Tag Archives: driving

Charlie Goes West, Day 0

I’m still scrambling trying to get everything packed, or at least staged and ready to go. It turns out when you’re going to leave home for a month, you need to give some things a little extra thought. How long will those eggs in the fridge last? Which lights should be left on? Little things like that.

I still need to get Nora’s food and medications all packed up. The dog sitter loves Nora, which helps. They have a small dog and a couple of young children, and Nora gets along quite well with all of them. She spent the night with them last weekend and they got the Full Nora Experience, which means she got into their snack stash and ate an entire bag of Fritos and a bag of Brownie Brittle. They need to work on understanding her “tells” as well. When Nora comes and sits in front of you and stares at you, she isn’t saying “Oh, please pet me.” She is saying “Hey dummy, I need to pee. Let me out.” They had to deal with a couple of accidents because of that, but seemed quiet OK with it. In talking with them, they have a lot of experience with dogs way more troublesome than Nora, so I think she’ll be just fine there.

Nora stares into the camera as a hand from offscreen scratches her chin.

So anyway, I have four weeks of travel ahead of me, starting right after I drop Nora off tomorrow morning:

The first week and a half is going to be fun, but a little tiring. As I have learned from past road trips, the daily routine of driving someplace new, stay at a hotel, then pack up and drive to the next place can be wearing. I’m glad I’ve got some AirBnB’s lined up in Flagstaff, Albuquerque, and Denver. That will give me time to recharge a bit, work remotely, and do some laundry!

Tomorrow, I hit the road!

Maritimes Road Trip, Part 2

Day 5: Ottawa, Ontario to Quebec City

I woke up entirely too early, but I decided to take advantage of this and get on the road. I took Charlie for walk in Byward Market, which was just getting started for the day, and got to take a picture of him in front of the famous Ottawa sign, which is usually mobbed by tourists.

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Maritimes Road Trip, Part 1

Day 1: Home to Livonia, Michigan

 This started off well enough, at least. I had the car packed up and ready on time, and drove up to Chad’s place to drop off Nora. It was raining pretty steadily and I found that after applying the sealant to the windshield the wipers were chattering with every pass. I conferred with Piper, and he confirmed my suspicion: they needed to be replaced. Fortunately there was an Autozone just up the road in Kenosha, but after a brief detour and installation of new wipers, Charlie and I were good to go!

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Maritimes Road Trip, Day 0

Everything is packed and ready to go into the car in the morning. Charlie’s food, medications, bowls, and various accessories are ready to go. Nora’s food and medications are packed and ready to drop off with Chad, who is a wonderful friend who will be taking good care of Nora while I’m gone.

Here’s what the next three weeks look like:

This is looking like it’ll be over 4,000 miles. It’s a lot, but I’m really looking forward to it. Seeing new parts of the world is always exciting anyway, and I’ve never explored Quebec or the Maritimes before. I’m also looking forward to meeting up with great friends along the way, and hopefully meeting some new friends too!

I’ll be blowing up my Twitter along the way, and I am hoping to post daily updated here as well. Stay tuned!

A map of the Great Lakes and Eastern Canada showing a round-trip route from Chicago, Illinois to Halifax, Nova Scotia

On the Road Again: Maritimes Road Trip 2022!

It’s been five years since my last road trip, which means this year’s trip is long overdue! The general idea is to hit the road for three weeks, traveling to Halifax, Nova Scotia and back. And this time I won’t be going alone! I will have Charlie as my co-pilot.

Charlie, a RedMerle Border Collie
Charlie can be my navigator. Sure, he’s blind, but what could possibly go wrong?

The general plan is to stop every couple of days and work from my hotel room. In my current position I can’t just disappear for three weeks, so this seems like a reasonable balance. Plotting things out, I realize I’m probably still driving too much on too many days, but on the flip side I have worked hard to keep all driving legs to five hours or less. All of my hotels are booked, so the itinerary is set:

  • Ann Arbor, Michigan
  • Toronto, Ontario
  • Ottawa, Ontario
  • Québec City, Québec
  • Rivière-du-Loup, Québec
  • Moncton, New Brunswick
  • Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia
  • Halifax, Nova Scotia
  • Lubec, Maine
  • Boston, Massachusetts
  • Binghampton, New York
  • Cleveland, Ohio

A bit of a whirlwind tour even taking 19 days, but I’m really looking forward to it! I’m glad I will have Charlie with me, since he helps with a couple of things. First and foremost his company will be welcome. Having him along means that I will almost always be eating in an outdoor environment (Remember Covid? Yeah, it’s still around.) Finally, everyone wants to stop and say hello and pet Charlie (and he loves it). This provides needed social interaction, since I tend to be rather introverted when traveling alone, and not very good at striking up conversations with strangers. It helps that Charlie adores riding in the car, too!

As with my last road trip, I will be documenting it both on Twitter and here. Keep an eye out!

Great Western Road Trip, Day 0

(Hereafter Great Western Road Trip is abbreviated GWRT)

Today’s Song: Ready To Go, by Republica

Current Location: Volo, Illinois

Everything is packed up, the dogs are with Grandma, the rental car has been procured, and now the reality is setting in: This is really going to happen. I mean, I planned for it but I always suspected some circumstance would force me to put things off.

I have a long trip ahead of me: approximately 8,000 miles in 24 days. My route will take me from Chicago in the upper Midwest to the Canadian Prairie Provinces, over the Rocky Mountains, down the Pacific coast, and then back to Chicago. Along the way I’ll be seeing dozens of friends Dan and I have made through the years, and hopefully making new friends as well.

Why am I doing this? Dan and I had planned to take a two-week Caribbean cruise in April 2017. When he passed away suddenly all of that got cancelled. Now that I had the vacation time and the funds we’d set aside for that available, I kicked around the question of what to do with those for a few weeks. I have always loved road trips, but in the last decade or so they have simply not been possible due to some of Dan’s health issues. So first off this was a way to cross a long road trip like this off my bucket list.

Although we had a wonderful and well-attended memorial for Dan a few weeks ago, many of our dearest friends were unable to join us. I hope to bring the memory of Dan to them, to celebrate his life and to share a toast to an extraordinary man.

What am I hoping to get out of this trip? I know that hopes and what actually happens are two different things but I hope that this trip serves as a reset button, a demarcation point of My Life Before and My Life After. It’s hard to admit it, but it may also mark where “Tom and Dan” ended and where “Just Tom” started (again). In the 100+ hours of driving planned, there’s going to be a lot of time to think and to work things out in my head. Whether this produces anything constructive is anyone’s guess, though.

Throughout the trip I will be posting my experiences to Twitter. I also hope to post a summary of each day here as well, perhaps providing more context for the tweets and additional photos and memories. Way back in the dawn of time (2002, to be exact), I started blogging on LiveJournal. All of those entries are archived here on this site fortunately, since LiveJournal is now a terrible place. I found that I enjoy going back over old posts that talk about what I did where and with whom. This will be a place to keep the memories of this trip in one place. I also hope to have a theme song for each day, as posted above. This will reflect my mood for the day, my location, or a general feeling I get as I drive across the countryside.

See you all tomorrow, when I hit the road for St. Paul, Minnesota!