THE DREAM IN ACTION

This series of blog posts are officially co-written, by yours truly and the well known author of Mollstar.com.

We’re going to be blogging our road trip, so follow along to the excitement that is central Kansas, the delectable joy of gas station coffee & donuts, or the relief of arriving safely to Hayes Valley, SF, CA.

Here’s the game plan for the journey…

Day 1: Wheaton – St. Louis

Day 2: St. Louis, MO – Denver, CO

Day 3: Denver, CO – Salt Lake City, UT

Day 4: Salt Lake City, UT – Lake Tahoe/Truckee, CA

Day 5: Lake Tahoe/Truckee, CA – San Francisco, CA

Packing the remaining items from our apartment in Chicago, this beast stopped by to say farewell (see image left). As we were packing, I totally thought I heard a fire truck…turned out it was a tornado siren. When I asked Moll what we should do, she said, “normally we’d head to the basement, but let’s finish packing”. I was confident in my ignorance. We lived downtown Chicago for 4 years and never once have we heard a tornado siren. Isn’t it lovely that today of all days, as we pack the Pathfinder to the brim, an F1 tornado is spoted within miles of us?  We hoped this wouldn’t be an omen to the rest of this journey across the country.

The luck of the Irish returned when we saw a beautiful rainbow overhead just hours later.

As we spent our last couple of days in Wheaton with Molly’s folks, we were sad to leave the fam and our friends in Chicago, but excited for the trek west.

We started the trip to STL for our friend, Whitney’s wedding with plenty of time to spare. Moll planned ahead to make sure she had an outfit for the wedding and some how in the chaos, I only set aside a suit and dress shirt. I was without shoes, a belt or a tie so Nordstrom Rack was a must.

Although we found the Rack & I got some awesome new kicks, it somehow added about an hour to the trip. This would later come back to haunt us.

The wedding was scheduled to kick off at 6pm and at 5:00p it became apparent that we were cutting it VERY close. We realized that we were not going to be able to stop off at the hotel first and a car change was required. We chinese fire-drilled on the highway so that Moll could begin her prep & I took the wheel. She was looking great and ready to roll but as we pulled up the the church at 5:58 I was still in a t-shirt & shorts. I quickly tossed on the suit and new kicks in somebody’s front lawn and we ran into the wedding, disheveled, but ready for the party.

All turned out alright and the wedding was great. Stage 1 of our five day trip across the country was relatively smooth and when we woke up this morning at the hotel the scooter was still safely hitched to the back of my Pathfinder. Day 1 was solid. The next day would be our longest. STL – Denver & 12 very full hours of driving…

To be continued…