Go West! Day 1: goodbyes and thunderstorms

Day 1: Boston, MA to Ann Arbor, MI
Mileage: about 800 miles

We had intended to leave early in the morning to get a head start and arrive in Michigan before sunset. But last minute preparations took the whole morning. My brother and Anh-Hoa’s sister and brother-in-law were at our house to help us pack. We did not bring much, just a change of clothes, some books. We had not really shipped much to California either, having decided to leave almost everything we had in Boston. We were to start afresh in California, beginning not just a new chapter but, as Anh-Hoa’s brother said, a whole new book.

We also packed two tents for 4 people. A few days prior we had decided to invite two our nephews, Tai and Qui, to join us on this trip. It was summer and they had some free time. Like us, they had never done any cross-country traveling before. The plan was to pick up Tai in Quincy, MA and head to Qui’s place at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. As we intended to cover lots of miles each day, having some extra drivers were extremely helpful.

Four people in a tiny BMW 128i convertible required judicious packing. The tiny trunk of the 128i was apparently designed to fit at most a backpack for a trip around town, not a 4000-mile-plus trip across this vast country in thunderstorms, desert heat, freezing mountain weather. Living so close to the hospital, I had barely put in any mile on the car in the past two years. This trip will increase the mileage on the car by more than fifty percent. Before the trip, one of Anh-Hoa’s sisters told us that we would destroy this car. “Rent a car!” she advised us, feeling sorry for our stupidity in driving an almost brand-new car cross country. But what was a car for if not for driving? We didn’t buy this car to pamper it. We bought it to drive it. And if there were any problem with the car on this trip, we would still have the warranty and BMW road-side assistance! Well, our sister’s advice probably had some validity–throughout this trip, the only BMWs I saw were GS motorcycles tackling the national parks and Southwestern desert dirt roads.

My father didn’t worry about the car but fretted about our safety. To him, American roads were full of robbers and thieves lurking from behind the bushes to rob innocent people. OK, he didn’t really think that, but he was still full of worries. “Pick a nice hotel to stay in,” he advised. “Don’t stay at shady motels.” Good advice. I didn’t quite tell him about our plan to camp along the way even though I felt that camping was probably much safer and more hygiene than staying in cheap motels.

We said goodbye to our neighbors, Liza, Si, and Bannon.

We finally locked up the house, its future uncertain in this crappy real estate market, around 11 a.m. and stopped by a Star Market to say goodbye to Mo, Simone, and Victor. We would definitely miss them so much as our years in Boston have been greatly enriched by knowing them. After a short drive to Quincy to pick up Tai, we jumped on Interstate 93 then I-90 to leave Massachusetts.

Tai recently finished his Master’s program at Boston University and jumped on the opportunity to join this cross-country trip. His mother, who is Anh-Hoa’s older sister, was probably as worried as my Dad about all the lurking roadside dangers but managed to appear calm when we said goodbye.

We didn’t take any photo because there wasn’t anything interesting. Anh-Hoa and I had taken the same road last year during our trip to Niagara Falls. Somewhere upstate New York, it started to rain on and off. Then we entered a ferocious thunderstorm. Anh-Hoa was driving and suddenly the rain poured down so thickly that visibility was reduced to only a few feet. We struggled to avoid cars that had stopped on the side of the road. After about ten minutes, we exited the thunderstorm, happy that the first day of the trip didn’t end up disastrous.

We followed the southern edge of Lake Eerie to enter Pennsylvania, then Ohio, before turning north to Ann Arbor. We arrived on the campus of the University of Michigan past four o’clock in the morning. Dead tired, we passed out on the floor of Qui’s apartment.

Qui has just finished his first year at the Ph.D. program in Biostatistics at the University of Michigan. He’s taking a break of his summer research to join our expedition. Qui’s mother, who is the older sister of both Tai’s mother and Anh-Hoa, is another worrier.

Future reports will have less text and more photos, I promise.