No, that isn't a photo from the set of a Claritin commercial, that's actually a picture I took yesterday (Sunday) in... get this... Oklahoma. I know! But more on that, and my run-in with a tornado a few hours ago, in a little bit. Oh, and I'm trying something on this site I've never done before. Also, I don't want to link, because I'm on a laptop I'm not very comfortable with in a town that is too far away from home, so just stay with me! Oh, and the time zone of this post is Central!

I want to apologize for not putting up a post Saturday night. I said I would try and post a photo every night, but I ended up not doing it the first night! I underestimated the magnitude of 800 miles and we ended up showing up to Albuquerque almost two hours late. Don't worry, it didn't hurt us too much, actually it helped: we couldn't get our original room, so we got promoted to a two bedroom suite for free, haha. Showing up late is genius. And the wireless connection in our room was just horrible - would you believe me if I told you it was a 1Mbps connection? I know!

I don't really have any photos from our Day 1 trip. Why? Because it was through freaking Arizona and New Mexico! Nothing against those states, especially New Mexico, but they're worthless. New Mexico is a waste of space. We already love the old Mexico, why on earth would we want a new one? The only things I have to say about those two states are the speed limits. 75! Wow. I had no clue. That is an amazing idea. Put the speed limit high enough that people won't want to speed. I usually go 80 in LA, but I didn't feel comfortable going a lick of 75 most of this trip so far. Maybe it's the van we're driving in, or maybe it's the fact that we're going cross-country, but I felt so strange being forced to drive over 75. I say forced because I didn't want to be one of those rejects in the slow lane, behind big-rigs! I wanted to be the cool California guy with a Laker flag in the fast lane. But guess what, some big rigs tried to pass me on that damn I-40 freeway. Which is another thing I wanted to say, New Mexican big-riggers are freaking insane. They're driving like 90 the whole way. Damn dopes.

Arizona was alright (we'll be dropping by again before we head home), lovely mountains, but the best part was its rest areas. Arizona has the best rest areas of any state I've been to (though, yesterday in Texas, we drove by a rest area that looked beyond amazing - I think it even had a Church in it!). If you're passing through Arizona, drop by a rest area, especially the last one on the I-40 before New Mexico. Such high ceilings and air conditioning - you will feel at home in that middle-of-nowhere-stall. New Mexico was another story. It's like a wanna-be Arizona, but doesn't succeed at all. The first few moments we got into New Mexico, this car passed by us and the passenger looked at me and put his hand up in the shape of an "L". I obviously took that as "Go Lakers" because of our Laker flag, but my Mom told me he probably meant "losers" because the Lakers lost Game 4. New Mexicans suck. But then we stopped off at a McDonald's Sunday morning before leaving Albuquerque, and the people in there were so nice! They had huge cowboy hats, but were real nice. The only thing I will really remember about those two states from Day 1 is this:

Dude, even idiots yell at these guys for being idiots. Wear a damn helmet while going 80mph! Wow. I saw three different motorcyclists without helmets, is there like a low prohibiting protective cranial gear? Stupid. Other than that, those two states were just fine, haha. The very next state we hit out of New Mexico was Texas:

I don't care who you are, that line at the bottom is just hilarious. I wonder if they'll keep it when he leaves next year... hm.... Anyway, the part of Texas we drove through was that small tip part that's only 100mi wide, and boy am I glad it was short, because I was not too comfortable being in Texas for whatever reason. The roads were totally different, everything was yellow and brown (I mean the grass) and too many Bush fanatics. One of the first Texan cars we saw in Texas had tons of pro-Bush bumper stickers on their car, an elderly couple. I would post a photo, but it came out pretty badly. I realized I'm not the best photographer when I'm shooting from behind the wheel, haha.

After Texas, we drove through Oklahoma, and I have to tell you, I was pleasantly surprised. I'm not sure how I came under this impression but I definitely thought that Oklahoma was this southern uneducated hick town that was plain and boring. Damn was I wrong. I didn't get a chance to meet anyone, but you can learn a lot about a place by its talk radio. I was astonished. But that wasn't the only thing that amazed me about Oklahoma, check out the larger version of this picture you've already seen:

The place is damn beautiful. Even though our windshield was bug-infested (though I cleaned it a few hours prior at a gas station), it still looked amazing. There was not one part of Oklahoma that I did not enjoy (my Mom though kept getting annoyed by the constant tolls, I think we paid the state $5 just to drive through, haha). I enjoyed it so much; I even suggested us moving out there, even though it was in the middle of nowhere. The cost of living would be so cheap and it was just so beautiful:

Isn't that Godlight amazing? I don't think I've ever had such an opportunity to take that kind of a shot. Perhaps at the beach a couple times, but this was one just so perfect. So Oklahoma was really beautiful, but then I remembered one small thing. Tornadoes. Just a few minutes after I took the above picture, we started to approach darker and darker clouds. It was obvious something was about to happen. We already knew we'd be driving through a thunderstorm to get to our hotel in Springfield, Missouri (and watch game 5), but who knew it would turn out to be so bad. This is one of the last dry spots we had before the thunderstorm:

At the time, we thought it looked really cool, but we had no idea what power those clouds possessed. Soon enough, we faced this:

That photograph gives no justice to the storm. For the most part, there was probably only 50 feet of visibility - at some point it was seriously just 5 feet - and pounding "drops" of rain overhead. It went on for maybe two miles, but because we were all averaging about 20mph, those of us actually driving, some people camped out on the side of the highway hoping to wait it out; it took forever. It was one of the most thrilling driving experiences ever. I've driven through rain storms like this, the last time was on a trip up to San Francisco, but I have to say I have never experienced anything like this. Remember that storm that hit LA back in the Winter? Well multiply the worst parts of that storm by 10 and you get this one, no lies.

When we crossed the border into Missouri, the rain still continued to pound and the lighting still continued to strike. We had managed to find ourselves out of gas, in the middle of the storm, an hour away from Game 5. But suddenly, we drove a little farther, and the storm stopped instantly. We took an exit, filled up our tank, and tried to go as fast as we could to Springfield to watch the Game. I know what you're thinking, "what happened to that tornado?", I'll tell you. While searching for the Missouri ESPN Radio station, I came across this weather station that had an announcement about a storm watch and a tornado watch. After listening to it a bit longer, we quickly found out that the area we just passed, the photo above, had a tornado forming right above it. To make matters worse, there was an accident in the area and traffic became piled up. How horrible is that? But we luckily made it through without any complications, though my Laker flag would say otherwise:

Who knew a ten dollar flag couldn't survive a thunderstorm? We originally had two on, but the first one ripped right off about 500mi into our trip, haha. Anyway, I never found out whether the tornado ever touched ground and if everything was okay. We got to Springfield in one piece, and with a much cleaner car, and rushed to our room to catch the game. We missed the first quarter, which was probably the best part. But because the Lakers won and elongated the series like all true Laker fans hoped, I can't complain. Game 6 is Tuesday night at the same time. I'll be in New York by then, Insha Allah, and will hopefully have a better TV to watch it from - the color of our room's TV was so off, did you know the Celtics switched their jersey color to magenta? Made 'em lose, so I'm happy. Okay, I'm done with this central time post, it's almost 2 AM here and I have to wake up and drive another 800 miles to Pennsylvania! But tomorrow will be more relaxed, we don't have a game to rush to. If anything interesting happens, like Sunday's thunderstorm, you'll be hearing from me later tonight, in eastern time, otherwise, I'll see you in New York. I hope you enjoyed this post and the photos, because it wasted so much of my sleep! Take care everyone. see u.