June 25, 2009

Start: Starved Rock State Park, Utica, Illinois
End: HQ – Reston, VA

Waking up to dozens of birds making unique and amazing sounds is actually quite pleasant – if only they had a snooze button. The 5:30 wake-up was made less unpleasant after half a quart of luscious chocolate milk, and after a lazy breaking of camp (everything thrown into the bed of the beast) wheels were rolling by 6am local time. For giggles I went ahead and plugged HQ into the Garmin and saw that in just 12 hours I could be home. Unfortunately the program was aiming me at Chicago and its rushhour so instead I was able to take state roads Illinois 23 south to 24 east and drove it, with the Garmin perpetual updating me with u-turn options, until I crossed into Indiana. Then I hopped on the interstate and rolled for a long while, seeing the hotel in Indianapolis where I lived for eight months 1999-2000.

Monitoring the olde crack-phone I needed to prepare and transmit some documents, so just west of Dayton I started searching for wireless, and because the nearest Starbucks in the 2006 Garmin was in Cincinnati, I pulled into a Holiday Inn. Unfortunately their wireless was password secured, so I had to chat, negotiate, and smile a lot at the women at the front desk to get the password, which they eventually shared. To save you the burden, if you are at the Holiday Inn in Englewood, OH the username is “Excellent” and the password is “Guest.”

The Garmin Nuvi surprised me when I pulled into Pennsylvania – I’ve done the 70 drive several times and expected to be put on the Pennsylvania turnpike but after some u-turns through construction sites I ended up on National Road. It was great that I was able to take a historic road, a beautiful drive, and the fastest route all in one! It was fun to drive where the speed limit was irrelevant as on the way up some mountains it was tough to get beyond third gear, while on the backside I’d be coasting with both feet on the break at 80mph.

Pics: a) even after putting on a long sleeve shirt and some sunblock - i ended up with a sunburn on my left hand; b) all that time on the road - not many opportunities for interesting, or attractive, pictures; c) the scourge of the neighborhood!

Day Miles: 796
Trip Miles: 3,398
People required if holding hands (4ft diameter) for hands-across-mack’s-trip: 4,485,360
Population of Croatia: 4,489,409
Percent of border of Croatia (land & sea borders) on this trip: .69.95%
Fifteen hour day – door to door average speed: 53.08 mph
States: 7 (IL, IN, OH, WV, PA, MD, VA)
Bananas consumed: 4
Starbucks in Dayton, OH (starbucks.com): 10
Starbucks visited since 6/7: 0
Cute cheese song: Taylor Swift, “love story”
Creepy cheese song: Duet “love story” of Taylor Swift and Def Leppard
Respective ages of Taylor Swift and Joe Elliot: 19, 49
Beast mileage at purchase (12/29/2006): 20,775
Current mileage: 73,664