Day 0: The First Step

Before I start anything else, I'll just go ahead and explain what this blog is about:

Around January, my good friend, Geries, decided that this summer would be a good time to do a cross-country road trip, and suggested it to me. At first I thought it would be pretty cool, but not something that would be feasible, but the more I thought on it, the more I realized that this was it-- it was now or never. That's a little dramatic, but it isn't far from the truth, since Geries and I will soon be graduating from Georgia Tech, and will be off to the "real world" where three-month blocks of freedom seldom crop up. So, long story short, I decided to join Geries, and we began planning our adventure.

Since the decision was made early on, and the spring semester was in full swing, we put off much of the planning for the trip, but the thing to solidify first was the list of destinations. While it would have been great to spend the whole summer on the road, other obligations and the rapidly increasing price tag led us to settle for about a month. With that in mind, we came up with this list of destinations:

• New Orleans, Louisiana
• Houston, Texas
• Roswell/Albuquerque, New Mexico
• Grand Canyon, Arizona
• Las Vegas, Nevada
• Los Angeles, California
• Sequoia, California
• Yosemite, California
• San Francisco, California
• Seattle, Washington
• Yellowstone
• Mount Rushmore, North Dakota
• Chicago, Illinois
• Detroit, Michigan
• Boston, Massachusetts
• New York City, New York
• Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• Washington D.C.

With 18 destinations, about 2 nights per destination, 35 nights on the road, 8451 miles to drive, and 147 hours (6.125 days) spent in the car, this was looking to be one hell of a trip. And now that we depart tomorrow, we've been working hard to get everything ready for the journey-- including starting this blog.

We'll be updating this blog on a daily basis (Mostly. We'll be camping some, so those posts will have to wait) with our location, some pictures and video, and what we've been up to.

And I'll start with today! We spent a total of about 12 hours making sure the car was in order, getting last minute supplies, packing things, and getting our bikes ready for the trip. Our bike rack got some preliminary testing, and looks like it will hold. Both Geries and I were skeptical at first, but it turned out to be rock solid, and there's nothing to worry about. After some quick trips all around the metro-Atlanta area we gathered all the supplies we needed, performed our necessary bike/car maintenance, and packed everything up for tomorrow.

Tomorrow we set off! See you guys in a month!