Our first blog post on the road! By Mike G

Timespan: 8PM June 9^th- 9AM June 11th

Last night around 8:30PM, Pacella and German met up and loaded up the car a bit haphzaradly as we have now  found.  With access only from the back sseat, most items are burie d and inaccessible until we remove the bikes on Sat/Sun.  Oh well, no big  deal because for no we ar driving machines!  Between all our lovely photos taken by the Northeast Booster and German being horribly organized it wasn’t till ~2:00AM that we arrived at Jesse’s place.  There we realized a 5^th bike was not going to fit and that a roof rack would be lovely.  By the time adjustments were made and more bags packed.the Subaru had about 5 in of clearance between rear tire fender and ground.  I meant to get stronger shocks put in the rear tires too, but oh well the car will survive- it’s a Subaru!  More goodbyes were said and our journey had officially begun.  I immediately try to sleep after lack of sleep and general low-level stress for the last forever.  Upon waking up, I can’t see out the window and Pacella is beasting up the Appalachia fog along 70.  My goodness it was thick, we felt like we were skiing through gates with the markers and shiny road patches being our only knowledge that a road existed below us.  I was too tired for this non-sense and slept on and off till the morning.  Yeah back-seat piles of stuff!  But it was a little “yeah… hair raising.”  The rest of the day we rotated sleeping, driving, and purchasing gas- Pacella, Crow, German, repeat. 

Where did we eat?  Around 6am at Panera in Ohio, somewhere.  I entered a $2000 giveaway, hopefully we win!  They didn’t have leftovers to give us because they give them away at night :(  We ate PB&J for lunch in the hometown of Mark Twain alongside the Mississippi river.  That was peaceful.  But the PB was hot, and as we realized PB’s viscosity is a strong function of temperature.  So, maybe it was peanut syrup and not peanut butter?  Oh well, it was still delicious.  On the roa we went and eventually we ate some dinner at Arby’s in Nebraska, definitely get the market fresh sandwiches and nothing else, Pacella’s sandwich totally trumped  our sandwiches.  About an hour later we arrived at our first couchsurf in the wonderful town of Kearney, NE- it’s much larger than you would imagine.  I was being a big momma sissy pants and figured we would all just want to sleep after driving for 22 hr.  But that’s stupid, we were in the middle of Nebraska!  We gotta go do it up at the Palm garden Lounge!  The “sleaziest” bar in town… yeah it wasn’t.  They got us a pitcher of Coors Light… mmm funny tasting water.  Pacella got some Jack and Coke so he’d be up for some karaoke.  Katie and Katie, our host and roommate, typically sing (or yell) and sometimes get pulled off stage.  I did Hound Dog with them by Elvis, but couldn’t hear the music or pitch over their screaming so whatever.  For my first time at karaoke, it was meh.  Then our lot got up and did Bad Romance by Lady Gaga- sadly not recorded.  That was fun, we killed  sometime in the beginning and told some jokes.  Then we did our number and I had fun, there was a regular karaoke lady next to me who had a decent voice, and so I could follow her in a song I’ve only heard once on youtube and partially a handful of other times.  We came back and crashed for almost 8 hr- so lovely.

Got up and headed out, I nearly left my electronics bag, whoops!  We got some cereal at the local Apple Market and afterwards I told our cash register woman bout our ride, and gave her aposter.  She said she had already heard about us.  Que?!  I don’t know if I had spammed one of her relatives via couchsurfing for a place, or she saw our ridiculously beautiful car or it was from us hooligans singing Lady gaga last night.  But, my goodness word travels fast in small towns.  Well ,that’s cool I’m in support of people knowing about us and hopefully donating some money on line!  Or giving us some food or lodgings.

Fun note, we saw many wind turbines on the backs of big rigs, so that’s a great sign!  Although, there was a report about raptors being the bird killed predominantly by windwills spinning fast.  But I don’t think that would be such an issue in the Midwest (?) because it’s just plains, but I don’t know anything about birds.

Good day!