April 2008 Archives
It's been a long day but a good day. I'm sitting back with a beer from the Moab Brewery and figured I'd write a few words. I also thought I would upload some images, but alas the internet connection here is way too slow.
First, no speeding tickets today. I will say, however, that it turns out Tabor has a speed governor.
Second, the rockies are beautiful. I really enjoyed driving to and through the mountains and loved every moment. Such a far cry from Chicago.
Then, BAM, a major shift from the snow covered mountains of the rockies to the wind storm weather of western Colorado and eastern Utah. The weather today has been pretty beautiful, hovering between low 60's and mid 70's. Unfortunately, it has become overcast here in Moab - so the time in Arches wasn't as great as I had hoped.
We drove about 470 miles today, including our time at Arches National Park. A much easier day than yesterday's 777+ miles (even though we did it in just a bit over ten hours).
I'm hoping for better weather tomorrow so that I can get up way early and catch the sun rise in Arches. Then I'll go for a bit of a run before we head to the Grand Canyon.
Wish I had more to report folks. No tickets. No accidents. No bullshit.
First, no speeding tickets today. I will say, however, that it turns out Tabor has a speed governor.
Second, the rockies are beautiful. I really enjoyed driving to and through the mountains and loved every moment. Such a far cry from Chicago.
Then, BAM, a major shift from the snow covered mountains of the rockies to the wind storm weather of western Colorado and eastern Utah. The weather today has been pretty beautiful, hovering between low 60's and mid 70's. Unfortunately, it has become overcast here in Moab - so the time in Arches wasn't as great as I had hoped.
We drove about 470 miles today, including our time at Arches National Park. A much easier day than yesterday's 777+ miles (even though we did it in just a bit over ten hours).
I'm hoping for better weather tomorrow so that I can get up way early and catch the sun rise in Arches. Then I'll go for a bit of a run before we head to the Grand Canyon.
Wish I had more to report folks. No tickets. No accidents. No bullshit.
Never knew a cop driving on the interstate in front of you could a) radar gun you accurately and b) pull you over.and c) issue a speeding ticket.
Sorry Greg, a speeding citation has been issued. You may appear in court if you wish.
Best part though, I video taped the entire thing. Watch out on the blog later for the video.
Sorry Greg, a speeding citation has been issued. You may appear in court if you wish.
Best part though, I video taped the entire thing. Watch out on the blog later for the video.
We haven't been passed once. Not a single time. Since we began our trip.
I was dreading my brother driving; he calls himself a "conservative, moderate driver." Umm, right. On average - 10 to 15 miles per hour faster than me. In fact, I think he has driven my car faster than I have.
So yeah, we haven't been passed once.
Oh, and by the way, a recent road sign informed me that I trust in Jesus. Always good for those highway signs in the middle of nowhere to peer into my mind.
We are here:
I was dreading my brother driving; he calls himself a "conservative, moderate driver." Umm, right. On average - 10 to 15 miles per hour faster than me. In fact, I think he has driven my car faster than I have.
So yeah, we haven't been passed once.
Oh, and by the way, a recent road sign informed me that I trust in Jesus. Always good for those highway signs in the middle of nowhere to peer into my mind.
We are here:
Stuck in Kansas, for a while, still.
421 miles left today. Lots down. 90 mph gets you going on your way.
Tabor can easily hit at least 120 mph. Who knew?
Speed traps successfully avoided: 4.
Time brother spent sleeping in the car: at least 4 hours.
Now, he's driving. Oh Lord. Heavy metal music. Not a fan. At all.
He also stole my sunglasses. Not cool.
More later.
421 miles left today. Lots down. 90 mph gets you going on your way.
Tabor can easily hit at least 120 mph. Who knew?
Speed traps successfully avoided: 4.
Time brother spent sleeping in the car: at least 4 hours.
Now, he's driving. Oh Lord. Heavy metal music. Not a fan. At all.
He also stole my sunglasses. Not cool.
More later.
Stuck in Kansas, for a while, still.
421 miles left today. Lots down. 90 mph gets you going on your way.
Tabor can easily hit at least 120 mph. Who knew?
Speed traps successfully avoided: 4.
Time brother spent sleeping in the car: at least 4 hours.
Now, he's driving. Oh Lord. Heavy metal music. Not a fan. At all.
He also stole my sunglasses. Not cool.
More later.
421 miles left today. Lots down. 90 mph gets you going on your way.
Tabor can easily hit at least 120 mph. Who knew?
Speed traps successfully avoided: 4.
Time brother spent sleeping in the car: at least 4 hours.
Now, he's driving. Oh Lord. Heavy metal music. Not a fan. At all.
He also stole my sunglasses. Not cool.
More later.
Stuck in Kansas, for a while, still.
421 miles left today. Lots down. 90 mph gets you going on your way.
Tabor can easily hit at least 120 mph. Who knew?
Speed traps successfully avoided: 4.
Time brother spent sleeping in the car: at least 4 hours.
Now, he's driving. Oh Lord. Heavy metal music. Not a fan. At all.
He also stole my sunglasses. Not cool.
More later.
421 miles left today. Lots down. 90 mph gets you going on your way.
Tabor can easily hit at least 120 mph. Who knew?
Speed traps successfully avoided: 4.
Time brother spent sleeping in the car: at least 4 hours.
Now, he's driving. Oh Lord. Heavy metal music. Not a fan. At all.
He also stole my sunglasses. Not cool.
More later.
Current Road Trip Location:
Day 1. Complete. Hello Warrenton, Missouri.
What a day.
Two movers, two and a hal63383f hours late. Oh, and yeah, we can't move your wine. Nice. Thanks Fed Ex and Gourmet Grape.
Packing the car. Emphasis on the speed and less on the organization.
Driving the car. Over an hour of bumper to bumper traffic on 55 to start. Mmmm.
One thing learned - Tabor can go at least 110 mph. Speeding tickets - zero.
Dinner. Fast Food. Unacceptable. So unacceptable that my brother rushed in the hotel and promptly...
threw up.
Thanks highway dining.
To the hotel. Should have emphasized organization, not speed. Lots of broken bags and 15 minutes to get our suitcases.
Holiday Inn Express. Nice. Free cookie. It was good. Pool. Warm hot tub. Yes, the hot tub was only warm. I still liked it.
Time for a shower. I still feel like a hot tub. Glad to be out of Illinois. Glad it isn't raining anymore. Glad it is warmer here.
Not looking forward to packing anymore.
We are here:
What a day.
Two movers, two and a hal63383f hours late. Oh, and yeah, we can't move your wine. Nice. Thanks Fed Ex and Gourmet Grape.
Packing the car. Emphasis on the speed and less on the organization.
Driving the car. Over an hour of bumper to bumper traffic on 55 to start. Mmmm.
One thing learned - Tabor can go at least 110 mph. Speeding tickets - zero.
Dinner. Fast Food. Unacceptable. So unacceptable that my brother rushed in the hotel and promptly...
threw up.
Thanks highway dining.
To the hotel. Should have emphasized organization, not speed. Lots of broken bags and 15 minutes to get our suitcases.
Holiday Inn Express. Nice. Free cookie. It was good. Pool. Warm hot tub. Yes, the hot tub was only warm. I still liked it.
Time for a shower. I still feel like a hot tub. Glad to be out of Illinois. Glad it isn't raining anymore. Glad it is warmer here.
Not looking forward to packing anymore.
We are here:
How the hell am I supposed to fit a month's worth of essentials for San Francisco, plus my brother in Tabor for the road trip? This is going to be interesting.
Apparently, I'm blogging right now... not too proud of a moment.
Leg # 1, Chicago to St. Louis to Colorado Springs, Colorado. We're going to fly through Kansas (not much to see there) so that we can enjoy more scenic areas of the country at a more relaxed pace.
Leg # 2 - Colorado Springs to the Moab Desert and Arches National Park. This park is supposed to be amazing.
Leg # 3 - Moab Desert to Grand Canyon National Park. We're going to have a half day to spend there, which is great.
Leg # 4 - Grand Canyon to Kingsman, AZ. This is a short drive so that we can have all that time at the Grand Canyon. This is near a cool town that is supposed to be one of the more authentic "Wild West" during the day type of towns. That probably just means too many tourists.
Leg # 5 - Kingsman AZ, to Ventura, CA. This leg will be long and not so fun. It's necessary because we want to drive up the Pacific Coast. So, I got a nice hotel.
Leg # 6 - Ventura, CA to San Francisco! The last leg! A beautiful drive up Route 1 on the Pacific Coast. I can't wait.
Leg # 2 - Colorado Springs to the Moab Desert and Arches National Park. This park is supposed to be amazing.Leg # 3 - Moab Desert to Grand Canyon National Park. We're going to have a half day to spend there, which is great.
Leg # 4 - Grand Canyon to Kingsman, AZ. This is a short drive so that we can have all that time at the Grand Canyon. This is near a cool town that is supposed to be one of the more authentic "Wild West" during the day type of towns. That probably just means too many tourists.
Leg # 5 - Kingsman AZ, to Ventura, CA. This leg will be long and not so fun. It's necessary because we want to drive up the Pacific Coast. So, I got a nice hotel.
Leg # 6 - Ventura, CA to San Francisco! The last leg! A beautiful drive up Route 1 on the Pacific Coast. I can't wait.
As you can see, the blog isn't right.
Somehow, Network Solutions has managed to screw up again. They amaze me. I am currently forced to redirect those seeking to view my page from my old web service, until they can get their act together and have my domain name point to the correct server (like it was until an hour ago).
Sorry! Please ignore the funky error messages that pop up and ugly interface while my old provider gets their frikkin act together.
Somehow, Network Solutions has managed to screw up again. They amaze me. I am currently forced to redirect those seeking to view my page from my old web service, until they can get their act together and have my domain name point to the correct server (like it was until an hour ago).
Sorry! Please ignore the funky error messages that pop up and ugly interface while my old provider gets their frikkin act together.
I really want to thank Greg Swaney of NEXCESS.NET Internet Solutions for taking hours last night and the better part of the day today to migrate and setup my blog on the new server.
I've never had better customer service or technical support from any company. Really. If you need web hosting services, a virtual private server or a dedicated server - I suggest them.
I've never had better customer service or technical support from any company. Really. If you need web hosting services, a virtual private server or a dedicated server - I suggest them.
After running a half marathon this morning and working on planning the road trip for the rest of the day, I was able to finalize the route and book hotels all along the way. I even created snazzy images to post on here to show the various legs of the trip. Unfortunately, and inexplicably, my hosting server is prematurely terminating the execution of the cgi script I need to post these files within one entry. I'm a bit peeved about that. You would be too, but I bet you have no idea what I'm talking about. I would have no idea what I'm talking about if this were even five days ago.
I finally spent hours coming up with some potential road trip routes to get to San Francisco. I ended up with five or six but narrowed it down to these three, all of which begin the same way and change in Utah.
The first one (above) is basically a straight shot west on what Road Trip USA calls the "Loneliest Road." This is the shortest distance and could be deceivingly nice because it takes us close to Yosemite and allows for extra time.
The second option starts out the same as the first but heads (in a wacky way) south in Utah to stop at the Grand Canyon, then back up NW toward San Francisco. This one also takes us right near Yosemite, but wouldn't allow for much time there because this is the longest route.
The third option is similar but beelines down Utah and doesn't go SE toward the grand canyon. Instead, it picks up Route 66 and heads toward Los Angeles and then up the Pacific Coast from there. If I had a guess, I'd say we're probably going to do this one.
The second option starts out the same as the first but heads (in a wacky way) south in Utah to stop at the Grand Canyon, then back up NW toward San Francisco. This one also takes us right near Yosemite, but wouldn't allow for much time there because this is the longest route.
The third option is similar but beelines down Utah and doesn't go SE toward the grand canyon. Instead, it picks up Route 66 and heads toward Los Angeles and then up the Pacific Coast from there. If I had a guess, I'd say we're probably going to do this one.
So we will be taking them with the new Olympus 850SW Waterproof
Shockproof Freeze-proof Ryan-proof camera. <---Check it out on Amazon.
All of our goodness will be recorded in High Def using a Canon HV20 DV Camcorder. Let the good times roll!
This is a test post from 
, a fancy photo sharing thing.
, a fancy photo sharing thing.
I am deaf and blind because of an explosion at a Fear Factor event at Universal Studios Florida in March of 2007. I like roadtrips and grass.
Unbelievably, I just fixed the problem and the google maps feature is ready to go. We will be regularly updating the blog with our current location, c/o Google! Please check in regularly. Here is our starting point.
So why not try again with some new code?
I have spent much of the day trying to get the MTGooglemaps plugin to work on this blog. Much of the time was spent trying to figure out how to use the process_tags plugin to work. After what seemed like a year and a half I figured that out. At least I thought I did. I even got a google map to display in a very haphazard way in some of my blog entries. Of course, I don't remember where I placed my process_tags entries in my templates. Egad, nevermind. You don't know what that means. Now, whenever I try to insert a google map, here is what I get. So fun.
So here it is, the book that will help us traverse the country and perhaps even enjoy the journey.
Damn am I new to the blogging world. Trackbacks, typekeys, captchas, config files and absolute file paths longer than my...
I've spent hours more getting this thing up and running and I tell you that setting up a SQL server and movable type is no easy work for the rusty computer geek.
We're coming along though! This site is going to be ready and kicking for the road trip in 12 days!
Stay tuned, while my co-workers all make fun of me for slaving over this thing.
I've spent hours more getting this thing up and running and I tell you that setting up a SQL server and movable type is no easy work for the rusty computer geek.
We're coming along though! This site is going to be ready and kicking for the road trip in 12 days!
Stay tuned, while my co-workers all make fun of me for slaving over this thing.
So, you want to start a blog. What do most people do? Take my friend Jake. He just signs up quickly and easily on Typepad and voila, he's off! I could also take a page out of my friend George's book and blog on MySpace. Hell, I even have my own MySpace blog entry out there.
For those of you who know me, you understand that this isn't a possibility. I need to go all out. I want to be unique, I want to challenge myself. Maybe subconsciously I want to waste my time.
I need to create the road trip blog of road trip blogs. The king of highway travails.
So far.
Crap.
For those of you who know me, you understand that this isn't a possibility. I need to go all out. I want to be unique, I want to challenge myself. Maybe subconsciously I want to waste my time.
I need to create the road trip blog of road trip blogs. The king of highway travails.
So far.
Crap.
Wow. It is 1:10 am. I really need to get to bed. I've spent hours trying to get this thing up and running. It looks like a lot more work is in store before it is ready for the big road trip to San Francisco. Egad!
Welcome to my new blog powered by Movable Type. This is the first post on my blog and was created for me automatically when I finished the installation process. But that is ok, because I will soon be creating posts of my own!
