In 2001, in the aftermath of 9-11, I was dealing with my Seattle Detective, J.P. Beaumont, needing to join forces with Joanna Brady in southeastern Arizona.\u00a0 I was speaking by phone to my East Coast editor about the problem of getting Beau from here to there at a time when planes were not yet flying.<\/p>\n
\u201cCouldn\u2019t he just drive?\u201d my editor asked.\u00a0 I replied that it takes 26 hours, in a car with the wheels moving, to get from Seattle to Tucson.\u00a0 That response was followed by a long pause before she said, \u201cI didn\u2019t know we had such a tall country.\u201d<\/p>\n
The truth is, it is a tall country, and even though there are plenty of planes flying these days, it still takes 26 hours to get from hither to yon if you\u2019re doing it by car.\u00a0 We used to make that trip in three days flat\u2014three very long days\u2014but we were younger, and, generally speaking, we weren\u2019t traveling with dogs.<\/p>\n
This time we broke the trip and the hours into four relatively easy days\u2014Tucson to Palm Springs, Palm Springs to Sacramento, Sacramento to Eugene, and Eugene home.\u00a0 It was still a challenge, however.\u00a0 Instead of traveling with two dogs, we were traveling with one.\u00a0 And Jojo, who was accustomed to taking her car travel cues from Bella, found herself a little at sea traveling solo.<\/p>\n
When you\u2019re on the road with dogs, keeping track of the Pees and Craps is vital.\u00a0 On that score, Bella always determined where things happened and Jojo simply followed suit.\u00a0 Without someone giving her directions and faced with making up her own mind, Jojo was too easily distracted and those very necessary things didn\u2019t happen on a regular or predictable basis.\u00a0 Thankfully we travel with a fully stocked supply of puppy pads!<\/p>\n
Inside the car, Jojo was a lot more needy than I expected.\u00a0 She had to be in my lap and nowhere else\u2014except during the twistings and turnings in the mountains of southern Oregon when she suddenly decided she needed to be on my shoulders. People who saw us with her as a fur wrap around the back of my neck probably thought I was a living breathing Cruella DeVille.<\/p>\n
All of this is to say, that during those four travel days, there was a lap dog in my lap rather than a laptop in my lap.\u00a0 E-mails did not get answered.\u00a0 Forward progress in the book did not happen.\u00a0 I managed some steps once we exited the car in the evenings, but not very many.<\/p>\n
So we\u2019re home in Bellevue now.\u00a0 It was a big shock to leave behind Tucson\u2019s 95 degree weather and return home to a place where spring has not yet sprung.\u00a0 As a matter of fact, I\u2019m writing this in front of a burning gas long fireplace.<\/p>\n
Glad to be home.\u00a0 E-mails have now been answered.\u00a0 Condolence card thank yous have been sent.<\/p>\n
Now it\u2019s time to go back to work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In 2001, in the aftermath of 9-11, I was dealing with my Seattle Detective, J.P. Beaumont, needing to join forces with Joanna Brady in southeastern Arizona.\u00a0 I was speaking by phone to my East Coast editor about the problem of getting Beau from here to there at a time when planes were not yet flying. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[50,76,165,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-j-p-beaumont","category-pets","category-traveling","category-writing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-mh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1381"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1383,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1381\/revisions\/1383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}