First Day on the Road

Well hi everyone! Today was a very eventful day, to put it mildly. It was our "departure from DC" day, our "first day of tour day", our "fast food is still fun" day, our "everyone gets to drive a 15 passenger van for the first time" day, and our "wow, is this really what we'll be doing for the next 7 months" day.

We departed from the Kennedy Center around 10am, I said goodbye to my mom (the generous and wonderful woman who got me through the past two days without pulling all my hair out, along with my superman dad who helped me carry many loads of my crap to the car...thanks mom and dad!), and lugged all my stuff into one of the white vans. I have a regular size suitcase, a smaller carry-on size suitcase, a backpack for the car (with my laptop in it) and my guitar case. The vans are wonderful. No, really. We are SO lucky to have two vans for our tour, so everyone has a bench to themselves. They are long enough that you can lay down, extremely comfortably, and nap for extended periods of time (as I did several times today).

As per equity rules, we stop every two hours for a ten minute pee break (ok, so it doesn't say pee break in the manual or anything, but anyone who knows me and my small bladder knows that that is all that's on my mind after 2 hours in the car--show me the potty!) and we stop for an hour lunch break, and an hour dinner break. These breaks can be overruled if everyone int the van votes to drive on, or to take a shorter break for lunch (as we chose to do today)...these vetoed breaks can really shorten the trip, and we arrived in Dayton, Ohio at 6:30 even though we were allotted until 10pm for our travel day! Super duper...

Along the way we had many adventures already! The first being the sitting of the word "pop" on the sign stating "Beer and Pop warehouse" in Pennsylvania...I love when people say "pop" for soda...it's such a strange sight for this south-eastern girl. Then, would you believe...as we pulled up to a BP gas station in Ohio around 5:45pm, right before we reached our destination, a long trailer pulled up at the pump right next to us, carrying 2 beautiful equestrian specimens!!! I jumped out of the drivers seat to ask if I could pet the beautiful "babies". The owner gladly obliged, and even opened the little gated windows so they could poke their heads out and say hello. One turned out to be a mule, his big ears giving him away. He got a nice little nip at my shoulder when I was posing for a picture with them(it's okay, I was probably salty from sweating in the heat...horses love that salt). Any day that involves me being able to touch a horse is a good, good day.

Oh, and you might notice from the pictures that I cut 12 inches off my hair yesterday! Making this tour a new beginning of many sorts...this short do will make wig wearing and van traveling much easier...and I love it. :)

Tomorrow we're off to Indiana for tech...there's a waterpark in the hotel supposedly...I cannot WAIT.