A Special Road Trip

Nearly 43 years ago, my dad proposed to my mom while sailing around Ledge Lighthouse near Groton, CT – where they met.

My father was a submarine sailor, and my mom worked on the sub base at the credit union. My dad was smitten with her immediately and chased her for years, but she wouldn’t date him until he presented his discharge papers.

They were married less than 3 months after he did (for those counting, I’m their oldest and I turn 40 soon – this was no shot gun wedding.)

Their love for each other was beyond inspirational, and their partnership was strong for their entire marriage – running businesses together, raising kids and continuing to be absolutely smitten with each other. A true romantic story.

So perhaps you’re putting the pieces together… our recent special side trip was to full fill my father’s final wishes of where his ashes should be launched.

We made way to park our bus near Savannah, where our friend’s Ann & Elliott had extended the offer to let Kiki rule their lives for a bit.

We had considered driving the bus up, but the cost of diesel and diversion from our goal of getting to Oregon just didn’t make too much sense.

My mother wanted to drive up to Connecticut in her van and stay around for a few weeks visiting family, so it fit well for her to pick us up in Savannah and we’d share the drive up together.

We made the drive up to Connecticut over three comfortable days, with a stop in Philadelphia to visit a dear friend of mine on the way.

And serendipity would have it that our nomadic friend Karen (who is the awesome artist who created the word art graphic above for my parents), was also in town visiting family – so we got a quick rendezvous together as well.

My brother flew into Connecticut to join us for the weekend, and my uncle arranged a boat for us to complete the mission.

It was of course a very emotional experience – both sad and positive. Positive to get to spend time with family we don’t see often, explore where my mom grew up and a fun road trip. Kiki also apparently had a blast having a non-stop catnip party and unlimited access to food.

And sad of course for the closure of my dad’s recent passing. It was hard to let go of his ashes and return him to the sea. These things aren’t meant to be easy after all.

On Monday, we made our way back to Savannah via Amtrak, which was complicated by the Metro North train derailment that occurred the Friday before. We decided to catch an earlier train out of New London and trust that we could just go with the flow and navigate several hops on the work around ferry train & bus services put in place to get around the track damage.

And tweeting our adventure got us an interview in the New York Times – crazy to get major media for doing mundane stuff.

We made it to NYC with plenty of time to spare to catch our train to Savannah, where we had left Pixel (our MINI Cooper) parked at the Amtrak station. Completing our hectic non-bus side adventure that involved trains, automobiles and boats. Well, there was a bus too, but not our bus.

We opted to catch up on sleep instead of immediately hitting the road westward and enjoyed another evening sharing a meal with Ann & Elliott. On Wednesday morning, we hit the road to Chattanooga completing a 380 mile driving day. We’re getting some routine maintenance done on the bus at Choo Choo Express Garage.

Up Next?

From here, we’ll head to St. Louis and spend a few days with Chris’ family next week before we start our adventure out west towards Oregon! Our route is completely unplanned, and we’ll be giving ourselves the entire month of June to make the repositioning.

We also hope to have our new eBook – The Mobile Internet Handbook – completed and launched in the next week or so.