Day 1: The Time Is Now

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Thrifty Travel Tip 1: Stay with your friends. You'll enjoy visiting and it's usually free!

Hi Friends and Family!!!!

Today was an exciting but somewhat frantic day for Dustin and I. I startd packing at 10 AM... I know I was asking for it packing the morning before, but for those of you that know me well this should come as no surprise to you. It all seemed a bit too overwhelming. Trying to narrow your life down to half of a compact cars worth of stuff is no easy task and trust me, I was showing the stress I felt inside on the outside.

When Dustin got to the house, he didn't ease my stress much at all. As a matter of fact, he made it more of a challenge, having packed his GIANT amp, our P.A., and two guitars, he bodly announced I would have 1/2 of a backseat... and that was all. I stormed out to the car and started shoving, pullling, and re-adjusting, all while screaming "OH SHIT, WE'RE GOING TO HAVE TO BRING BOTH CARS. SHIT, SHIT, SHIT. THERE IS JUST NO WAY. AAAAH!" While I was running around in frantic circles, Dustin calmly went into the house and said, "I'm hungry." I think on the inside he wisely knew that I was too. As he offered me a bite of his Chinese, my rage only grew into "I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR SPICY BEEF OR CAT OR WHATEVER THAT IS." He finally got me to calm down long enough to take a bite. It provided just enough kick to make me realize I was hungry and I ate. Eating brought clarification which finally led to a packed car and us shoved in the front seat besides a bag of about 20 apples we picked the day before and my library books.

We got to the library and returned my books; this was one of the very few things I actually planned on doing. I also planned on finding a book that would tell us how to follow Historic RTE 66... of course the entire SE-L library and surrounding libraries had no such books. We settled on printing the wiki-travel guide... actually I settled on that, promptly found Dustin, and dragged him kicking and screaming from the new releases DVD section.

We left the library and I went to say bye to my Mom for the last time at Nestle in Solon, OH. It was messy and I won't go into graphic detail. Basically, we both cried... A LOT. She watched all the way out of Nestle's driveway and to the entrance ramp. When that was over we were finally free to travel wherever we liked; the only problem is we didn't know where we wanted to freely travel too. We had a few options: the first involved taking a small, slightly northern detour to and following rte 66 all the way. Dustin was highly opposed to this and made sure I knew it. Our other choice was to drive to Ox Vegas and visit friends. Dustin suggested we did this and stayed with friends or camped. Although I wanted in my heart of hearts to take RTE 66, He was driving so I said it was his choice. He immediately choose Ox and I felt a bit of disdain. I spent the first 20 minutes or so feeling a little crabby. About an hour after departure, I realized we were on the road with a direction ad purpose and for the first time, the stress and the tension began to float away. I felt a little euphoric and finally, a little excited.

We drove the familiar four hour car ride to Oxford. Upon entering, we visited my favorite family in the whole town, the Fishers. They graciously welcomed Dustin and I in their home, just as they had all four previous years. They fed us and we caught up over about an hour or so which was some of the best time spent on the trip thus far. We said our goodbyes when the girls were heading to bed and called Tom Shelley. Tom was the same as he's always been. Super kind, as laid back as ever, and of course, living with really cool roommates. We chatted and Tom offered us a place to stay for the night and he could never know how truly grateful we were to have that place for the night (THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, TOM!!!) We had to get one last good kick in Ox before we retired - we stopped early so we might as well have a good time. Jamie Bohannan, having got wind of our arrival, drove in to town for a reunion too long in the making! We went to see our friend Zach Douglas at Sigma Tau Gamma's house on High St. We of course, immediately commenced to drinking Bacardi following our huge hugs and "So good to see you!"s. A couple of beer pong games later (note: Zach and Laura are still undefeated,) we were giggling our way out the door and stumbling back to Tom's. Needless to say, we slept well that night and very much enjoyed our visit to Ox.

Thanks for reading, we miss you all already!

Stay tuned for installation #2, "Day 2: A Millionaire in the hand is worth... well, a million."

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Comments

[christine Andrews]

i wish westfield were on the way to CA!
I loved your blog, laura and dustin, and I hope you guys keep posting. Steve also possesses that special skill of knowing when I am hungry, even though I am annoyed every time he thinks my bad mood is attributable to hunger (and he's usually right). Have a fantastic journey!! We miss you soooooooooooooooo much and wish you all the best.