Strange stuff we saw

It turns out that in the middle of South Dakota there's a weird and awesome roadside attraction called Wall Drug. It's hard to describe for a variety of reasons, but as Doug and I were wandering through there we found an eight foot tall Jackalope, which I had to ride. It tried to buck me off, but I was victorious in the end.

How far did we drive?

When we were planning this trip, it wasn't clear exactly what route we'd take. But when you rent RVs you have to buy miles in a package, and if you go over you have to pay extra. So we took a guess and paid for 4,000 miles.

How many miles did we actually drive? See for yourself :-)

Travel's End

It's been another amazing trip. Spending time really getting to know these amazing people on the RV. All the great ideas for the future spreading around the conference. GWS is really an amazing group. To quote a great man, "We're websearch, bitches." I'll miss you guys.

Murphy's Law strikes again!

After 3000+ miles of driving, we dropped off the RVs and caught a bus from suburban NJ/NY into Manhattan proper. And wouldn't you know it, the bus broke down on the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel, just a few miles from the end of the trip.

An irate New Jerseyan woman rushed the driver, demanding an explanation, harshing our Californian mellow. But East-Coast Type-A assertiveness proved its worth as the lady flagged down a passing bus also headed to the Port Authority, so we hopped onto a transit bus on the middle of the Lincoln Tunnel offramp.



So we made it to the Port Authority in, oh, two hours, then split up — some of us to a dinner, some of us to The Book of Mormon, and some of us walked down The High Line back to our hotel, where we showered for hours.

The Eagle has Landed

After much craziness, the RVs arrived in Tappan, NJ yesterday around 2 PM. We unloaded all our junk, rammed most of it into Grigory's van and he shuttled it to NY while the rest of us took Greyhound buses to the hotel. Miraculously, we got our full security deposit back on both RVs! I won't go into the details about how one of the buses broke down, etc - cause I wasn't on that bus :-) But I'm sure somebody will fill in the details there.

We're now at the GWS Summit which kicked off this morning and is awesome. Chris Henry took a ton of photos - we'll update the blog with more info about the trip as we settle in to our post-RV life.

A Wrong Turning

It's been days since I've had a proper night of sleep. My liver weeps softly. Last night, we rolled into our last KOA at about 1:30 a.m. By the time we had found our site and set-up, it was past two o'clock. What time are we to leave in the morning? On the road by 7.

Sure enough, almost no one was awake at seven -- leaving a skeleton crew to get the RVs ready for departure. Still in darkness, we try to find the exit. Instead we find a steadily narrowing trail through the woods. After getting ourselves well down the "Nature Trail", we realize our mistake. What ensues is an entertaining RV skill challenge: back up along a narrow muddy trail and then execute a three point turn ... while tired and sleep-deprived and operating on a skeleton crew.

Amazingly, both RVs made it out unscathed. We're on our way. We should be in Tappan around 3 p.m.

Late arrivals

Me: "I'm going to New York for the GWS summit this year."

Mom: "Oh, are you flying to New York?"

Me: "No, I'm flying to Detroit. Then I'll take a cab to Ann Arbor. So that I can get on an RV. To New York."

Mom: "....."

Anyway, this RV is fantastic! It smells way better than it should at this point. So pumped to jump in for the last leg.

Hi Mom!

So the RVs have torn across Minnesota, over the Mississippi, and entered the promised land: Wisconsin. Land of beer, brats, Brewers, Badgers, Packers, protests, and, most importantly, parents.

This is "Real America" (bite me, Palin), and I was more than happy to drag the motley crue of Bay Area techo-elites (from all around the world) over the river and through the woods (literally) by backroads, cutting though forests and farm fields to my little hometown to, well, you know, meet the parents.

Well, and buy beer. New Glarus rules.

Most people like me would worry about their parents embarrassing them in front of their coworkers. I worried about exactly the opposite.

But they all got along swimmingly, and we had a cozy little evening, even if there was a little cognitive dissonance in having my family meet my other family. Will's dads even drove over from Appleton (Will and I both went to UW and he's also Robin's boyfriend. Cue It's a Small World).

I'd call it a perfect evening if only the Brewers weren't currently down 11-6 in the 6th in game six of the NLCS. Not that I'm bitter about it.

Now it's back on the road. We've got a long drive up north tonight where we'll hang with the yoopers. Uff da!

South Dakoooota and Minnesooooota

We visited the famous Wall Drug Store, which turned out to be a small mall complex with a Wild West theme. Wood panel walls, leather and mineral goods for sale, stern black and white photographs of Native Americans with their names in caligraphy ("Rain in the Face", "Low Dog"...), as well as home made ice cream, which we took to go.



Dinner was at the Anchor Grille in Chamberlain, South Dakota, "Where friends meet." Our waitress was a petite woman of about 21: sweet, doting, and accommodating, her name tattooed on one forearm and her son's name tattooed on the other next to "lil mamma". She explained that she had about 16 tattoos "all over".

We sat directly behind a group of locale hunters wearing camouflage and splashes of orange.


Meanwhile, doogle flaunted his "Go vegan or die" world view.


For dessert, we had the "deep fat fried snickers", a snickers bar wrapped in a tortilla, deep fried, then served with two scoops of vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, and cinnamon.


Some of us had a different notion of dessert. After setting up at our campsite, we welcomed Jinnah and Astrid to their first night on the RV with Macallan and Talisker scotches, Joose and Four Loko. The last of the liar's dice players finally quit around 5am.


We caravanned through Minnesota this morning.


And had lunch at a rest stop, where deep fried cheese curds welcome us to the midwest.

Minnesota

Flat. Wind farms. That is all.

These are blades on the move:

Let It Snow

Let it Snow as sung by drunken engineers

No trip through the Northern states would be complete without...

Mount Rushmore! Great family photo op. Great opportunity to make Kennedy jokes.

We are at Mt Rushmore

But this isn't the Mt Rushmore post. Jelena is going to post it. This is the post about Jelena posting the Mt Rushmore post. We must go deeper.

Devil's Tower National Monument, Wyoming

We arrived at our campsite at 1am and commenced the four loko proceedings, trying to keep warm by the fire. The bravest souls (Bill and Doug) camped outside over night in the sub-freezing temperatures.

As for me, I would have frozen despite sleeping in the RV were it not for Robin saving my ass (well, toes...) with a nalgene bottle filled with hot water. Robin: making my life awesomer every day. :)

We woke up this morning with a view that made the cold worthwhile.
A short hike around the base of Devil's Tower was wonderful after a few sedentary days, and then we were on the road again to pick up Jinnah and Astrid at Rapid City Regional Airport, South Dakota.

Back Up Has Arrived!

We've just picked up Astrid and Jinnah at what could loosely be termed an airport. We're in Rapid City, which is more of a hamlet. Really, we're in the middle of nowhere. After leading the other RV on a tour of short term parking, we're headed on to Mount Rushmore.

This planking fad has gone too far

Adios Montana

We're headed to Devil's Tower! It's going to be a long, beautiful ride. Doogle is driving and taking advantage of the built-in massage option.

Missoula Montana!

It's a little damp. Forecast is damp at Yellowstone (maybe snow) so I suspect we're going to skip it.

Busted!

The fuzz! Quick! Drink the liquor!

Can haz gas?

Dinner!

The delights of Redding

2 hours in

Time for a game of Dominion!

Pac-Man

As we get underway,  we're starting to eat through miles like Pac-Man eats through pills. Or miles, too, it turns out.

The King

Still building up our RV legs. We just needed a quick stop to get our burger on.

Doom!

As some of you know, I love a television show called "Invader Zim". In particular, I love a dysfunctional and insane robot named GIR (who is the inspiration for the GWS chatbot). GIR wanted to sing us a song before we left: "The Doom Song"

Game on!

Time to get this show on the road. Step one: take a shuttle to San Leandro to pick up our RVs with a metric ton of gear and supplies!

Please help, a compulsion to RV has come over me

I was just sitting there, like any guy in any meeting in any conference room in the world, when all of the sudden, I woke up with a bad hangover and was assigned to pick up cleaning supplies. Turns out I'm going with the RV. These guys have me in their thrall now, but I'm working on breaking loose somewhere in Washington State. I've been reading an instruction manual, and I'll send further updates effecting my escape via this channel in the future.

RVs are Booked

Thanks to Kathryn Welch, we are now the proud leasees of two V-31S RVs from RV Rental.com.  Check out the video walkthrough!

This means our drop-off location is now Tappan, NY.

Proposed Route

Here's a strawman schedule and route. The schedule is pretty rigid as laid out, but it's really just intended as a framework. En route, we can decide to switch things up. I've built some buffer times in here and there, if you look carefully. Most notably, a couple of mornings have generous allowances for sleeping in.

The main downside is that I can't seem to shake the one drive-through-the-night to start things off. The issue is that the distances between Mountain View, The Dalles and Yellowstone tend to be about 24h (when you count driving, sleeping and dinner). So it's pretty hard to keep things during business hours in Mountain View, The Dalles and Yellowstone ... unless we left super early on Wednesday.

• Leave Google Mountain View Campus at about 9 p.m. on Wednesday with the intention of driving through the night. We pick up the rentals just before close, and then come back to Mountain View to load up and have dinner.
• Arrive The Dalles at about 10 a.m. on Thursday. (12h18m driving) We'll take three hours for a tour. On the road by 1 p.m.
• Arrive Yellowstone at about 1 p.m. on Friday. (12h15m driving, 10h stopped for the night, 1h45 for a sit down dinner). We can spent a couple of hours here, and then on the road by 3 p.m.
• We'll sleep at Devil's Tower National Monument (or close to it), and stay long enough in the morning for a climb or two for those that are interested. It takes 7h35m to get from Yellowstone to Devil's Tower. On the road around 11 a.m. on Saturday.
• Pick up Jinnah at the airport in Rapid City, South Dakota. We'll be there a little after 1 p.m.
• Drive to Mount Rushmore. We'll get there around 3 p.m. Spend a couple of hours chilling out. On the road by 5 p.m.
• Arrive at the Corn Palace and sleep around there. Maybe grab dinner in downtown Mitchell. (ha!) Check it out in the morning. Buy the requisite keychain. On the road by 11 a.m. or so.
• Arrive at Nathan Naze's parents' place for dinner. About 7 p.m. or so. This is now Sunday. We can either pick them and take them somewhere, or make it a potluck. :) On the road again by around 9 p.m. This is possible Will Robinson Pick Up Spot #1.
• Drive (11h33m) and sleep (10h) on the way, and arrive at Annie's Place in Ann Arbor around 6:30 p.m. or so. Take her out to dinner if she's willing. This is Monday night. On the road by 8:30 p.m. This is possible Will Robinson Pick Up Spot #2.
• Drive on to Linden, NJ (this is El Monte's nearest location (assuming we go with them again)). This is about 11h of driving, plus maybe another 10h to crash out. Arrive at RV drop off place around 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday.
• We need some kind of pick up from here to Manhattan. The drive is about 40 minutes.