Day 18 (July 21): The Price Is Right...or is it?

Total Driving Distance: 563.3 miles (trip total: 4,981.4 miles)

States Traveled To: California, Arizona

Main Activity: The Price Is Right, Driving

This was the big day. The only day on the trip that we actually had something scheduled to do. The only day of the trip that we actually had to be somewhere at a certain time doing something. We had to be at CBS Studios in Hollywood at 9am to be in the audience for a taping of The Price Is Right.

We woke up at 7:15 to make sure we wouldnt be late. Liz had planned her outfit out the night before. She was wearing a bright green shirt (to attract attention in the audience) with black shorts and a BC sweatshirt (because they often call up college students). I was wearing my Walk for Darfur shirt and my BC sweatshirt as well. One of us had to be called out of the audience.

We drove to Hollywood, not even stopping to get breakfast. We parked at a grocery store and walked to CBS Studios. After about ten minutes of walking, Liz said that she had forgotten her wallet and thought she might need her ID card to get in. I told her to wait at the Studio gates (we were running late) and I would run back to the car to get her wallet.

When I got back to the car, I couldnt find her wallet. It wasnt in her purse or around the front of the car. I started looking through the back of the car when my phone rang. It was Liz.

"I cant find your wallet. It's not in your purse."

"Oh. I dont know where it is. Well I was calling to tell you that you dont have to run."

"Were we too late?"

"No. There is no taping today. The company that issues the tickets messed up. The lady from public relations said that they arent taping all this week. She's going to call the ticket company, find out what happened, then she said that she is going to get us tickets to another show today."

"Oh. Damn."

Needless to say, I did not run back to the Studio. I did find Liz's wallet (in a Universal Studios bag) and met up with her in front of CBS Studios. There were about eight other people there who also had phony tickets to the showing. Apparently one family had driven from Indiana solely for The Price Is Right.

"Hey, at least we arent wearing shirts that say 'HI DREW' or 'EXCITED TO BE ON THE PRICE IS RIGHT'," I told Liz. We had decided to wait for the PR lady to come back out and see what she said. "Maybe we'll get something free, like a CBS hat or something." "Yeah, a CBS hat would be awesome," Liz said with some not-so-subtle sarcasm.

When the PR lady eventually came out, I told Liz to start crying or get up and scream "This is the worst birthday ever" to get us something free, but she wouldnt. The PR lady told us that she was really sorry and that the ticket company apologized as well. She then said that the only taping that she could get tickets for that day was a Hannah Montana show. Shockingly, no one asked her for those tickets. We felt bad for the Indiana people, but the PR lady sat down with them and told them about all the stuff there was to do in Hollywood.

Depressed and disappointed, we walked across the street to a small Jewish cafe advertising the World's Best Bagel. Hopefully that would cheer us up.

It was a pretty good bagel. The world's best? Possibly. But it did cheer us up and gave us a chance to plan out what we wanted to do. It came down to two choices: spend a few more hours in LA and maybe hit the beach again or getting a head start on our 2,200-mile trip back to Atlanta. In the end, we decided that we were satisfied with what we had seen in LA and didnt feel the need to stay any longer. So we hit the road.

Before we went to sleep the night before, we had sat down at the kitchen table with Nhi and laid out a map. There were several ways we could get home. We could take I-10 down to Phoenix and then take either I-17 up through Sedona to Flagstaff and get on I-40 or continue taking 10 to Tuscon, where we could stay the night with Liz's uncle, and then take I-20 through Dallas/Ft. Worth all the way to Atlanta. Our other option (and the one I had originally planned) was to drive up to Barstow and get on I-40 which would take us all the way to Memphis. We were having trouble deciding when Nhi said that we would probably regret going through Phoenix. If we werent planning on doing much sightseeing on the way home, 40 was the fastest way to go. That is how we found ourselves driving two hours up to Barstow on that extremely hot Tuesday afternoon.

Since South Dakota, every time I talked to my dad, his first question was always, "Did you get the oil changed yet?" I kept telling him that we could wait until we had driven 4,000 miles. When we pulled into Barstow, we were looking at about 4,600 miles that we had driven in two and a half weeks, with 2,100 miles to go. So at long last, we decided to stop and get the oil changed.

After Mike at Mike's Auto Shop told us that he was too busy to change our oil (we didnt see anyone else around), we drove over to Walmart where they said they could have it done in an hour. This was great for us because it gave us a chance to buy a few groceries and stop for a bite to eat at the McDonald's inside the Walmart. I also had a chance to buy something I'd been looking for since Arizona, a cowboy hat. I put it on and we ate Chicken Nuggets, laughing at the Kids Meal panda that reminded us of our friend Meng.

Once the oil was changed, we ran to the car (it was 105 outside), loaded up the groceries, plugged in the GPS, and hit the road. Two minutes later I unplugged the GPS because we were now on I-40 and would be on that road for another 1,700 miles.

So we drove. and drove. and drove.

A cool thing about I-40 is that it the same route as Route 66 used to be. Almost every time we pulled over at a gas station or bathroom (from LA to Oklahoma City), there was Route 66-related stuff.

We saw broken-down buildings that used to be thriving businesses:

And we saw cheesy new businesses that always had a Route 66 gift shop (and they always had the same crap):

The road itself was not that exciting:

I was pretty tired by the time we reached Seligman, "the birthplace of Route 66," so we found a KOA in our handy KOA guide to stay for the night. The nearest one was two and a half hours away, in Holbrook, AZ, right outside Petrified Forest National Park.

We made it to Holbrook around 8 or 9 at night. We made dinner on the picnic table outside the van, then ate it in the back of the car while watching the second-to-last episode of Freaks and Geeks. Then we showered and went to sleep.

We drove a little over 550 miles that day. The only thing I could think about as we fell asleep was that we still had 1,600 miles between us and Atlanta.