4771 Miles

I am 1200 miles into this trip and already freezing my ass off. The wise decision was made that I should drive to Alaska rather than fly. Captain Mike, slayer of barracuda and all other reef fishes of Nicaragua, met me at Dallas-Ft. Worth airport and that is where the journey starts. I caught an early morning flight (5:20am) out of Orlando to Dallas with a 40 minute layover in Charlotte. I tried to stay awake all night so I could sleep on the plane and a little in the car. But I failed. I fell asleep around 2:30am and the alarm went off at 4:20am. So I am starting the trip completely exhausted.

Captain Mike is taking the first length of the drive. We plan on reaching Boulder, Colorado by midnight to stay with Hailey, a good friend of Mike. Mike drives through Texas and up to Oklahoma City. Between catching up with Mike and the sheer excitement of this massive road trip I can't get any sleep. I take over at Oklahoma City and drive through the miserable state of Kansas to the Colorado border. I-35 through Kansas is flat and the scenery is cattle, oil rigs, wheat fields, and cattle. Eventually we come to I-70 and head west for Colorado. I can not manage a wink of sleep until Strasburg, just west of Denver. We arrive in Boulder about 12:30am. I have gained two hours from time zone switches and have been in six states in less than a 24-hour period.

I crash hard for about eight hours and wake up to the smell of coffee. Hailey has tarot cards waiting on the coffee table for our morning reading. I shuffle the deck for a while to "put my energy into the cards" and then draw three. I then find out that I am soon to meet a girl that will "rock my world". I find that my grandmother has some recipes that she hasn't yet shared with me. I find that I will be very successful around the age of 38. I find that I must let go of my juvenile past. And I find out that there is a baby in the future. So now, for the sake of my conscience, I will have to wear condoms AND pull out.

Boulder has some amazing shops that stock heaps of organics. I made dinner for everyone and we swapped stories over micro-brewed beers and good wines. The dominating conversation topics were why Rachel Ray is a whore of the culinary industry, when and why food should be stacked, and what the term "fusion food" really means.




We are off after relaxing for a day with goals of driving through Wyoming and spending time photographing Yellowstone. Ideally we will end up in Montana around 10:00pm and camp out. We have to average about 12 hours per day to make it to Alaska by May 10th. Mike has to be there by the 12th at the latest. Only five hours into the drive and we run into heavy snow and icey roads. With near white-out conditions we are forced to pull into Casper, Wyoming and spend the night in a Super 8. With any luck the storm will blow over and we will be able to make up the time tomorrow.