Chris Arrives and Camera Fail

After years of flying, I think I've accrued somewhere in the neighborhood of 5.6 billion miles, though it might be slightly less. Despite the wealth of flying experience, I'd rather stab a flaming hot ice pick through my toenails than fly on an airplane. Not only that, I flew on the 8th anniversary of 9/11. :/ But I digress...here is my journey to Richmond, Virginia!...But first, a story about my camera!

About 5 months ago, I bought a Samsung camera that pretty much wipes the floor with almost every camera produced prior to 2008. I only say 2008 because Sony and Nikon still make a camera comparable to Samsung. Anywho, the 12.2 megapixel BEAST is like the Barry Bonds/David Ortiz/Manny Ramirez of digital cameras. It's JUICED! However, it requires a special, EXTREMELY hard to find charger (foreshadowing perhaps?). Maybe I was hanging out by the beach like in the Corona commercials and instead of skipping rocks into the blue blue sea, I hucked my camera charger. Either way, it's long gone.But for every problem, there is a solution! Just buy a new camera charger! Simple....right?....right!? After visiting seven, you heard right, SEVEN stores in two states, I have yet to find the appropriate charger. So now I have a $199 paperweight for the road trip. At least the maps won't fly around when I open the windows. :) (gotta look on the bright side right?)

Back to flying. So, I arrived at the airport about 830am-ish and checked my bag. After getting on the plane about an hour later, I noticed the mechanical crew taking a hard look at the left wing of our Embraer 190 jet. The captain notified us that they need to make a fix to the hydraulics. BROKEN PLANE! He also explained to us that we could probably take off and land without a problem, but that he "didn't want to land short of Richmond, Virginia." He repeated this phrase several times during his numerous updates. After about 30 minutes, we were huddled off to a new, unbroken aircraft. After a quick 1.5 hour flight, I arrived in Richmond, Virginia! (on a side note, it was the smoothest plane ride I've ever had. And JetBlue is a fantastic carrier)

After arriving in Virginia, I met up with Suzanne and off we went for lunch, bought road trip munchies, and made our failed attempt at getting the camera charger. As I'm writing this blog, Suzanne is packing her stuff and I am not helping in the least bit. So, I should probably go help with the packing so we can head out on time tomorrow!

Last but not least, please keep this road trip a secret from Wells! We want it to be a surprise. I'm also VERY excited for our 2700 mile journey to Spokane. :)

-CJ

Name one thing worse than packing...

Okay I thought of some. Having teeth removed with no Novocain, or having an extremity gnawed off by a hungry shark is worse than packing. Still, packing is horrible, at least for me. Making decisions on what to take based on the amount of space you have in your car is hard. Especially when you're moving to the arctic tundra which requires every wool, down or fleece item you own. Forget packing for changing seasons because Spokane only has two; Winter, lasting from Halloween to Memorial Day, and Summer which lasts from Memorial Day to Halloween. Flipflops and a bathing suit should be all I need summer. Check. Now if only I could find my down jacket.

To see the forest for the trees, this will be an amazing trip that I have the utmost privilege of sharing with my dear friend Mr. Christopher Jack. We will blog our way from Richmond, VA to Spokane, WA and will share everything from funny stories to our encounters with our CouchSurfing hosts and maybe even some wicked photos and random facts. Raise your hand if you've seen the Badlands. By the end of this trip Chris and I will have our hands raised - but only for a second because we'll be busy accepting all the friend requests from our new cross-country facebook friends! WIN! ha.

So the trip begins Saturday morning but Chris arrives on Friday so that we can load up the car and more importantly the cooler. After a send-off meal with my wonderful family it's off to Knoxville in the morning (with a lunch break in Blacksburg at my alma-mater, Virginia Tech - Go Hokies!) for another lovely evening with my boyfriend, Wells's family.

I guess now I'll go ahead and add that I have an ace up my sleeve. I have invited Chris along for the ride for two reasons. First is purely selfish because he is leaving for Korea (the good one) to teach for 1-2 years and we will miss him dearly so I wanted to spend time with him before he goes. Second is that he hasn't seen Wells (with whom he worked at Granite in Boston) since before he left for Basic Military Training in February and this will give us a chance to hang out for a couple days like old times. The kicker is that WELLS HAS NO IDEA CHRIS IS COMING!!! SURPRISE!!!!! :) If we make it to Spokane without Wells finding out, it will be the best surprise either of us (well definitely me, because I can't keep anything from Wells) has ever pulled off. I just can't wait to see the look on his face. That being said, please don't post stuff about Chris traveling with me on either of our facebook walls. I'll be so sad if Wells finds out .

So from here, I'll pass the reins to Chris as I'll be driving the first leg. We'll both be chiming in throughout the trip and I'm sure we'll be sharing some pretty interesting stuff! For example, I just rubbed chili pepper in my eye. Ha, stay tuned...

Suz & Chris