This Is Travel Blogging

You may have seen the phrase “This Is Travel Blogging” used a number of times on this site.  In posts, on pictures or in tweets.  If you haven’t, there are a few examples here, here and here.  Take a look at the lead photo for this post.  It looks glamorous, doesn’t it?  Laptops all fired up in a hotel room. Beer. Smiles. Gadgets.  “Ahhhh….that’s the life for me”, you might be thinking.

And that’s how we portrayed it our second night on the road.  That photo was taken at Big Sky Resort in Montana.  The wifi connection the night before wasn’t the best in our cabin (I was the only one to get on because, evidently, I have a Super Antenna(TM) that sucks all the wifi out of other laptops around me, or so Pam says) and we were happy to all have time to catch up.  And we had beer.  Once again, it looks glamorous, doesn’t it?

Reality is the flip side to this coin.  In this case, the reality is we spent about two hours at that table, uploading photos, typing blog posts, pumping our adventure through Twitter.  I then spent another hour in my own room after Pam went to sleep and kicked me out.  Most nights were like this in one way or another.  Some mornings too when Pam would get up early and write her posts.

It is a lot of work to keep on top of things while traveling.  Kelly and I both don’t do well with reading/typing while in a car so that limited our time to write.  Photos needed to be vetted, geo-tagged, uploaded and then corrected on the map.  Batteries (laptops, cameras, GPS, Flip, TwitterFone(tm), etc…)need to be charged.  An internet connection wasn’t always available where we camped.  Oh yeah, and we needed to eat at some point.  Stop me when it sounds like I’m complaining.

All in all, it IS a fun life on the road.  I love the open road before me, driving and taking it all in.  And I DO love staying connected and communicating with friends, family, strangers.  But to do it well takes time out of the day.  Some days we’d blow it off and as a result I lost tracking data as my GPS receiver wasn’t charged.  No biggie, but annoying.  Blog posts were later than expected.  There is a noted absence of photos from some days.

Would it be easier to drive and not stay connected?  Sure.  We could have turned on the SPOT device and let it track our progress (it’s the one device that never needed a battery change).  Nights could have included more sleep.  We might have interacted with more locals rather than tweeting about our breakfast quality. 

But that would have missed part of the point for this trip.  For me, the idea was to make this trip as live as possible and help people feel they are along for the ride.  Use words and pictures to share our experience and maybe inspire others to get out on the road this summer.  To give the daily grind cubicle warriors out there a glimpse into another life beyond the 9-5 even if they are short on vacation time at the moment. 

The personal motto I have slapped on my business card reads: “EXPLORE - INSPIRE - EDUCATE”.  And that’s why I chose to take this adventure across the States with Pam and Kelly.  Travel blogging, and in the case of live travel blogging, is a chance for me to do all three.  I knew it’d be a lot of work.  In the end though, it turned out to be fun work.  And I can’t think of a better way to live life.

Why 3 Travel Bloggers And A Minivan Is An Excellent Configuration For A Road Trip

Crew note: We realize that because VW is one of our sponsors, the tone of this post sounds suspiciously advertorial. We  want to assure you that all the stuff Peter says here is actually absolutely true.Just FYI in a CYA sort of way.

In a nutshell, this trip has been an absolute blast.  I’m not bragging.  I’m only bringing it up because I’ve been dissecting what’s happened these last eight days to find out what has made this trip such a complete success (while noting Pam and Kelly still have to drive BACK to Seattle).  And I think I’ve come up with some answers I’d like to share for those pondering such an endeavor.

1) Get A Mini Van - I never thought I’d say this out loud or type it in the semi-permanence of the Internet, but a minivan is a wonderful option for a road trip.  Maybe I’m just getting old or possibly more sensible.  I’ve road tripped in many a vehicle; station wagons, vans, Suburbans, sports coupes, Jeeps.  Nothing compares to the sensibility and ease of use I’ve found with our minivan.

Thanks to Pam and her connections, we found that VW was quite excited about lending us a Routan for the journey to Chicago and back.  And we were excited to have a vehicle to drive!  The Routan, named Snuffleupagus, arrived approximately 20 hours before out set departure time and it was oh so pretty.  All clean and new with only 6000 miles on the odometer.

As I write this post, now 2621.1 miles and 8 driving days since our departure, I can state with a firm tongue that the Routan is an excellent choice for a road trip.  It has a storage all over the place, including a sunken trunk that swallowed up our camping gear and travel bags and kept them well below the review view glass.  There is storage under the floor behind the front seats, excellent for muddy shoes or things not needed often.  Cupholders!  There are eight cupholders up front (most of which became gadget holders for us), sliding side doors with roll down windows making road side photography a breeze and a sunroof.  Our model was the base S model, without the fancy DVD players, navigation system or 110V outlets.

We average around 21MPG for the trip with the AC on most of the way with the minivan loaded pretty lightly.  Cruise control on the Routan worked quite well, keeping us up to speed on the most demanding hills.  And the manual override for the six speed transmission is located close to the wheel, making downshifting to pass traffic safe and easy.  With one of the mid seats flipped up there was plenty of room for a cooler and the three power outlet were enough to keep our massive thirst for battery charging sated.  I really liked that the middle slide doors created easy ingress when jumping out to grab a camera tucked next to the cooler.

The biggest gripe we all had for the Routan was the driver’s seat ergonomics.  For me, there wasn’t ample lumbar support and instead it allowed me to slouch too much while the the headrest pushed my neck forward.  Instead of cradling me, it forced me into a C shape that was uncomfortable after three hours.  The passenger seat was the same but didn’t require upright seating and thus was more comfortable slightly reclined.  Oh and the wipers. None of us figured out the wipers the first time each of us went to use them.  Those who had mastered the use still weren’t able to explain their use to the others.  They just seemed a bit odd to control and I’ve driven a VW Passat for five years.

2) Three Is A Really Great Number - Three travelers, be they bloggers or not, is really a great number for a roadtrip.  Again, I’ve traveled with groups from one to six and I found the three of us on this trip to be a perfect combination.  It gave us ample room in the Routan whereas four would have been just a bit more cramped.  It also allowed us to divide up the jobs; passenger seat was for navigation and handing things to the driver while back seat was the designated TwitterFone(tm) and napping spot.  The far back seat held items needed while driving, but not needed all the time.  While the VW would have held seven of us, I can’t imagine taking the trip with that many bodies.

Plus three people move better.  It’s still a small group so unloading and reloading was easy with no one in the other’s way.  No need to climb over the seats into the back.  Not to mention three people can decide on music easier than four or more.

3) Relax - None of us are uptight people and I didn’t realize this until a few days into the trip.  As mentioned previously, we really didn’t know each other that well before taking off last week.  Would they like listening to Jimmy Buffett when I wanted to chill out and Pink, Disturbed or Chemical Brothers when I wanted to drive faster?  What would camping be like with strangers?  And route finding…..are they the type of people to freak out when we make a wrong turn?

It turns out we are all fairly relaxed people when it comes to that little stuff.  And that was a huge relief once the reality of it sunk in.  Pam and I often sang along to most songs (even when we got Billy Joel lyrics wrong ), Kelly took to camping like a fish in water and many a ‘wrong’ turn was made with only a shrug of the shoulders and second check of the map.  We all knew we’d make it eventually.  No freak outs, no shouting matches.  Just going with the flow and adapting when needed.

Is three travelers and a minivan the ideal setup for your next road trip?  I can’t say with 100% certainty.  I do know that for this trip to TBEX it’s been the perfect configuration for me.

Mount Rushmore and Badlands National Park; WOW!

Siggy was a recent high school grad from Poland who we picked up hitchhiking in Big Sky, Montana.  Siggy told us not to go to Mount Rushmore.  He seemed to know what was best about our country as he had literally just flown into Chicago and then drove, with four of his buddies, to Big Sky on the West side of Yellowstone National Park.  An outsider’s view.  We listened to his advice, ponder it for a few hundred miles and expected to see a rather small representation of some of our most beloved presidents.

But Siggy was wrong.  Dead wrong.  On day five of the TBEX road trip we woke up just five miles from Mount Rushmore National Memorial.  Our campsite near Horse Thief Lake was quiet and just a bit dewy, but the skies held promise of a crystal clear viewing.  We had decided to not show up at 8pm with overcast skies the night before, in favor of catching the morning glow on the faces of those four, chiseled presidents in the morning.  It turned out to be a grand choice. 

Siggy did have one valid point.  As you can see from the photo above, most pictures taken of Mount Rushmore look a lot like the postcards for purchase in the gift shop.  It’s hard to really capture a different view of the presidents the way it’s possible to capture the many moods of, say, volcanic mountains like my favorite, Mt. Baker Washington.  And with only an hour and a half in the park, we weren’t going for any award winning shots. 

For me, the most exciting part was watching the making of Mount Rushmore in the park’s visitors center.  The 15 minute film is narrated by Tom Brokaw, a South Dakota native, and is an incredible story of the nearly two decades it took to sculpt the mountain.  Considering the tools available in the 1920s, I’m still amazed at the quality of the work finished.  It’s on a scale hard to comprehend and yet, there they are, staring across the Black Hills.

While this area of South Dakota holds many treasures, we don’t have time to discover them all on this trip.  And soon enough we were back in the car heading for Rapid City for breakfast.  Ahhh breakfast.  As Pam mentioned in her last post, breakfast is our main meal of the day and by now is highly anticipated.  While the breakfast in Rapid City was situated in the cute, tree covered, bronze presidential statued lined streets of downtown Rapid City, the surliness of the wait staff and slowness of delivery left much to be desired.  But nothing cheers up the day like posing with Ronald Reagan! (pictured at left)

Grasslands, grasslands, grasslands.  That’s what comes after Rapid City on the way to Badlands National Park.  It’s also what comes AFTER the Badlands.  Split into two distinct section, we opted for the more popular North district after a stop at the visitors center, which included another video not narrated by Tom Brokaw.  But it did a great job of showing the park in its many moods, complete with Buffalo that had eluded us, nocturnal ferrets we’d never see and freezing blizzards in the winter months.  Done with the video, it was time to see some seriously bad land.

Below are but a sample of the awesome geology and sights to be had on the drive along Highway 240 towards Wall and I-90.  It’s yet another park we wish we had extra time to explore but will have to save for another day.

Whoa, That’s Some Big Sky: Day Two On The Road

Day two started out odd for this road tripping, travel blogging crew.  We hit traffic in Sandpoint, Idaho of all places.  Not much, but then we needed fuel, which, obviously, led to a discussion with a gentleman at the gas station about the health care plan before Congress.  Pam has told us she attracts all kinds of strangers to talk with her and this was my and Kelly’s first experience with it. 

With that oddity out of the way, and with Pam courageously taking up the driving, we headed out East from Sandpoint on Hwy 200 on the suggestion from Lisa Gerber.  Hwy 200 is a great trip around the North and East sides of Pend O’Reille (pronounced Pond Oray I believe) as we wound through pine tress and the swamp lands of the Pack River.  Hope was our first destination and a seemingly good way to start the day.  But Hope is never what you think it should be, and the one joint in town that open really didn’t seem interested in feeding us.  Onward!

Soon after this point, I fell asleep.  Kelly and Pam say things were pretty as we left the lake and started following the Clark Fork River.  I’ll take their word for it.  I did briefly wake up at Noxon (our first town with a palindrome name!) as we hunted for breakfast.  Soon after we crossed into the Mountain Time Zone, quickly making breakfast a brunch affair when we found it in Thompson Falls, Montana. 

Big cinnamon rolls and a bear greeted us inside the front door of Minnie’s Montana Cafe, a likely spot filled with locals and just a few of us tourists.  Well past noon, we were happy to see it was a true cafe, offering breakfast all day, although Morgan, our waitress, warned us everything was big.  It’s a common Montana theme; Big. Big Sky, Big Pancakes Pam couldn’t finish, Big Hats, Big Chevy that took us to get beer later in the evening, Big Drunks at the bar where we bought our beer.  Everything here is indeed, Big, with a capital B.

Heading East and South out of Thompson Falls the geology changes to stratified hills laid bare on one face and the road goes from constructed to under construction.  Slow, slow, slow.  South, South, South until the speedway of I90 is again obtained near Butte with its 90′ tall Madonna on a hill.  We jack up the speed and fly up one side of the Rockies and down the other.  Some place along there was the Continental Divide but we missed the sign. 

Let me take a moment to explain one piece of amazing technology on this trip.  It’s called the TwitterFone(tm).  I’m sure it has another name, maybe even a model number, but for us, it’s a phone that connects us to Twitter.  And Twitter has been a valuable resource on this trip; finding us stops, helping us realize that 90′ tall Mary was not, in fact, not a statue of Jesus as I first thought and in general helping make this trip more interactive, fun, connected.  The Twitter phone is relegated to the back seat passenger with the shotgun seat reserved for navigation.  It’s a tight ship we run.  If you’re curious to follow and possibly help out (we need places to stay in Iowa, for instance) follow along with @nerdseyeview, @kag2u and @pwcarey as any one of us might be in the TwitterFone(tm) seat.

Pine!  Can you smell that piney smell?  Working out way South on Hwy191 towards Big Sky the pine jumped through the ventilation of Snuffulupagus raising spirits as the canyon walls killed reception for the TwitterFone(tm) (which also has Google Maps when we get lost).  Our sunroof became invaluable to me for scopping out tanned rocks along the road, dreaming of spending days climbing in this area.  The Gallatin River carved our path through the hills until we reached Big Sky, where the confusion started.

Our problem with the finding our accommodations for the night is Big Sky is Big!  The Big Sky Resort consists of three separate hotels, a mall, golf course, ski resort and more.  It’s Big.  With some meandering and asking around, we found our comfy rooms on the third floor.  The hotel seems to really be pushing the ‘green’ concept in a good way.  Compact fluorescent lights through out, ‘eco’ soap and hair products and signs about it here and there.  Settling in, and then grabbing some beer to go at a surly local bar (noting you can still smoke in bars in Montana), we set to the task of organizing the days thoughts, catching up on email, downloading photos and the general task of blogging on the road.  While I know the picture makes our life on the road look tremendously glamorous it’s still time consuming and work.  Fun work, but still work.  Ok, lame attempt asking for pity is done.  Back to looking for buffalo!!

The Day Before The Big Trip

Packing and more packing.  As you can see from the picture at left, I’m lost without a list and it’s what kept me sane at midnight last night.  I hope I have it all, at this point it’s kind of late as I’ve left the house, nary to return for weeks on end. 

The TBEX Road Trip officially gets under way tomorrow and today we are getting together to test pack the vehicle.  At this point, we’re actually not sure just which vehicle we are taking!  But that’s a minor thing, really.  The technology is all in place, our route is plotted (and we’re still looking for diversions! ), all that is left is to make sure it all fits and then hit the road.

While we had grand dreams to hit the North Cascades highway, we have instead opted to take the direct Interstate 5 path to Sandpoint, Idaho.  This way we have more time to hang out and enjoy the hospitality of Lisa Gerber has lined up for us.  After about, oh, let’s say 9am tomorrow, check out the Wonder Map to follow along!  And look for a post coming soon from Austin on how he built the Wonder Map in case you’re curious.

The TBEX Road Trip Wonder Map

Questions: What road trip is complete without a map?  And what’s better than some bland, old, static map showing where we thought we were going to go but hasn’t been updated in days?

Answer: The TBEX Road Trip Wonder Map!

As stated previously, we want to make this trip interactive for you, the dude or dudette sitting in your cubicle lusting after the open road.  To that end, the TBEX Road Trip Wonder Map was crafted with many interactive features in mind. (because it’s interactive, if I didn’t mention that)

First, it lays out our intended route.  By no means is this route set in stone, but if you’re located along our path, please drop us a line (in the comments section) and let us pay you a visit.  Show us around town, meet up for a drink.  Even better, if you have a spot we can couchsurf or camp, please oh please drop us a line!

Second, once the road trip gets started on Thursday, July 16th, you will be able to e-stalk us with ease!   Thanks to the wonderful SPOT Personal Satellite Messenger, our location will be broadcast every 10 minutes.  It’s not perfect technology and does miss spots once in a while, but for the most part this device will help you keep up with us.

Photos!!  Everyone loves photos.  We’ll be geo-tagging our pictures and sharing them through our individual Flickr accounts.  The Wonder Map will then glob all of these photos together and present them on the map.  Check it out now as we’ve put some test data into the map already.  Like a virtual bread crump, the photos will present the road trip in a way words cannot.

Taking the geo-tagging one step further, our blog posts will be tagged as well.  You’ll be able to see where we are posting from as the trip unfolds.

Lastly, it’s your turn!  On the map page there is a tab for “Suggest A Place”.  Clicking on this tab will enable a simple search for a location.  Upon locating a great stop in any state we are visiting, click on Suggest.  You will have space on the next screen to fill in your name, website, Twitter name and email address.  There is also a box where you can tell us more about the location and why we should stop by to see it.  This is one of the more exciting aspects of the trip I can’t stress enough; we want to hear from YOU about what to see and do along the way!!  Even if it’s not right on our path, please suggest any wonderful, wacky or wild stops we shouldn’t miss!

Oh wait, that wasn’t lastly….lastly is the other side bar on the map page.  It contains tweets from the road from all three fearless travel bloggers.

In a nutshell the TBEX Road Trip Wonder Map is like a one stop shopping experience for everything going on during this road trip.  Tweets, photos, blog posts and it’s oh so adorable I just want to hug it every morning I wake up.

Why Traveling With Peter Can Be The Best Thing You’ve Ever Done In Your Life Or Pure Agony On A Stick

As Pam was gracious enough to let the world in on what it’s like to travel with her and some things we all should know, I thought it best to throw my hat into the ring.  Mind you, before we all decided to spend 8 days in a car and 4 more days in Chicago together, we didn’t know each other that well.  Really, I only knew both Pam and Kelly from some tweets and a quick meetup.  So take this as a nice air clearing session for all us road trippers and a chance to say, "I told you so!!"

1. I ALSO CALL SHOTGUN - This might be bad news for Kelly, who, evidently, has no problem reading in the back seat.  Unlike Pam and I who tend to get woozy without a clear view.  I’ve gotten better over time but I still get a bit icky in the back seat especially if I try to read.
2. I BREAK INTO SONG EASILY - It seems just about anything anyone says makes some kind of connection in my head with a song lyric.  Sometimes improvised, sometimes verbatim.  And I’ll be happy to share no matter where we are.
3. I GET UPSET IF YOU DON’T CATCH ON TO MY OBSCURE MOVIE QUOTES - There was a guy named Joel who I used to work with.  Joel knew every movie quote I ever rattled off.  If you’re not Joel, you best be good at guessing.
4. STOP ME IF YOU’VE HEARD THIS - I’m not that old yet, but I often forget stories I’ve already told people.  Stop me, please, if you have actually heard it.  Don’t humor me by politely laughing, just say, "Dude, old story"
5. FRUIT AND DESSERT DON’T MIX - Please don’t ask me if I want any fruit whatsoever on my ice cream, cake, or other tasty dessert.  I don’t know why, but I just don’t like fruit on my dessert.
6. I’D RATHER BE TWO DAYS EARLY THAN FIVE MINUTES LATE - This is an old adage for me.  And it’s something that I often live by when there is an important appointment.  I really do prefer to get to where I’m going first, then find water, food, fuel or whatever.  I’d rather spend two hours on the other side of a security check point in the airport than time it ‘just right’.  It makes me feel calm to know where a new location is first, then find the grocery store and not the other way around.
7. THE COPILOT HANDLES EVERYTHING - From decades of road trip experience, those who travel with me know just how true this one is.  A great copilot takes care of the pilot as in, opens packages or water bottles, reads road signs (my vision sucks sometimes), finds new music and reloads assault weapons.  I handle my own seatbelt but beyond that, I nee help to keep us all alive.
8. TECHNOLOGY FIRST, LOGIC SECOND - I will often keep making attempts to use technology to solve a problem long beyond a practical end time.  Like finding an exit….I’ll fiddle with the GPS and force it to do my will, rather than get out the paper map sometimes.  I often here the phrase, "why don’t you just…." a lot because of this.
9. I DON’T WORRY MUCH - While generally a good thing, this can annoy some people.  Something that may seem catastrophic to you at the moment, to me it may just be another bump in the road.  This often leads to others believing I have no empathy.  But that’s not true, I’m just not as freaked out as you are that we’re 140 miles from the nearest town and running on fumes. "It’s not time to worry yet." - Atticus Finch
10. SPEED LIMIT + 10 IS MY LIMIT - Really, don’t ask for more.  It’s not going to happen.  Maybe I was traumatized by getting 3 speeding tickets in 9 months time as a kid.  Or maybe it’s just I’m a financial wimp who doesn’t want to pay for a ticket or the increased insurance premium.  I just don’t speed any more.  Do I know how to?  Yes.  Will I?  Only to save our lives.  Or if there’s a really hot chick in a Ferrari like in the movie Vacation.
11. STOP ME IF YOU’VE HEARD THIS - I’m not that old yet, but I often forget stories I’ve already told people.  Stop me, please, if you have actually heard it.  Don’t humor me by politely laughing, just say, "Dude, old story"

Beyond that, I’m fairly easy going.  I trust my gut a lot and it’s almost always right.  I can’t sleep just about anywhere like some people, but I’m perfectly fine muddling through.  Discomfort is just a part of life and nothing, include discomfort, lasts forever.

And I absolutely love being on the open road.  Even with a road (I-5) I’ve been down scores of times before, there is something about that wide open space coming at me at 60MPH.  Passing semis, sleeping on rest stop picnic tables, laughing at odd town names.  I can wait two more weeks before we launch for Chicago, but just barely.

What The TBEX Road Trip Is All About

I guess it’s time to explain a bit about what this whole TBEX Roadtrip site is about.  Wait, no.  Let me take a step back and explain why we even need a website in the first place!

Travel Blog Exchange 2009.  Masterminds Kim Mance of GoGalavanting.com and Debbie Dubrow of DeliciousBaby.com created this conference to bring together travel bloggers from near and far for a day of discussion.  Following the ever popular BlogHer conference, this year TBEX’09 will be held on July 26th in Chicago.  And that got me thinking, which led to one little post and some tweets on Twitter about taking a road trip from Seattle out to Chicago.  Soon after that original thought, Kelly took the idea one step further.  What if we threw a few travel bloggers from Seattle into a car and made it a ‘live media event’?

And so, what started out as my simple quest to be cheap and have others share the cost of fuel, has blossomed into The Travel Blog Exchange 2009 Road Trip, or TBEXRT for super short.

Our main goal is to have fun and see a slice of country most of us usually fly over.  Our lack of knowledge of some parts of the USA became evident at one planning meeting (held in a coffee shop, Seattle-style) when none of us had a clue what goes on in places like Iowa.  Or South Dakota.  Actually, anything past the Rockies was a mystery, I’m sorry to say.

All the better reason to get out and see it!  And if we’re going to head out into the Great Unknown, we might as well take the opportunity to let others come along virtually if they so desire.  That is what you are now checking out thanks to the wonders of the Internet.

We have some simple plans for this site before and during the trip.  First, we want to make the trip interactive through this site and our individual Twitter accounts (tied together with the hashtag #tbexrt).  We want to hear from you about what to see and do along the way.  You can do that by responding directly to tweets from any of us or by posting comments on this blog.  We already have posts up covering such important topics as: What To Do In Iowa, Places To Get Beer and What’s In Your Road Trip Kit?

Second, we REALLY want to make this interactive.  If you live along our path and would like to show us around your neck of the woods, drop us a line!  The Internet is so much better when you step back from it for a moment to meet people in real life.  And if you wouldn’t mind lending three weary travelers a small plot of Earth in your front yard where we can pitch a tent for the night, we’d love to hear from you as well!  Think of it as a short term CouchSurfing meets Twitchhiker but with tents.  TentSurfTweeting just didn’t have a good ring to it, though.

As with any good travel bloggers, we’ll be posting photos and video along the way and we’ll have a map with all kinds of up to minute details.  We’ll be tweeting, of course (@kag2u, @nerdseyeview, @pwcarey and #tbexrt) and presenting daily updates as we prepare for and embark on the eight day trek to Chicago.

In a nutshell, that’s it!  If you would like to follow along with the blog, it’s easy to subscribe with this link.  And check out the itinerary page to see if we’ll be passing by your place.  If so, drop us a line!

In Search Of The Ultimate Seattle-Chicago Road Trip Vehicle

We are in search of the Ultimate Seattle-Chicago Road Trip Vehicle for this July’s Travel Blog Exchange (TBEX) Road Trip.  Personally I’d prefer the Urban Assault Vehicle from the movie Stripes pictured at right.  But barring that beauty, here are our requirements:

• Drivable
• Will make it to Chicago kinda drivable
• Seats 3 adults comfortably
• Room for all kinds of camping gear and a ukulele
• Gets decent gas mileage. North of 20MPG would be nice
• Fun
• Dead Sexy (ok, that’s an option)
• Free

Super ideally it’ll be a vehicle we can take one way and leave in Chicago.  We are already in contact with a couple car rental agencies but if there are other options out there that are both way more fun and dead sexy, we’ll take it!  We can also bring it back to Seattle if you need us to.

What we are looking for is a free loaner for the trip.  We’re hoping someone out there has a vehicle they wouldn’t mind loaning three poor souls for a week of good old American Road Tripping.  We are all grown, responsible, non-smoking, mentally competent, crash adverse adults who will take good care of said vehicle.  For the honor of rolling your vehicle to TBEX and possibly back, we’d be glad to pimp your life, cause, company, cat or anything you wish to pimp on this site, our blogs, and the blogs other travel bloggers supporting us.  In other words, exposure.  PIE.

If you are willing to offer up a Ferrari for the trip, I’m going to have to ask for two, otherwise we’ll have to do Rock-Scissors-Paper to see who stays behind.  Something like a Vanagon would be perfect.

Let us know what you, or your buddy, or your neighbor’s friend’s golf cart repairman might have sitting around.