Woofabago

I checked my BlackBerry and discovered that I had 114 e-mails that I hadn’t yet read. Since I have a total of about four friends, and even they’re not particularly crazy about me, this was slightly unusual. The only time I get a boatload of e-mails is when a book has just come out and readers are responding to my request for feedback. But I hadn’t had a new book out for a couple of months.

I started to read the messages and found that most were from readers telling me that they were following our adventure on “Woofabago” on Facebook. And based on the Facebook posts, it sounded like everybody, the people on the trip and the ones following it, were having a blast.

I partially understood it. If I were at home, watching football, drinking a beer, and occasionally checking out Facebook, I’d be having a hell of a time as well. The best part would be reminding myself that I was at home and not on an RV riding cross-country with twenty-five dogs.

A typical post from our group was made on the first morning. It said, “Yay! We have over 500 ‘Likes’ … a 25-wagging-tail salute to you all from all of us here on the Woofabago adventure. Consider yourselves honorary members of our Merry Band of Lunatics!”

Ugh.

Worst of all, Facebook was filled with pictures of the trip, including many of me. I had this image of social media exploding with talk of the fat, gray-haired lunatic with all the dogs. Had I known the pictures were being taken, I wouldn’t have exhaled.

At the next stop, I asked around and found out that the person running our Facebook operation was Cindy Spodek Dickey. That made sense; she’s an executive in the tech industry, and in fact was working at Microsoft when she met Debbie. Together they did a highly successful Taco Bell/Xbox promotion.

Cindy is a very upbeat person, which makes her my natural opposite. She’s also completely at home in social media land, while I’m only completely at home when I’m at home.

But she was not identifying herself by name in her posts, and since I was the figurehead of the operation, people were just naturally assuming that I was the one writing them. These were clearly people who didn’t know me; if they had, they’d have known that posts that did not include whining and complaining could not be mine.

And the only way I would use the words “wagging-tail salute” would be if an upbeat pod had taken over my body.

But I was getting credit for writing the posts, so I hurried to disabuse everyone of that notion with my actual first Facebook post. I credited Cindy for her work keeping America informed, and made sure that everyone knew I hadn’t been involved. I didn’t want anyone to think I was having fun; it would be too confusing when I killed myself midway across the country.

“What a shame,” they would say. “And he seemed to be enjoying himself so much.”

But I couldn’t worry about that right then; it was finally time to change drivers. Emmit, Joe, and Randy had been handling the chores exclusively, and they needed a break, even if they wouldn’t admit it. So I told Emmit that I was taking the wheel at the next gas stop, and I did so.

As we were about to leave, Emmit got back in the RV and sat in the passenger seat. He told me that Debbie and Cyndi were taking the wheel in the RVs that would be following us. In deference to the fact that it was their first time driving this kind of vehicle, we needed to take it slow and careful.

He said that I should keep my speed to no higher than fifty miles per hour and should stay in the right-hand lane. It was a good twenty miles an hour slower than we had been traveling, but Emmit said that later, when Debbie and Cyndi were more used to it, we could speed up.

So I did what Emmit said, even though it felt like we were crawling along. At that pace, we’d be in Maine in time to watch the Super Bowl.

When we got to the next dog-walking stop, Debbie came up to me and asked, “What is going on?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you driving with the emergency brake on?”

“Emmit felt that with you and Cyndi driving for the first time, we should take it easy,” I said.

She nodded. “That would make some sense—not much, but some—if Cyndi and I were driving. But it’s still been Joe and Randy.”

I reported this piece of news to Emmit, and it turned out that he hadn’t been completely truthful with me. Another way to put it would be that he lied through his teeth.

Apparently, Emmit has a well-developed instinct for self-preservation, and he made the assessment that his life would be imperiled if I was to drive an RV at a high speed with him in it. It’s a point of view that did have some logic to it.

But I took the wheel again, this time with Debbie and Cyndi actually doing the same. What I hadn’t realized was that we were about to be driving across the Rockies, which meant a lot of turns and bends in the road, and some moments when we seemed a little close to elevated edges. There were also hills; it turned out the Rockies have a lot of them.

It was a little scary, especially since it was nighttime, but nothing too daunting. If it weren’t for the fact that I was driving this strange, enormous vehicle, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it.

Debbie had a different point of view, and in the time since, to hear her describe it, you would think that we were hanging by our fingertips from a high cliff while being attacked by Geronimo and his warriors.

But the twists and turns made me go close to the speed Emmit had advised, so he seemed somewhat satisfied. I wouldn’t say he was completely comfortable, because about every thirty or forty seconds he asked me if I wanted him to take over.

We stopped for a late dinner, which Mary Lynn’s son had prepared in advance. It was spaghetti and meatballs, and Mary Lynn and Cyndi heated it while the dogs were wandering around the fenced-in area we’d set up for what seemed like the hundredth time.

You’ve never lived until you’ve eaten spaghetti and meatballs off paper plates, standing in an area pretty much covered in dog shit. Of course, it was almost completely dark out, so there was no way to actually see the dog shit, which made stepping an adventure, and something to be avoided.

The food was actually delicious, and it was a nice change. For me, it was a change from the cold cuts and fruit I had bought; for everyone else it was a change from the convenience-store stuff they’d been inhaling. Based on how my food had gone over with everyone, you’d think I’d sprayed it with pesticide before we left.

Everybody was getting tired, a combination of the arduousness of the trip and the fact that no one had gotten much real sleep during the Vegas deluge. Not too many people seemed to be able to nap while we were driving, probably due to a combination of being thrown around by the rattling vehicles and having dogs licking their faces.

So we agreed to think about whether and where we were going to stop for the night, and we’d make the decision at our next gas station visit.

Based on the way the vehicles sucked up fuel, I figured that would be in about four minutes.