Hooray, we made it!

Nicole and I have made it to Connecticut - Torrington, to be more exact. After our brief trip to Chicago, we decided to drive all the way here, overnight. It took us about 14 hours to do the drive from Chicago to Torrington, making Mapquest surprisingly accurate in its estimate.

Connecticut so far is well. My sister and her kid flew in today so it's been a bit of a family reunion. Our plans right now are to visit family, and then either go camping out on the Atlantic coast (weather permitting) or go down to NYC for a day of sightseeing. A day certainly isn't enough time, but we've got a list of things we want to see.

The trip home will probably involve making a stop at the Quick Stop in Leonardo, New Jersey, and then heading out to Columbus, Ohio to visit a friend of Nicole's. From there, we'll be off to Mt. Rushmore (and the Badlands of South Dakota), with a possible stop at Wall Drug. And, time permitting, a stop at the Sturgis biker rally. We'll take it as we go.

Still truckin'

Nicole and I are now in Chicago - and I'm typing this from the North Michigan Apple Store in downtown Chicago. What a gorgeous store... really, really gorgeous. And, they have a free Internet cafe. I wish I could tell the woman across the table from me that her music stinks and that she should USE HEADPHONES, but oh well.

So anyway, the drive so far has been pretty good, but traffic in Chicago sucks to holy high hell. As soon as we're done here, we're going to head off to the Sears Tower (sorry, I just have to go to the tallest building here!) for some sightseeing. And then, I think we're going to drive the rest of the way to Connecticut.

Traffic oasises (or is it oases?) in Illinois are pretty dang interesting, although it seems like either the gas station or the restaurant is always being upgraded/replaced. One had a working gas station, but no working restaurant, and vice versa. Interesting.

Drivers in Chicago are nucking futs. So far, we've seen three cars passing us on the shoulder. This is unheard of in Seattle. Drivers in Wisconsin weren't much better, although they didn't pass in the shoulder. Instead, they just tailgated. Hey buddy, I'm doing 90 in a 65 and you're still tailgating me?! Sheesh!

Alright, I think it's time to go now. Next update might be from Connecticut. We'll see.

Makin' progress...

As I type this, Nicole is speedily driving us toward our next destination - Minneapolis. There we're going to make two quick stops at each of the local Apple Stores. And then after that, we'll try to find someplace to relax for the night.

Last night we camped in Medora, ND and left the campground at 8am. Due to the bumps we hit in Idaho and Montana, we made a stop in Bismarck to have the car's dangling tailpipe looked at. It needed to be replaced, so we had the guy put on a new tailpipe and rear muffler. That set us back by about an hour and $75.

It's hard to appreciate the incredible diversity in landscapes until you drive the country for yourself. Just yestrday we crossed the continental divide and started seeing some spectacular rock formations in North Dakota. Today we've seen the flat wind-swept prairies of ND and the rolling farmlands od Minnesota. Very cool.

1720 miles down. Many more to go.

The trip has begun

Right now I'm sitting in a hotel in Missoula, Montana. It's a little after 10pm, and we spent a good 10 hours on the road today. Car's doing just fine, and getting better than expected fuel economy. We stopped in Yakima today to visit Nicole's parents and then hauled ass here. I didn't think we'd get this far, but the real test comes tomorrow. We have Montana and North Dakota to negotiate, and if we can get to the far side of North Dakota (or at least through half of it), I'll be very pleased.

Getting this hotel room was a bit of a challenge... when we called, the concierge said this room had just opened up. We got lucky - most of the other ones we looked for were all smoking rooms. Not good.

Observations so far:

- Miner's in Yakima makes very good burgers. I always try to go there whenever I'm in the Yak.
- Ellensburg to Spokane is really boring, but the rolling wheat fields are very pretty.
- Lake Coeur d'Alene is unbelievably beautiful. Like, wow.
- I-90 in Idaho sucks, and is very rough. There's quite a bit of work being done in the Idaho panhandle and western Montana. Never before have I seen an entire side of a freeway closed while the other was turned into a two-lane highway. It certainly worked, although it slowed us down a little bit.
- Nicole noticed this, and I agree - people here in Montana are very very nice. Even with all of Nicole's piercings, my "No, I will not fix your computer." t-shirt, and Nicole's "RTFM" t-shirt, people here have been incredibly nice to us so far.

So, more to come as soon as I get more Internet access. Connecticut here we come!

Interesting car concept struggles to get some traction...

Even though it's Ferrari red, zooms from zero to 60 in four seconds, and has a sensuous black leather dash with the same Motech data display found in Grand Prix race cars, this is not your typical little red sports car.

A car like this would be a lot of fun for my morning commute into downtown Seattle, but it would certainly suck on tomorrow's big cross-country trip.

Saturday (the big trip) approaches...

This Saturday, Nicole and I will be setting out from Seattle on a cross-country road trip to Torrington, Connecticut, to visit my dad and all the rest of the family out there. I'm a Washingtonian, through and through, as I was born and raised here. Still, because my sister and nephew are flying out there, I wanted to be there at the same time she and the boy is. Since my parents were divorced six years ago, I haven't seen my dad nearly enough.

I'm getting pretty nervous at the thought of driving 3000+ miles (each way) in my aging 1995 VW Jetta (it'll turn 104,000 miles by Saturday). I've recently had a fuel filter replaced, and just had the tires rotated and oil changed today (changed the oil myself, even). Even still, this should be a trip to remember.

My parents moved out west from Connecticut in 1977, after getting married, to escape their overbearing parents. They settled in a small town in North-Central Washington called Twisp and by the end of their first day in town, my dad had a job with a logging crew. I was born in August of the following year. My parents briefly moved back to Connecticut for about eight months before relocating once again to Southwest Washington, were I spent my youth and adolescence. Eastern America seems so alien to me sometimes, especially coming from the "left coast."

Our planned route is to go through Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York before finally entering Connecticut. On the way back, the route will look similar, but we're planning to go through South Dakota so we can see Mt. Rushmore (and maybe even stop in Sturgis for the rally). I'm really looking forward to getting to Chicago, as I really want to take a look at the Chicagolands from the top of the Sears Tower. I imagine on the way we'll probably make some slight detours for sightseeing, but that's what I'm hoping for.

Once on the east coast, Nicole wants to see the sun rise over the atlantic. So we'll be making a trip to Massachusetts for that. I don't think we'll have time to go to NYC, unfortunately. Another time.

We've given ourselves about 2 1/2 weeks for this trip. It's going to be grueling, but I hope it'll be a great experience, hopefully somewhere along the lines of our Vegas trip in July 2001.

Cellphone coverage between Billings and Fargo is pretty non-existent as far as I can tell, so unless we happen to find some WiFi or Internet cafes, I don't think you'll be hearing to much from me. I do plan on writing about the trip and posting it to my journal when I can.

I welcome any suggestions on things/places to see, so long as they're along/near I-74, I-84, I-90, or I-94. I think that's all of the major ones :-)

Group sues Everett, Wash., over Ten Commandments display

A Washington, D.C.-based group sued the city of Everett on Wednesday for refusing to remove a 6-foot tall granite monument bearing the Ten Commandments from city property.

The story...

It makes me happy to see lawsuits like these. Yay 1st Amendment!

Woof?

It's always great to find a funny picture like this one. Poor Bush - after screwing over the world for the past 2 1/2 years, now it looks like you're beginning to go to town on your poor dog.

Yar! Thar be brats on the field, matey!

Pirate fined for assaulting sausage

My favorite line: "...Simon took a half swing at the Italian sausage character, hitting her from behind and causing her to tumble. When she fell, she knocked over the woman dressed as the hot dog."

Good thing I'm going to be making a couple stops in Milwaukee at the end of the month during Nicole's and my trip to Connecticut. This could get interesting.

Damn crappy [insert country here] software!

After reading this article over on Salon, I wonder if you'll hear me sometime in the future complaining about crappy software primarily programmed by outsourced programmers.

I think it'd be nice if there were some sort of information available with the software that said "some outsourced programming from India, Ireland, Russia, etc. was used in the creation of this software." Of course, I don't think it'd do much to change my buying habits, considering I drive a German-designed, Mexican-made car, but still.

I've been lucky, so far. My company isn't outsourcing any programming or support jobs to other companies/countries. But, I have had been on some calls with other companies that do outsource to other countries. I'm not knocking the competency of the other programmers, I just worry that programmers could be going the way of the skilled laborer of yore.

If outsourcing really takes off and India becomes a major white-collar industrial power, are we going to start bashing them like we did Japan back in the 70s-80s-90s?