Vacation 2010 Leg 1

So I’m trying a couple of new things this time around. I’ve recently identified that I require an ipad in order to survive. In order to prepare myself I’ve decided to post my vacation blog entirely from my iPhone. We’ll see how long this lasts. I think I may be too old to learn to thumb type and ignore basic punctuation and spelling rules, but I suppose time will tell.

Our 2010 “trip” started last night around 4:30 central time. Our destinations this year inlude Denver, the grand canyon, then finally Phoenix where my parents have recently “relocated” for their winters. We opted to drive since the thought of flying with Quin makes even a brave man cringe.

The original plan was to leave after Ethan’s tennis lesson at 5:30, but we found out later that tennis had been canceled, so I had designs on leaving by 3:00. Well, things rarely work out he way you think. Jenny has to run reports once a month at the beginning of the month. On this run, everything that could go wrong with those reports did. When all was said and done we didn’t get out of the house until 4:30. Even then, as we were trying to leave, Ethan fell while running to the car and had a boo boo that had to be tended to before we could go.

We managed to make it to Rockford by 6:00 in time to het so e dinner at some ghetto mall in the greater Rockford area. Ethan was treated to some typical suburban teenage language with m-er f-er this and that… I guess they are going to bear that eventually. Ethan heard it from me and my family years ago…

The plan was to drive all night and we accomplished that goal. We used a tested method of listening to a book on tape while we drove which really made the time go fast. I also employed a new technique of drinking a 5 hour energy drink which has kept me up through now. Everything seemed to work out well. We made it to Denver with two stops by 9:00 mountain time this morning.

A couple of observations from the road. Iowa is much more interesting than Illinois or Nebraska. They also have very nice rest areas with wifi and everything. At their least frequent they are spaced at 40 miles and most of the time they are at 20. Nebraska is just damn big and seems even moreso when you don’t even get into the state until 11:30. Lastly, as tempting as it might seem at the time, Sterling, Colorado is not a great place to stop for gas or food even though it is the first town of any size in Colorado. Gas is expensive, the water has nitrates, an the fii doesn’t taste all that good. Other than that it’s nice.

Today has been a bit if a blur. We went to Dave and busters, I tried to take a nap and failed. All in all it was a pretty good first day of vacation. It finally turned into a vacation at 5:00 tonight when I cracked my first Colorado beer.

Tomorrow should be nice regardless of what we do since Jenny and I will be able to amass more than two hours of sleep between us.

As an aside, this posting method is kind of painful. I can’t get as much on the page as I want to because this is so slow…. I’ll keep trying.