Friday, July 4, 2008

Entry 1: Pittsburgh to Indianapolis

Well, it's official. I'm no longer a Pittsburgh resident.

I don't think things will really hit until Prescott Valley when I rejoin the new family..... The shock of actually loading all my stuff into the trailer, hitching up, and pulling out hasn't worn off yet so it doesn't feel like a reality.

The 5th wheel trailer tows surprisingly well and navigating tight construction zones with Semis beside me was no problem.


We may have hit a mechanical snag though. When we were on an uphill grade on concrete parts of the highway the rig would violently shake front to back.....like real scary like..... The curious thing is once we hit asphalt on the same hill, it went away instantly. Weird. We're going to get it on the road and hope that it was just some weird road thing. There's a monstrous 5th wheel parked behind me here at the Flying J in Indianapolis (where the waitress made fun of my dad and I for just ordering English Muffins out of guilt for using their booth power outlet) and they appear to be driving a Ford Super Duty as well. Hopefully they can shed some light. I was hoping with a new vehicle I would break the eternal curse of the Chalk Outline Party Subaru road trips..... So yeah, please send my truck (Tobias maybe?) good vibes so he behaves. It's a freakin' '08? I mean....C'mon!

But yeah, we're taking it slow on the road to break in the rig. ETA is Late Tuesday morning/early afternoon in Prescott. We were planning on hitting a huge Classic Car dealership for my dad tomorrow but we left Monroeville a lot later than planned. I'm bummed we have to skip that. It was right on the way.

We are meeting a few of his old Kansas friends who will be in a city right on our way so that will.

Oh yeah, I had my first RV conversation with the dude parked in front of me here. He came right over with a "she's a beaut, is she new?" haha. I'm in a new club I think like it or not.... Turns out he's a traveling Electrician from Iowa on his way to somewhere here in Indiana. He was a talker.....but in a good way. I got advice on which route we should take (brought out the Atlas and all) and heard about how he wants to learn to play piano and was wondering if 50 was too late to start.

All in all not a bad trip thus far. Spent most of the drive trying to find empty frequencies on the radio to tune my i-pod FM transmitter thingie into. Yeah, my beefy truck doesn't even have a CD player. Hindsight is more than 20/20 now that I know more than I ever thought about diesel engines and what they will leave out of a 'basic package' truck.....I must have explained a dozen times what I needed the truck for and how much time I would spend in it.....Sales guy was too busy drooling all over himself in anticipation of selling a truck to mention that I wasn't getting a CD player. If you're in the market for a Ford anytime soon.....don't go to Day Ford in Monroeville.....

I miss all my awesome friends and family already. I still have work to do learning this show but wanted to at least get a 'first entry' in.

Hopefully the writing will improve with time.....I'm going to have a lot of it on my hands.

Until tomorrow.....