Made It!

After a long, but completely awesome road trip with my BFF, Melissa Schneider, I have arrived in the beautiful, but very rainy state of Connecticut. (For those of you who read my last blog about Ireland, Melissa was the one I dressed up in a cast and feather head-dress when she broke her ankle. You may look at it at saradingman.blogspot.com)

Here's how the trip started:

Lacey and I, like complete idiots, ran the Colfax half marathon. Remind me to

never to that again, no matter how much anyone in my life tries to convince me. If you are wondering, the tutus are a costume, we do not dress like that all the time, and our team name was the Hot Cakes in honor of our love for cake. Our team is in no way fast, although we got a lot of compliments on our lovely outfits, and will not be attending races any longer than a 10k in the future!

After the race, and my desire to vomit subsided, the Hot Cakes, the Ding-parents, Melissa, and Tucker (my dog) met at Taco-Mex to enjoy one final relleno before we hit the road. The best aspect of that part of the day was when Mel forgot her Blackberry, drove all the way back to her apartment only to find that it was packed right where it should have been in the back of the car. And so begins one funny quote book!

After a long and entertaining drive to Omaha, we stopped for the night. The entertainment was provided by my favorite Nebraskan, Jeff Darst. He is the Rainman of Nebraska highway exits. He knows every town that corresponds to each and every exit in the state. It is amazing. And weird. But I loved it, and Melissa and I were very into the whole thing, and tested him the entire way across the state.

Day 2 took us to the super-fun town of Fort Wayne, Indiana. The drive to Fort Wayne, however was not so fun. Here's what Melissa and I looked like after the construction and ensuing lunacy that happened on the Chicago highways:

You get the hint. It was pretty scary.

In Fort Wayne, we caught up with my long time buddy, Baldondo. He is an amazing friend from my Drum Corps days of yore. His girlfriend is also amazing and makes a kick-ass pitcher of sangria. Of which we drank 2 batches and then finished off the remaining red wine while we caught up till 330 am. It was so much fun, I loved every second!

After Ft. Wayne, we pretty much just drove our hung-over behinds to Bridgeport, Connecticut, where I now reside. The high point of that part of the drive was the section through upstate New York. If you ever have the chance to drive on the Palisades Parkway, you should. It is, to date, the prettiest drive I have ever taken.

I would like to send a big shout-out to the Kriedermans, who made us a bad-ass music mix that took up 9 entire cd's, all of which we heard, Jen Crownover and Heather Shockley, whose amazing travel snacks fed us the entire way, and last, but not least, Kathy Griffin and Tina Fey for entertaining us to the point of tears with your hilariousness in your audio books.