face, got under the covers and fell asleep exhausted, knowing that I had failed myself, had failed my family, and once again my hopes had been crushed. And maybe I thought, as my thoughts drifted off into nothingness, I would never hope again.