Trip 13: Minneapolis, Minnesota

After a fantastic drive through Wisconsin, we arrived for our long stay in Minneapolis - we arrived on July 22, and we didn't leave until July 27... our longest stay anywhere, and it wound up being Minnesota!  I was originally scheduled to fly home and have a bit of a break, but due to various circumstances, the company decided it would be better to keep me downrange.  I missed not going home, of course, but they were very good about trying to give me as much time off as possible in Minnesota.

We jumped hotels almost every night in Minneapolis - I guess there were lots of events going on that weekend, and so finding a place to stay proved a little more difficult than anticipated.

We visited the Mall of America on our first day in town.  It's absolutely huge!  Seriously, I think it has more parking than Disneyland, and the entire center of the mall is filled with rides and rollercoasters.  We wandered the mall for a few hours and were just overwhelmed by all of it - hundreds of people, and three levels filled with more shops than I had ever heard of.  I did take advantage of it and bought myself jeans that fit, though, so I guess I can say I've officially shopped at America's largest mall!  (And second-largest, back in Philadelphia's King of Prussia Mall, where I bought sunscreen and chapstick.)

Other than visiting the Mall, the only other activity I did in Minneapolis was to begin being trained on driving the truck and trailer.  This meant that I did some class time, some hitch training, and some behind-the-wheel training, as well as training on how to log my hours in compliance with all the trucker laws.  Sounds fun, doesn't it?

We had the full weekend off before the event, and none of us really realized how tired we had been until the event rolled around and everything just went insanely smoothly.  Three am wake-up calls don't seem so bad when you're full up on sleep!  We could all really notice the difference in how we felt at the end of the event since we had so much time to recover before it, and it was really nice to have that break in Minnesota to sleep in for a few days without any work or stress to interrupt it.

Our site at 4 am.

At 4:30 am, it's nice to be alert enough to appreciate the sunrise!

 For all the bouncing hotels, the truck and trailer training, and the fact that we did have an event to run, it almost felt like Minnesota was "time off".  The usual trifecta of laundry, letters, and grocery shopping was achieved without feeling rushed for time.  Plus, I got a call from friends in Spokane announcing their engagement, so despite the crazy freeway systems in Minneapolis, I really enjoyed Minnesota!

Also, we stayed in Minnetonka, a suburb of Minneapolis, in Minnesota, near Minnehaha Creek.  If, like me, you were curious about what on earth that minne in all those words means, the answer is: water.  It's an old Dakota word.  And it makes sense, as Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes (with 12 in Minneapolis alone!).

After how restful Minneapolis was, it was a bit hard to leave.  Still, we left the day after the event to drive south to the furthest west we've been all tour: Omaha, Nebraska.  Of course, we had to drive through Iowa to get there, and as L lamented, it was about 380 straight miles of corn...

-Beth

Trip 12: Springfield, Illinois

The day after our Indianapolis football debut, we were on the road again like all good teams.  We were off to Springfield, Illinois!

I will admit to sleeping through most of this drive, even though it wasn't too long - after a while the tired just catches up to you!

When we arrived, the heat index was at 127 degrees, and it stayed that way for the entire time we were in town.  Despite being the land of Lincoln, I was tired enough that I decided to take the city off - we'd had some recovery time in Charlotte, but at this point I was just off of my medication and wanted to take things a bit easy.  Unfortunately, that meant I missed out on seeing the old downtown Springfield, which is by all accounts amazing and a great tribute to the era of Lincoln.

On the other hand, it meant that I spent a lazy first afternoon in town doing laundry (exciting, I know), and hung out with D and L all the next day.  We went to Lake Springfield, where we'd planned on renting Wave Runners for the afternoon, but they turned out to be so expensive that the guys only rented them for a half hour, and I only paid to tag along with one of them, not for my own rental.

Still, that half hour out on the water was an absolute blast.  Not only was it a great way to see the lake - tons of fish jumping, and really wild shorelines with just trees right down to the water, no beaches, and lots of birds and waterfowl along the shore - but it was really a ton of fun.  I rode behind D and almost fell off a few times, but we caught air and splashed at L and in general loved every second of it.  It's like motorcycles on water; seriously, I need to do this again!

Because we couldn't spend the whole afternoon out on the lake like planned, we decided we'd go to the water park just down the road from our hotel since it was still 90-some degrees in the shade (heat index of 126, today).  We arrived at about 4 pm, and the guys got a little sidetracked by the other offerings of the park, so we went first to the driving range, where D showed us all up and I attempted real, non-mini-golf for the first time (results were so-so).

L's awesome skillz.

Then we went to the batting cages, where I was a failure but still won by not getting smacked by the slightly-off-track pitches like L did.  We decided then to head into the water park - only to find out that they'd be closing in an hour.  Seriously?  It's 100 degrees out, and the sun stays out til 9 pm - why would a water park close at 6 pm?  I still don't get it.

The sun at 8:30 pm.

But it was probably for the best - we went back to the hotel in time for our pre-event meeting and did some set up at the site before coming back and crashing.

The event then next day was hot.  Really, really hot - our hottest yet.  Don't get me wrong, it was still very successful - but it was so hot that even the media decided it was too hot to have an event.  Luckily the on-site agents agreed, and it was a short event, but it still took us nearly an hour longer to set up, and probably twice that to tear everything down.

What can I say, the water guns were an excellent purchasing decision.

The next day saw the drive up to Minneapolis, Minnesota, for our next event, which took us through one of my new favorite states, Wisconsin.  Why is it one of my new favorites?  Well, aside from the beautiful scenery and geography, you can buy fresh cheese curls at the gas stations.  Also, the Amish set up bake sales at the gas stations, and they have really good cookies.

Like I said before, I've got my priorities straight!

-Beth

Trip 11: Indianapolis, Indiana

Our first day in Indianapolis was another rest day - not a reset day for our driving hours, but an extra day built into the schedule in case it took longer for us to drive north than expected.  We had a meeting in the morning, and then spent the afternoon lazing about before doing dinner with the local event agents.

The next day we went out to our event site - one of the parking lots for Lucas Oil Stadium, where the Indianapolis Colts play.  I have to say, it was probably the coolest site we've been at so far!

D and I before the event started, in our oh-so-lovely uniforms!

It was hot, but we managed to stay cool and hydrated.  I was off of my "happy pills", so I was allowed to drive and help out more again... so I very considerately made sure that everyone else was keeping hydrated as well, by judicious use of my newly-acquired squirt guns.  Water guns + cooler ice water + coworkers = glory.

After the event, though, came the best part - a private tour of Lucas Oil Stadium!  The lady who gave us the tour really loved taking us around.  We visited the private boxes, the press boxes, and a lot of the behind-the-scenes rooms like the press rooms and the interview rooms.  The stadium is only a few years old, and it looks really great since they're getting it ready for the upcoming Super Bowl.

We got to go into the locker rooms... guess who's locker this is?

...And out onto the field itself!  That was clearly the best part of the tour.  D had bought a football in Charlotte, and we brought it with us to play some catch down on the fake grass.  We had a blast running around - even though it was still ridiculously hot out and all of us were pretty tired from the event!

J2, J, D, R, me, and L.  We will mess you up (even if J is penalized for a false start).

All the guys kicked field goals, but since I was wearing sandals (I wouldn't have changed if I'd known field goals were in the works!) I contented myself with doing front handsprings on the 50 yard line.  There's my bragging rights for the summer!

me, D, L, R, J2 (hiding) and J.  J2 was just out for this event; otherwise, that's the summer team!

We just had an absolute blast playing around in that stadium - really, one of the funnest afternoons of the trip so far.  And it turned out to be L's birthday, as well, so we wound up going out to dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe in celebration that night!  Not a bad way to say farewell to Indy...

-Beth

Trip 10: Charlotte, North Carolina

Charlotte's event was the morning after we arrived late into town because I had to stop to see a doctor in Virginia.  Basically, I didn't drink enough water in New York and that caused some problems!  I was put on light duty for four days, which luckily only translated to the Charlotte event and some driving days, but it meant that I couldn't lift more than 15 pounds and wasn't allowed to drive because of my medication.  So I took the Charlotte event fairly easy - I ran the scoreboard instead of running around out in the heat.

Still, the event went well, and my coworkers were all really understanding.  After a while, they got tired of me apologizing and told me all the stories of what else had happened on these trips in years past, and proved that me finding a doctor was small change compared to some of their stories!

After the event, we actually had enough time to stay in Charlotte and recharge.  Every so often, we need to stay still for 34 hours to reset our driving hours, and Charlotte wound up being the place to do it for this time around.  We didn't do too much - I walked to the Staples nearby to pick up a converter for my iPod to listen to it in the car, and D, L and I went to a restaurant called Upscale for some of the best food we've had all tour.  L had been raving about this place from last year, and it did in fact live up to expectations.  I tried fried okra, which was really pretty good (though weird)!  Other than that, it was just a day to relax.  I did some laundry, wrote some letters, and in general took things easy!

The next day, our hours reset, we started the long drive up to Indianapolis, Indiana.  I still wasn't allowed to drive (everyone was calling my medication my "happy pills"... apparently my first few hours on them were fairly entertaining for L on the drive into Charlotte), so I acted as passenger and navigator again.  I was a bit bummed, though - not how I wanted to spend Matt's birthday, hundreds of miles away from him!

Most importantly, though, on the way into Indianapolis I bought water guns.  These would prove important later, oh yes...

-Beth

(Sorry no pictures... my camera batteries both died early in July, and my cell phone pictures didn't always turn out!)

Trip 09: Long Island, New York... and travel!

So if you remember right, we flew to Seattle on a crazy long Friday, ran an event on Sunday, and flew out of Seattle on that Sunday on a red-eye flight to New York.  As you can imagine, the three of us were utterly exhausted!  We left Seattle just before midnight on Sunday, and arrived in New York's La Guardia Airport right around 11:30 am on Monday.  Then we took a car to our hotel on Long Island, which meant it was nearly 1:00 pm before we were able to collapse in our hotel rooms!

As you can imagine, I slept as much as possible.  I remember next to nothing about either the flight into Cincinnati or the one from there to New York, and the car ride to the hotel is just a long, hot blur.  There was much collapsing to be had at our hotel!  We woke up that evening to go out to look at our event site for the next day and to have a meeting to prep for the event, which wound up going until 11:30 that night.  Luckily, our wakeup call was at 6 the next morning - if it had been another 3 am wake-up call, I don't think we would have managed it!

The event went very well, but it was really hot again.  I was stupid and didn't drink enough water, and on top of my lack of sleep, this would come back to bite me later!  But we ran a great event, everyone had a good time, and once we packed everything up, it was L, D, and I leaving directly from the event to start the drive to Charlotte, North Carolina.

The only picture I have of Long Island - our hotel's parking lot.  Who would have expected so much green in  Long Island?

We left straight from the event, with the goal to get as far as possible before we ran out of hours for the day (we have to follow the same rules as truckers regarding our hours spent driving in a day or week).  This meant we were headed towards (dun dun dun) New York City.  At rush hour.  With a truck towing a sixteen-foot trailer.

L, being amazing, was driving the truck, and I was along with him as navigator and general extra pair of eyes for getting the truck and trailer through New York City.  At first, it wasn't too bad of a drive - the closer we got to the city, of course, the more traffic, but all in all not too bad.

We started to recognize the skyline as we got closer and closer - L really loves NYC's skyline, but I have to admit, while impressive, I'd rather look at mountains or natural scenery instead.  So we bickered about that for a while as we approached the tunnel into Manhattan...

Then disaster struck.  We were pulled over to be inspected before the tunnel - the inspection was fine and half-expected, so it didn't take us more than five minutes before the security guys let us go.  The problem was, the lane they had us enter for the inspection?  Wound up putting us into the wrong lane to enter the tunnel.  Which wound up putting us into the wrong lane to exit the tunnel.

Which put us in Manhattan.

In the truck and trailer.

In rush hour.

Seriously, it was awful.  I can now say I've driven past Times Square (who knew there's a GameSpot right next to it) and right past the Empire State Building, Parson's School of Design, and who knows how many other famous NYC landmarks.  I can't say I noticed much - I was too busy being terrified.  Seriously, no one knows how to drive in NYC.  And if you think the drivers are bad, the pedestrians are even worse - everyone in the city crosses streets like they're immortal and don't even need to look for cars.

Oh, and did I mention that some streets are autos only, no trailers?  And that you only find this out right before you try to turn into them, rendering most forms of navigation very unreliable?

Eeesh, things I never want to do again - that's definitely on the list.  L was a god of driving to safely navigate us through the city to the Lincoln Tunnel out of that hellhole.  I never thought that I would sing the praises of arriving in New Jersey, but good grief, I was so glad to put NYC behind us!

We drove along the New Jersey Turnpike for about another hour before we had to stop for the night, and I have to say, the roads there were definitely more my style:

After a quick overnight stop, we woke early the next morning to keep driving to Charlotte.  I was majorly impressed with the NJ turnpike - and we even listened to Simon and Garfunkel's "America" while we were on it!

However, just after lunch, the exhaustion and lack of hydration in Long Island caught up with me, and a muscle in my neck spasmed badly enough that we had to pull over and seek medical attention somewhere in Virginia.  Luckily, being my favorite state on the tour, Viriginia's doctors knew what was wrong, gave me some medication for my neck, fixed my electrolytes, and put me on light duty before sending me right back on my way with orders to keep myself hydrated!  D and L were really good to me throughout the whole thing, and when L and I arrived fairly late into Charlotte, the others let us sleep in as much as possible!

-Beth

Trip 08: Baltimore, Maryland

After our stormy stay in Virginia, it was time to head northeast to Baltimore, Maryland.  I drove for most of the way, so I wasn't able to record as many sights in my "to investigate later" list, but I did have two points that I remembered long enough to jot down in my journal later: Why is the National D-Day Memorial in the middle of inland Virginia?  Also, Carl's Jrs. are called Hardee's here, but otherwise appear identical.  (I still don't know the answer to that first one yet, and Hardee's are clearly inferior to Carl's Jrs. as they do not have Western Bacon Cheeseburgers.  No contest.)

I loved Virginia - it remains so far my favorite state to have visited this summer (Tennessee and Wisconsin currently round up my top three, as of the end of July).  It was so green, with all the rolling hills and mountains and rivers that you'd expect of John Denver country.  We did, in fact, listen to "Take Me Home, Country Roads" in Virginia, and it was awfully cool to drive past signs pointing out various locations in the song: Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River...

But it was onto Baltimore for the next event.  We arrived and settled into a hotel that was far too downtown for my liking - I do not like downtowns; I have had this point hammered home many times this trip!  I maintain I'm a country girl... or at least, a suburban girl! - but the plus side of the very downtown-ness was that we were just a few blocks from the harbor.

Aside from the Constellation, which was at dock, we weren't amazingly impressed with the harbor, though seeing a submarine docked by the aquarium was pretty cool.  But we decided to do dinner together for J's birthday at a sushi place overlooking the water, and had an added bonus when we sat outside on the balcony.

There are two important things to note in this photo: first, those dark and very threatening clouds overhead.  I'll get back to those!  Second, see that obviously-man-made fortification directly across the bay?  That would be Fort McHenry.  For those not completely obsessed with history like me, think the War of 1812 and Francis Scott Key - when the British failed to bomb out the fort, the flag flying from the fort's flagpole inspired Francis Scott Key to write "The Star-Spangled Banner".  Not bad for a dinner overlook!

We had some really tasty sushi out on the restaurant's balcony, the only people brave enough to sit outside in the face of those nasty clouds.  We were treated to another spectacular lightning storm over dinner, complete with another torrential downpour!  We just cracked a lot of jokes about being from Seattle and thus used to rain and stayed right where we were (thankfully under a canopy!).

It was a great show with dinner.  We could watch the rain as it came towards us over the water, and see lightning striking all around.  We even had a rainbow come out over the submarine by the aquarium, and we timed our dash back to the hotel for when the rain let up slightly.  Still, it was a crazy storm - the tv and radio played warnings to "take shelter within sturdy buildings".  I was slightly amused at the "sturdy" part of that warning... shouldn't it be understood?  We wound up losing the tv signal because of all the interference back at the hotel from the storm.

I went to bed fairly early, but woke up to add to my journal: It is incredibly freaky to see lightning out your window - like an actual line of lightning, not just the flash - when you know darn well you can't even see the sky out that window, just the many-storied building across the street.  It was an intense storm!

Still, storm or no storm, we had an event the next day.  The rain actually held off until about a half-hour before the event ended, but we were set up in the stadium lot in Baltimore and were able to put everyone under a freeway overpass (which actually had a waterfall going for a while, it was raining so hard!).  Luckily, the rain only lasted about forty minutes - once everyone left and we started cleaning up, the rain stopped and so we were able to remain relatively dry.  Which was definitely a blessing, since L, D and I went straight from the event back to shower at the hotel and run to the airport for a flight back to Seattle for another event!

Ah, but this was our very long Friday!  We left the hotel for the event at 4:30 am.  We left the hotel for our flight at about 3 pm.  After a bit of a worry in the airport because of weather (that same storm shut down the airport for about an hour, and there were lots of canceled flights), we were able to board our flight back to Seattle, where we arrived at about 12:30 am on Saturday.  But because of the time change, it was really 3:30 am to the rest of us... a 23 hour day!

Luckily, we had that Saturday off, but then we ran a full day event in Seattle on Sunday.  No time to really do much afterwards - we were on a red-eye flight to Long Island Sunday night for our next event!

-Beth

Trip 06: Roanoke, VA

We flew into Roanoke on July 5, the first of our long mid-summer trip.  It was hot and humid when we arrived, and we went straight from the airport to our event site (seeing the world, one parking lot at a time!).  We were able to block everything off early, and reached our hotel at 10:30 that night.

Sunset was gorgeous, but should have warned us what we were in for...

I will quote from my journal to describe how the event day started:

3:00 am.  Alarm goes off. Thunder and lightning occasionally.  No rain.

3:02 am.  Matt texts me from Seattle to say he just arrived home from game night.

3:28 am.  Leave hotel to go to site.

3:31 am.  Start site set-up.  Watch lightning move closer.

4:30 am.  Finish set-up.  Media arrives.  Prep for media.

4:50 am.  Lightning storm directly overhead.

4:55 am.  Media on hold due to lightning - they can't put up their broadcast tower.

5:00 am.  Rain starts.  Set up rain flies on tent.  Media is supposed to be starting now; still on hold.

5:30 am.  Media cannot broadcast in lightning.  Media leaves site.  We leave site.

5:45 am.  Reach hotel bed.  Sleep.

7:00 am.  Wake up.  Round 2.

7:15 am.  Leave hotel to go to site.  Rain's stopped.

7:30 am.  Team meeting, minor course corrections.

8:00 am.  Break out journal, chips, and pop.  Wait for...

9:00 am.  Event start.

I would like to say that this is a typical schedule, except usually we don't get to go back to the hotel for sleep because of thunderstorms.  Still, we hadn't seen anything yet.  The event ran just fine, and ended around noon.  Just as we started to take everything down, the skies just about split and rain just poured down.  I really don't think I've ever seen it rain that hard before in my life.  We were soaked through in seconds - and it takes us about two hours to strike our course, usually, so imagine how wet we were at the end!

Oh, and the lightning came back too, just as we were taking down our 10'x10' tents - you know, the ones with the huge metal support poles and metal struts.  I've never been so close to lightning before.  The hair on our arms was standing up, and we could hear the crackle in the air before we saw the bolt hit.  One struck so close that the four of us standing outside the trailer working on the tent all jumped about ten feet, ducking and moving away from the tent as we did.  First time I've heard a few of my coworkers swear, right there!  We realized we basically had two options: 1) run like little girls, or 2) finish tearing down the tent so we could run like little girls in vehicles.  We chose option 2!

The vehicle seats were still soaking wet the next day when we got ready for our drive, and it was barely five minutes from the site back to our hotel room.

Of course, by that evening the storm had spent itself out, and our whole crew rented a taxi to head toward the old market.  It was J's birthday the next day, so we went out for barbecue together.  I finally found my hush puppies, something I'd been looking for the whole time we'd been in the South in June!  They were ridiculously tasty and worth the search.

I know, I have my priorities straight while traveling!

-Beth 

Fourth of July Break!

Luckily enough, we were all allowed to go home for the Fourth of July.  Can I say how great it was to be at home with no plans to move for a while?  We didn't even have too much planned for the Fourth itself - just hanging out with friends and family, a really low-key day.  I didn't even stay up to see the fireworks, I was so focused on catching up on my sleep!

There was a lot of catch-up in other areas, too: I made cookies, paid bills in advance so I wouldn't have to worry about them on the road, ate all the junk food and real cooking that I can't get out on the road, resupplied my Kindle with books (not that I'd have a chance to read them, more on that later...), and hung out as much as possible with all my Seattle people.

Guilty pleasure: eating pizza while making sure my mini laptop is updated.  Love my tablecloth, but not so much the classy folding kitchen table...

Time was also spent hanging out with Matt and the kitties, who I'm sure have practically forgotten my existence by now, as I've been gone for so long!

It was great weather while I was in town, too - I moved to Seattle last August, but then promptly went back to Spokane to work at GU for another three weeks, so I have yet to truly experience a Seattle summer.  And I'm definitely not getting the chance this summer!  Still, it was the perfect temperature and sunny out - I wanted to plan a few picnics, but we didn't really have enough time.

Instead, the day after the Fourth of July, the July trips began... the Trip to End All Trips!

-Beth