Louis took twelve hours and was mostly on two-lane roads. My parents woke me up for it at dawn. We had just spent an outstandingly fun week with my Minnesota cousins, but as soon as we pulled out of my uncle’s driveway these cousins evaporated from my mind like the morning dew from the hood of our car. I was alone in the backseat again. I went to sleep, and my mother took out her magazines, and the weight of the long July drive fell squarely on my father. To get through the day, he made himself into an algorithm, a number cruncher. Our car was the axe with which he attacked the miles listed on road signs, chopping the nearly unbearable 238 down to a still daunting 179, bludgeoning the 150’s and 140’s and 130’s until they yielded the halfway humane 127, which was roundable down to 120, which he could pretend was just two hours of driving time even though, with so many livestock trucks and thoughtless drivers on the road ahead of him, it would probably take closer to three. Through sheer force of will, he mowed down the last twenty miles between him and double digits, and these digits he then reduced by tens and twelves until, finally, he could glimpse it: “Cedar Rapids 34.”
