The Paper Ladder

So this is the first time we’ve been able to check into the website to look at the blog. We were wondering why all the good commentary stopped and just discovered that the faulty iPhone client for WordPress failed to publish our last 2 posts from the road. That’s fine though…we didn’t have much to say other than to briefly recap:

• The Grand Canyon
• The long drive into HB
• Our burning hatred for Verizon as a company
• Lucy’s confusion from being in a new room every night for a week and a half.

We still don’t have our stuff or a reliable internet connection so we can’t update too much here. But we do have tons of photos and a good recap to go through the trip over the last 2 weeks. We’re supposed to be up and running with phones and all the internets tomorrow so maybe then we’ll have a chance to put more up here.

Back to working in an uncomfortably hot coffee shop with internet connections as reliable as 2 tin cans over a taut string…

We finally took a day off from driving after 6 straight days on the road speckled with night time sight seeing and socializing. And by “day off,” we mean a 4 hour rafting trip followed by a 4 hour hike in 100 degree shadeless heat. Needless to say, we’re a bit tired again today.

But Moab, UT and Arches National Park are pretty breathtaking places to take a day off, even if that day off is spent tramping up cliffs in the back country mountains. Take a look…

We’ve been off the air out here in the southwest for 2 days but hopefully will find a little more energy, time, and Internet to put something together tomorrow in the Grand Canyon. Oh and more contests, too. Lovin’ the participation so far.

It’s 6:43 in New Mexico and we’re already on the road. Lucy crawled back in bed as we were trying to pack her dog bed. She’s already asleep in the back.

Yesterday was a long day on the road. It started off in the beautiful countryside of south Texas, then flattened out and got really boring, long, flat, endless-road boring. Texas and New Mexico have these huge fields of oil derricks as far as you can see and the whole area stinks like tar. I have one thing to say: Back off Jersey, America!

Just when we were both close to falling asleep at the wheel, we drove through Lincoln National Forest which was absolutely gorgeous. The temperature dropped about 10 degrees and the views were amazing! We’ll post albums online when we get to Cali.

A little over ten hours and we pulled into Alamogordo and hustled to see the sunset in White Sands National monument. White Sands reminded me a lot of my experience seeing the leaning tower of Pisa. You get all the way there and think “Yep, it really is leaning… Ready to go?” The sand really was white.

But, the sunset was gorgeous. We saw a bunch of families with kids there sledding! It looked awesome. I was so tempted to ask for a turn.

I’ll close with an exciting announcement: Maggie Nokes you are a winner! We passed over 600 trucks in Texas and then got tired of counting.

Today’s contest: guess the grossest roadkill we passed. (be careful following up with this, it’s really gross)

Caption me. Some ideas:

-”fastest way for Ned to call his friend Ned”
-”efficient summer college kids available”
-”apply within for real life internship experience managing hourly motel”

Keep ‘em comin…

Congratulations Mike Matthews with 109!

Now that we have a captive audience, we will be thrilled with anyone who comes up with a good way to pass time. We’re 5 hours from White Sands and bored.

Also, this is Texas; we passed over 100 trucks in the first hour. Keep trying.

Monday morning is much more enjoyable driving through the country side. Who would have thought we’d like Texas! It turns out that the countryside is gorgeous here. Trees, cacti, mountains, streams and picturesque entrances to each ranch with the Texas flag waving proudly, of course.

Despite our suprise, Texas is still Texas which brings us to today’s contest! How many trucks will we see today in Texas? Here’s the scene: we’re driving on small country roads from Austin to Alamogordo, NM that are low in traffic in general. We’re not counting parking lots, SUVs, or 18 wheelers. There is a very authentically Texas prize for this one!

Results of the high temp contest will be released at 3pm. Get your final guesses in!

Right now most of you are settling in at your desks, first cup of coffee in hand, inbox skimmed and ready to see what happened on the road trip over the weekend. It’s ok with us that the only reason you’re here is that Banana Republic isn’t having a sale this morning.

We’ve been playing catch up too. Being on the road and cramming in everything you can of a city into one night is a bit demanding so here’s the last few days in review….

Friday: Charlotte -> Atlanta

Jess is an advertiser’s dream.  She’s an 18-39 professional female, a targeted demographic.  If you have a face lotion, a perfume, a pair of jeans, anything in a catchy ad, she’s convinced she needs it. This is her natural instinct which she’s had to wrestle into submission with maturity and financial stability. So, it struck her that the signs on the roadside reading “Abbot Farms – Peaches! Boiled Peanuts!” would be some magical rural mystery tour of southern delight filled with all things Georgia.

Much to her dismay, Jess was feeling a little

after

really just turned about to be…

a truck stop:   .

At least the Mr. Waffle in the background offered her the solace of some sweets to soften the blow.

Friday night, Leslie threw a party for Rob to welcome him to his new digs in Atlanta. What’s more fun than crashing someone else’s party? And crash it we did:

(FYI, all the following videos got uploaded at half the recorded frame rate by accident and we have to hit the road. We’ll edit later but for now, just fast-forward to the end of this one with about 20 seconds left to see the action and be patient with the 2nd one)

Graham McDonald introduced us all to a new lawn game: Adult Jenga. Get your collective mind out of the gutter; it’s more like giant Jenga or macro Jenga where each pieces is a section of a 2×4. Just make sure to keep dogs and open toes away from a 50-lb timbering pile of wood when someone loses.

Friday night also brought another first: Leslie ditching the shackles of vegetarianism (aka wussitarianism depending on pronunciation) and diving headlong into a delicious hamburger:

Saturday: Atlanta -> New Orleans

We kicked off the morning after the party with a drive through Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Yep, killer scenery on this route. Actually I found a picture of Bo Jackson receiving the Heisman hung on a wall in a rest stop that I thought was pretty cool. It hit us that the trip is still a bit surreal when we realized we were eating Saturday lunch at a seafood shack along the Gulf in Alabama. Not your normal day.

Nawlins greeted us with vigor Saturday night and we stayed just southwest of the French Quarter but within a few block walk. We bought some more contest prizes (get your entries in!) and ate oysters, shrimp, beignets, and crawfish. And we drank lots of cheap Bourbon St beers too. We’ve been regaling people with details of our trip and one bartender in New Orleans even recommended that we move to Hermosa Beach if we hadn’t found a place yet. Funny.

We’ll get to Sunday (Austin) and more details from the weekend when we get to New Mexico today.

It’s hot here.

WP just ate my last post so here goes the next try. New Orleans to Austin across LA and TX is none too exciting. Not much to write about other than more good BBQ and the heat.

There are lots of stories, pics, and vids to post that we haven’t gotten around to yet but hopefully we’ll get a chance tonight in Austin.

We do have time for a contest today: what’s the hottest temp we saw on our trip from Nawlins to Austin? If the attached pic doesn’t show up, it’s a snapshot of the dash gauge reading 100.

We’re assuming our reader base took the weekend off from following us so we’re taking our sweet time getting the weekend recap up. More to come…

So we’re a little late on putting out day 2’s contest but better late than never. This one will be a little more challenging than day 1 though.

For those who don’t know, we’re driving a 2006 VW Jetta from coast to coast. It’s a 2.5 liter 5 cylinder engine and we’ll assume 4,000 lbs with everything in it. The gas tank holds 14.5 gallons of regular unleaded.

What will our total gas bill be to get us to Hermosa Beach? We’ve been acquring prizes across the south east so let’s get some banter.

Last night was spent in Atlanta staying with Rob and Leslie. They threw us a party (even though I guess it was technically a party for Rob who just moved into ATL). Lots of good stuff to share from yesterday but I’ve got to put it all together from the laptop instead of the iPhone later today. Stay tuned. Seacrest, out.

The first day on the road was pretty uneventful. But, there are a few things I learned:

1. Jess doesn’t like car trips (already knew this but she confirmed) (audio)

2. I am a boring car companion after about 35 minutes

3. People will like your blog more if you offer them prizes for reading
4. Large plates of food make me sleepy:

5. There are funny people in Arlington, my old home place

Here’s our route from yesterday:

Day 1: DC – Charlotte – - Everytrail

We’ll add more later but this morning’s been spent fighting with WordPress. I should probably get a blog that works.

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