We woke up in Sioux City Iowa and someone from the hotel had slipped a piece of paper under the door. It was a printout of our bill for the room, and on the bill was a $40+ charge for a long distance phone call. Before I left Miami I had noted local numbers to dial to get on the innernets at each place I thought we would be staying. The problem was that on the beach you have to dial all 10 digits of a number even if you’re calling next door. In Sioux City Iowa, you will get charged for a long distance call if you dial all 10 digits. I tried explaining that I didn’t make a long distance call at all, but they pretty much said “We don’t believe you. You dialed 10 digits so it must be long distance!” I wasn’t happy.
Our first stop after leaving the hotel was Wal-mart for jerky and Red Bull. here’s a dumb video from the parking lot. (oh hay I wore that shirt today!) I had wanted Kim to take a PICTURE of me draining the water out of the ice chest… I thought it would look like I was peeing (not really, but you know…) and that would be funny. Instead, she made a video clip of Brandon putting ice in my shorts. Some friends, huh?
We got on the road and I don’t remember how it happened exactly… Either I saw a sign for a John Deer dealer, or we had to pee, or Kim saw their sign, or something… but we ended up at Stoner Drug in Hamburg Iowa. It was actually a cool place with a soda fountain deal in the back. We spent quite a while there just looking at stuff (and peeing!). Oh, I remember what happened… They had trouble with their credit card processing thing and that took like seriously 20+ minutes to get sorted out so I could pay for my Stoner Drug sweatshirt (and probably jerky and Red Bull!). Brandon got a Stoner Drug t-shirt, and I can’t remember what Kim bought. On the way into this town we passed a John Deere dealer, and before we even left Washington I had been saying I wanted to stop at a John Deere place somewhere in the midwest so I could buy a hat or something. Well, on our way back to the interstate I asked Brandon to stop at Athen Implement. Kim and Brandon stayed in the truck and I walked in. I was like deja vu all over again. I walked in and all of the old white people (like 5 of them) stopped their conversations and just stared at me. I was waiting for one of them to be like “zOMG BROWN GUY! GANG MEMBER!!!” or something. I had a look around and found a hat I wanted to get, but there was nobody at the counter and nobody else there seemed to want to help me so I just left. (NOT with the hat in hand… I actually never took it off of the rack) I was kind of upset because I’ve been dealing with people like that all of my life and there isn’t much I can do about it. I mean, I realize I’m not the shiniest person on the block, but I’m not a hood either. I wonder what would have happened if Kim had gone in with me. Or what if I had a white girl on my arm?? It’s like, if I can nut up and walk into this old-timer’s establishment, they should at least be able to be cordial. If they only knew how white I really am! I mean, I probably could have schooled them on a lot of farm things. I WAS A STATE LEVEL LIVESTOCK/DAIRY COW JUDGE AND TRACTOR DRIVER!! Wow, remembering that kind of got me fired up. Everyone was so cool and nice at Stoner Drug, but not at this joint. (see what I did there??) Anyways…

We eventually passed into Missouri, or as I like to call it, Misery, because even though I grew up on a farm and still have an affection for rural america, at this point I was feeling Ocean Drive a lot more than dirt roads.

EXACTLY!!

If I remember correctly, this was our longest driving day, and on top of that, we didn’t have any cool destinations to hit on our way to St. Louis. To illustrate how boring the drive was, Kim drew ME! I think she did a pretty good job.

Oh, St. Louis! Once we (almost) finally got to where we were going, we hit traffic. And I mean BAD traffic! We were stopped in the same spot for so long, but something cool happened… We’re sitting there and we’re like WFT why aren’t we going anywhere?? and all of a sudden a car hauls ass past us on the shoulder and then like 767657 cop cars went by chasing the car. It was awesome!

T
his is Kim with her friend Jamie. We stayed at his place in St. Louis.

This is Sadie chewing on the fake poop Brandon bought at Wall Drug. Brandon thought it would be funny to play a joke on Jamie by setting the fake poop out on his carpet by the front door for him to find in the morning. But what actually happened was funnier/more embarrassing for us! One of Jamie’s roommates (that we had not yet met) came home after Brandon had placed the poop by the door. When we heard the keys in the lock, Brandon jumped up to grab the fake poop, since the joke wasn’t intended for a stranger. Well, the roommate opened the door and Brandon was right there. The roommate (I forget his name) was like… “What’s up” and Brandon’s response was “Just playing with poop.” as he tossed it up in the air and caught it again. It was like, OH MAN! You just made us look like a bunch of stupids! but we had a pretty good laugh over it.
The next morning Sadie had played a joke on Brandon with the fake poop… She had chewed it up and made a huge mess with the little pieces!
More pictures here!

I like to start my stories at the start, but in this instance it’s kind of hard to say where the start really is. Taking it to an extreme I guess we’d have to go all the way back to 1989 when I had brain surgery twice in 2 weeks and missed like the first 6 weeks of my freshman year in high school. That eventually led to me leaving Yakima (and my parents!) at the end of the 9th grade and moving to Othello so I could be with all of my old friends. It was during my sophomore (or maybe junior) year that I happened to sit in on a presentation of Walla Walla Community College on college day or at a college fair or something. Hearing about their “Irrigation Technology” program stuck with me and after a 2nd senior year and still not having enough credits to graduate, I decided to take methods tutor melbourne services before I was over high school and moved to Walla Walla. I started classes in the fall of 1994 and one of my classmates/new friends was Brian Weinmann. The following fall Brian had a new roommate in Brandon from Prosser. Brandon and I quickly became great friends. In the spring of 1997 Brandon graduated from WWCC and moved to Pullman to attend WSU. At the end of 1997 I moved to South Beach and after 8+ months of vacationing, I started working at Lazerland. That’s where I met Chad and eventually his sister Kim.
So fast forward to the spring of 2000, and Brandon is graduating from WSU. Somehow we stayed in touch through the years and I had been dying for someone from Washington to come visit me on the beach. As a graduation present from his family, Brandon flew to Miami to hang out with me for a week or something. I didn’t have a car so I asked Chad to make an airport run with me. Kim tagged along too. Matter of fact, I think we went in her car. That was when Kim met Brandon.

Kim and Brandon on the night they met.

Kim claims that she didn’t really like Brandon that much when she first met him, but it looks like she’s getting pretty friendly with him here. (hey, who’s that big guy on the left? NICE VISOR, DORK!!) Brandon flew home a day or 2 later.

On the 2nd weekend of December in 2001 I flew back to Washington for Family X-mas. Flights from Ft. Lauderdale to Seattle were crazy cheap! I mean, my round trip airfare was $105.50 and I told Brandon that he should come back down for a visit. His airfare was $111.50! My parents drove me back to Seattle so I could fly home and I met up with Brandon there. We flew to Florida together, and I had asked Kim to pick us up at the airport. She claims that when she saw him at the airport that she could tell that there was something different about Brandon and that she liked him then.

I don’t even know who that guy in the hat is! He just appeared in the shot.

Needless to say, a lot of Brandon’s time in Florida was spent with Kim. Then he flew home and a couple of months Kim flew to Washington to visit Brandon. And then he flew here a couple of times and I think she went there one more time. All of a sudden 2 of my friends were a couple!
Well, by the start of 2003 we were planning Brandon’s move to Florida! It ended up being one of the greatest road trips ever!

I guess this is probably where my post should have started but I felt that the background stuff was important for some reason.

So on May 14th, 2003, Kim and I flew to Seattle. My parents picked us up and we drove across the Cascades to Yakima. We met up with Brandon at Miner’s. Kim went home with him and I spent a couple of days with my folks. On Sunday May 18th Brandon said good bye to his friends and family and embarked on a journey with a destination of a new life in Florida. I met up with him and Kim (and Sadie!) in Connell Washington and we drove to Coeur d’Alene Idaho. It was only 2-3 hours of driving, but it worked out as a good primer for the following 6 full days of driving.

Here we are on Connell Washington. That was 3 years ago today.

This is all MY stuff! I even added more stuff once I got to Washington. Like a box full of CDs that I left at my parent’s home when I moved to florida, and a case of Widmer Hefeweizen, my favorite beer which wasn’t available in Florida at the time.

NO TURNING BACK NOW!! (This is one of my favorite pics from the trip, so I had to include it.)

I think this was in Post Falls Idaho. We had a contest to see who could go the longest without talking. Naturally, I won that contest! Brandon said it’s hard to breathe without talking. Whatever!

We stopped by Wal-mart for Red Bull (and other things). In the following days you’ll see how Red Bull was a big part of the trip.
More pictures here!