First Day: to Kingston, TN

Saturday, July 7, 2007, 11:55 pm:

End of the first night. Will need to flesh things out later. We have so much we’re trying to figure out how to do. Like, when we got to Jason’s mom’s house, we knew that we didn’t need to bring everything in, but we packed our basic clothes bags on the bottom, which made sense when we were packing the car before leaving, but was kind of a pain to unload. But not that much of a pain, and everything was packed in pretty tightly, with nothing sliding around and still good visibility out the back.

As I said, we are staying the first night at Jason’s mom’s house in Bristol, TN. We arrived a little before 7 pm. We left Piedmont St. at 1 pm this afternoon—a little later than originally planned, but not too bad as we still got in for a reasonable dinner time. We left so late for a few reasons. First, I had to sign my lease for my new apartment (Crystal Towers in Crystal City) with Mike Mikeska and Alex Kepler this morning after a hectic 4th of July week.

Before going to sign the lease, I briefly joined Mike and others at the Original Pancake House in Falls Church where 12 or so were gathered Jason for a goodbye breakfast of sorts. That started around 8:30, followed immediately by Mike and me heading straight to Crystal City. Then it took a pretty long time to get everything into its final packed location and then into the car. We also kept thinking of things to ask Dave (Cunningham, our other roommate) to do.

We hit the road at 1 pm. Forgot to take a beginning of the trip picture. We’ll have to take one in front of the car in the driveway of Jason’s mom’s house tomorrow. That’s still pretty close to the beginning. Everything about the first day feels kind of like it doesn’t count: roads we know, we’re pretty much just in VA still (more on that in a sec), generally still in comfort zones, it just feels like a trial run. I think by the time we get to St. Louis or so tomorrow night it’ll really start to hit. After a nine hour drive tomorrow, we’ll know if we’re going to make a good go of this whole trip.

The drive to Jason’s mom’s house was pretty uneventful. I took the first shift for about three hours from Arlington. We hit a little traffic on 66 early, but by Rte. 50 we were past it and cruising down 81. I switched out at 3 hrs, the halfway point. Jason drove the rest of the way, being more familiar with the drive. We made good time all day today once past that first hiccup. We hit the VA-TN border right around 6:30 if memory serves, though I forgot to get a picture of our first Welcome to… sign. I’ll endeavor to do better tomorrow. We also may start to keep track of license plates, although at the rate we were seeing them today, I think we’ll hit all 50 within 3 or 4 more days.

Jason’s mom and stepdad George have been so great. We had a great, what I was told was traditional East Tennessee country meal, with a bit of a Polish flair from George’s grilled sausages. Pinto beans with raw onion or Jason’s grandma’s chow chow relish, sliced potatoes, fresh sliced tomatoes with cottage cheese, cornbread, sweet tea with lemon, cole slaw (I passed) and chocolate pie for dessert (with a glass of milk to wash that down). All delicious and I am stuffed. A lovely first evening.

I’ve been at this a while now, and I will never keep this up for 28 days. But had to get some early thoughts down. I think I will try to do more of this while in the car. Only way to keep this up. Next task is to decide if to blog online or maybe just email it offline. I don’t want to spam people either though. Maybe that’s what makes blogging so powerful. Huh…

Goodnight….