January 26, 2006

One week from today…






…when we’re parked at this Starbucks it will be 6:00 in the morning – an hour and fifteen minutes before sunrise and too dark to take a picture! But this is where we’ll be, our last stop in Richmond before we hit the road. We plan to be on I-64 West with the cruise control on by 6:30 AM. So when the sun rises around 7:15, we’ll be almost to Charlottesville. By lunchtime a week from today we’ll probably be almost to Charleston, WV and stopping for a bite to eat and the first of many, many tanks of gas. Hopefully by dinnertime on that day (Thursday, February 2) we’ll be pretty far west of here and finding a good place to spend the night, and hopefully it will have an internet connection so I can update this blog!


Packing is going smoothly, and I’ve got the car washed and the roof rack up. The car looks so shiny and beautiful in these pictures – I can’t imagine what it will look like when we return in March!


Just FYI, some people had inquired about our general route. Due to uncertainties about weather and road conditions and so forth it’s impossible to tell where we’ll be sleeping each night. But our approximate route will be:


Richmond, VA (N37º x W77º)

St. Louis, MO (N38º x W90º)

Denver, CO (N39º x W105º)

Cheyenne, WY (N41º x W105º)

Salt Lake City, UT (N41º x W112º)

Boise, ID (N44º x W116º)

Portland, OR (N45º x W122º)

Seattle, WA (N47º x W122º)

Vancouver, BC (N49º x W123º)

Whitehorse, YT (N61º x W135º)


According to my Trip Tiks from AAA, that route will take 4,761.9 miles. Of course, that doesn’t take into account stops for gas, food, coffee, restrooms, hotels, etc. I’ll be surprised if it’s less than 5,000 miles to get out there. I’ll have a lot of what my brother Shane referred to as “Zen time,” as in driving across Kansas and seeing a sign that says “State line, 423 miles” and there’s nothing but grass and fence and sky (hopefully not filled with snow clouds) as far as the eye can see.


I’ll post my location every night I’m able. I’ll give the address or whatever for “normal” people, and for you geeks (that would include all males in my immediate family, and a few others) I’ll give my location by latitude and longitude, as in the list above. If you don’t understand that but you’re interested, there will be two numbers: an “N” with a number after it and a “W” with a number after it. “N” is northern latitude, or degrees north of the equator. As the number gets larger, we’re going farther north. “W” is western longitude, or degrees west of Greenwich (London) England. As the number gets larger, we’re going farther west. The numbers following the degrees are just smaller and smaller “slices” of a degree. Here are some approximate examples of places, just to help you get oriented:


The Equator:

The North Pole: N90º

My house - Richmond, VA: N37º 36’ 09.8” x W77º 33’ 16.0”

Key West: N24º x W81º

Atlanta: N33º x W84º

Chicago: N41º x W87º

Seattle: N47º x W122º

Vancouver: N49º x W123º

Whitehorse: N60º x W135º

On the chart of our route that appear near the top, notice the number after “N” grows larger as we go North and the number after “W” grows larger as go West.

Also, if you’re not from Richmond, or if you are from Richmond and you didn’t see yesterday’s Richmond Times Dispatch, Mark Holmberg wrote a very nice article in the Metro section about the dogs and me and this trip (among other things). You can read the complete text of the article if you click the link that says “VIEW MY COMPLETE PROFILE” near the upper right hand corner of this blog. Once there, look to the left and under our picture (that picture was taken by Shane up at Mom and Dad’s house around Christmas) there is a space that says “Contact.” Below that, click on the link that says “My Web Page.” You’ll see a couple of pictures of Ivory and Nicky and a picture of my house below them. Just go down a little bit farther and you’ll see links to three nice articles that Mark has written in the past. The one from yesterday’s paper is up there now too.

I may be updating a little more frequently between now and the start of the trip – no promises, though. Until then, have a great day,

Jay

January 17, 2006

Sixteen days until we leave...







January 17, 2006

Sixteen days left until departure. I haven’t posted anything in quite a while so I just thought I’d put up a picture or two and a quick note. One picture is of the stack of boxes I’m going to be taking on the trip – pretty boring, and they’re all still empty. But another picture is of the James River in downtown Richmond. I took it last Thursday (January 12) when Tom and I were down there.

Packing is going well (even though the boxes are still empty) and the rest of the trip preparations are about where they need to be with sixteen days left. I still need to wash the car and get an oil change and put the roof rack up, but we’re well prepared. Sometimes it seems like the time is flying by but sometimes it feels like it’s going really… really… slow…. But it will be here before we know it.

January 02, 2006

Hospital visit - blog test day 7

January 2, 2006

It’s the seventh day of a seven day trial period of blogging. And tomorrow, Tuesday, January 3 marks departure day minus 30 – tomorrow will be thirty days until departure.

Today Ivory and I went down to MCV to do Pet Therapy and I took this picture of him sitting outside before we went in. I took some more pictures a couple of hours later when we were finished but he was lying down in all of them!

An old friend of ours named Ty was up on the seventh floor playing a video game in the hall. Ty will be six years old in April and Ivory and I have known him for his whole life. He’s lived about 9/10 of his life at MCV and he’s an excellent person. He was dressed in full Spiderman regalia, including a Spiderman shirt complete with black plastic spiderwebs attaching his upper arms to his chest, like wings. He was sitting in the hall playing a Spiderman video game, pausing occasionally to give Ivory a treat. At one point after a particularly hair-raising feat of web-slinging, he looked up at me and said “I almost just got killed!” I said “Thank goodness you’re already in a hospital.” He didn’t even blink and said “I meant Spiderman almost just got killed.”

January 01, 2006

Happy New Year, 2006

January 1, 2006

It’s January 1 and normally we do something kind of exciting but today was unremarkable – but enjoyable. For New Year’s Eve we spent a thrilling evening watching the Dukes of Hazzard Reunion Special. If you missed it, you really, really missed something very… special. Anyway, we stayed in last night because we didn’t want to miss getting up early for our weekly Sunday Morning River Walk. And the only picture I took this entire day was on The Walk when I took this shot. It’s taken from a place on the riverbank in Pony Pasture I call “The Altar” and I have felt much more spiritually moved when I’m there than I have at many other more conventional altars in my life.

Pat and I also had a great ride today, nearly two and a half hours, then Larry and Jennifer and Inder and I went to see Walk the Line, which was fantastic. And the Redskins won and went 10-6 and clinched a wildcard spot! Nice improvement over last year’s 6-10 record. Welcome back, Joe Gibbs.

Happy New Year. I hope all of you have a fantastic 2006.