Ok, so this isn’t exactly what I planned when I was leaving Amsterdam. According to the pipe dream at the time, I should be rotting in an Iranian jail by now. Instead I have hit the road to travel across America – also not a bad idea!
As I mentioned earlier, my friend Lindalee suggested this roadtrip, since she would be between jobs and I am, as we all know, an unemployed shiftless bum. Surprisingly, it looks like it’s actually going to happen, although due to tonsillectomies (hers), relocations (both of us), nasty head cold (me), and wedding photo editing (me again), it’s been delayed a couple of days.
I finished editing Abbie and Dersk’s wedding photos a couple days ago, then spent another day getting them in various formats, uploaded to my website, burned to DVDs, and stuck in the mail back to Amsterdam. I think I spent about 20 hours photographing the bachelor party, HHH wedding, and wedding ceremony, around 35 hours editing the 1200 raw photos down to 435 finished shots, and another 10 hours packaging up the results. I’m glad it’s DONE (although I still have the “fun” HHH wedding shots to go through).
10:40: the movers were supposed to deliver my stuff from Amsterdam “probably around 7 or 8” this morning… I’m still waiting. I delayed the trip a day in part to take advantage of this, so I’m starting to get annoyed with the additional delay. Not sure if there is anything in it that will be essential on the trip, but at least a few of my secondary camera lenses will be nice.
Ok, the afternoon got a little blurry. The movers finally came and dropped of all my stuff around noon-thirty. I hopped in the shower. I realized they forgot the major portion of my desk. Called them, left messages. They found it in the truck, which was already halfway to Tennessee. Fine, whatever, they’d bring it in a week or so. Rooted through my stuff from Amsterdam, found my good sunglasses, some camera lenses, my dart set, and a few other nice-to-have things, and finally hit the road to Tipp City!
Stopped by the storage building to look for any AAA maps I had from the last version of this trip, then the bank in Chillicothe to withdraw oodles of cash from the Amsterdam account and turn around at deposit it here, a Bacconater (ugh, I know) from Wendy’s, and got to Tipp City in time to have a lovely dinner with Lindalee and her parents.
Went to Meijers for some groceries for the road, went to bed around 24:00. Writing this in short sentences and phrases since I finished it up the next day in Hays, Kansas, after being awake since 6am and driving 400 of the 900 miles we covered today. More on that… later! It’s an awesome trip so far! Oh, except I can’t get it to insert photos correctly, so the blurry photo of the St. Louis arch as we zipped at 70mph will have to wait.
Oh, and by the way, Yay America! Woohoo!
